By: Prof. Dadan Ramdan, M.Eng, M.Sc.
Rector of Universitas Medan Area
The dynamic of global life definitely has an impact on the development of the world of higher education. The management of higher education should also keep up with the demands of the development of global civilization. A new phenomenon in campus management is the Green Digital University, which is a university whose academic and non-academic management applies digital technology and its educational outputs prioritize and focus on the fields of green sustainable digital, green sustainable economics and sustainable engineering and environments.
The Green Digital University curriculum is dominated by the use of future computer program applications and many lecturers and students create new applications to facilitate society’s needs in the future. The learning activity system uses a blended learning system. During online learning activities, the methods used are synchronous and asynchronous models.
In addition, Green Digital University is a green, beautiful, healthy, convenient, clean and safe campus that is managed digitally and UMA is on its ways to implement that system. The infrastructure for a green and beautiful campus environment in a comfortable academic atmosphere has been properly realized. Various awards have also been achieved for a green, beautiful, clean, convenient and beautiful environment. In the future, the management of the virtuous campus environment will also implement a digital system so that the entire management of UMA, both academic and non-academic, will be digital-based.
The concept of digital transformation has been defined in many different ways, so it is appropriate that the first thing we do is to define our own definition.
Digital transformation is more than just digitization. According to Senén Barro, “it is important for university to understand that the goal of the pathway should not be only to simply digitize the university but also to become digital universities” (Barro, 2018). What should be understood by the university is how to digitize the use of information technology to offer faster and more efficient solutions to business needs However, digital transformation consists of digitizing and detecting the potential of technology to drastically transform business processes or create new services or strategic business processes for organizations based on the technology (Figure 1).
Figure 1. Digital Transformation vs Digitization
We will propose a Digital Transformation Maturity Model for Universities (MD4U) in this report, considering the arguments we will present and the definition of the model will be limited to the university environment, which is very characteristically specific and different from other industrial sectors. Therefore, the model will be valid for this field, but not necessarily valid for the others. However, it can serve as a frame of reference and be adapted to the particularities of any sector.
It is expected that UMA will be able to realize itself as a Green Digital University with the support of facility and infrastructure completed with qualified human resources,