Impact of the Pandemic on the Barriers to the Digital Transformation in Higher Education - Comparing Pre- and Intra-Covid-19 Perceptions of Management Students

• Published in: Perspectives in Business Informatics Research Vol. 430; pp. 3 - 18
• Main Authors: Packmohr, Sven, Brink, Henning
• Format: Book Chapter Conference Proceeding
• Language: English
• Published: Switzerland Springer International Publishing AG 2021; Springer International Publishing
• Series: Lecture Notes in Business Information Processing
• Subjects: Arbete och organisation; Barriers; Covid-19; Digital transformation; Higher education; Student perception
• ISBN: 9783030872045; 3030872041; 303087205X; 9783030872052
• ISSN: 1865-1348; 1865-1356
• DOI: 10.1007/978-3-030-87205-2_1

The rise of digital technologies is a macro trend, forcing organizations to transform digitally. This so-called digital transformation (DT) is affecting the field of higher education, too. Higher education institutions (HEI) digitalize internal processes and offer digitally-enabled education services. Different types of barriers are challenging a successful DT and need to be mastered. Our study follows a longitudinal research design by surveying different student cohorts in the same courses. Before the pandemic, we identified the barriers to DT and transferred them into a research model. Pre-pandemic, we surveyed the influence of barriers perceived by management students on the DT process of their HEI. Taking the pandemic as a solid external driver on DT, we examined students’ intra-pandemic perception in the same courses as the pre-pandemic analysis. With pre-pandemic data, the projection explains over 50% of the adjustment problems of the DT process. Based on intra-pandemic data, the explanation decreases to 45%. Hypothetically, we expected a better explanation degree as an impact of the pandemic. Interestingly, results indicate that intra-pandemic perceptions got more complex and, therefore, less significant.