Developing a digital education strategy means bringing together priorities from across the institution. Academic leaders are focused on quality, recruitment teams on opportunities for growth, student success teams on flexibility and access, and technology teams on systems and integration. While there may be broad agreement that digital education matters, turning these different perspectives into a shared strategy, with clear priorities, choices and measures of success, is often the real challenge.
And that challenge is a familiar one across higher education. Digital transformation is now a given, but maturity (and the competitive advantage it bestows) depend on what comes next, refining the strategies that turn widespread digital activity into coherent, high-quality provision.
Before institutions decide what to launch or build, they need to agree on a more fundamental question. What role could digital education play in the institution’s future, and what should it make possible?
That is the challenge at the heart of Leading with SCALE: A framework for resilient digital higher education. The guide sets out five interconnected pillars for developing digital capability: Strategy First, Collaborative Design, Agile Execution, Learner-Centric Quality and Evergreen Innovation. Each pillar matters, but the real value lies in how they work together to create a practical, operating model.
The first pillar, Strategy First, establishes the foundation for everything that follows.
Strategy: The first step towards digital maturity
UK universities have already made substantial investments in online and blended learning. But activity alone is not enough.
More than 135,000 undergraduate and nearly 94,000 postgraduate-taught distance learners were enroled in UK higher education in 2023–24. Yet fewer than one in three UK universities describe their digital education capability as institutionally mature. Digital provision has become structural, but institutional capability has not always developed at the same pace.
The challenge, therefore, is increasingly one of alignment.
Institutions need a clear basis for deciding where digital education can create the greatest value and how individual initiatives contribute to a wider institutional purpose. That is why SCALE begins with strategy.
Strategy gives digital transformation its direction,” says Arlene Stewart, Director of Academics and Operations at OES UK. “It helps institutions move beyond a series of individual projects. The goal is to create a shared vision that is connected to their mission, and the learners they want to serve.”
Begin with institutional purpose
A strong digital learning strategy starts by defining what the institution is trying to achieve.
For one university, the priority may be widening access to learners who cannot participate in traditional campus-based study. For another, it may be expanding into new markets or strengthening workforce alignment. For others, digital learning may support portfolio renewal, financial resilience or the wider reach of specialist academic expertise.
The objective is not to pursue every possible outcome at once. It is to establish a clear relationship between digital provision and institutional purpose.
The Strategy First chapter explores what distinguishes digital activity from genuinely strategic digital capability. It examines the questions institutions need to resolve before investment, design and delivery begin. That is, how digital learning advances the institutional mission, whose needs it is intended to serve, where ownership sits and what will keep the work relevant long after launch.
These are the foundations that determine whether digital transformation becomes a collection of projects or a coherent institutional capability. The full chapter unpacks how to put them into practice.
Additionally, it includes questions and prompts designed for strategy sessions, board briefings and institutional planning.
For instance,
“If we had to brief the board on our online portfolio performance tomorrow, what would we say?”
or,
“What would we do differently if we had to double our online enrolment within two years?”
These questions matter because they move the conversation away from general support for digital transformation and towards the decisions, evidence and capabilities required to make it work.
The guide also includes a Strategy Readiness Checklist (see p.15 of the guide) that helps institutions identify strengths, bottlenecks and gaps across mission alignment and stakeholder engagement. It provides a practical way to turn strategic intent into a clearer picture of institutional readiness.
Case study: What does Strategy First look like in practice?
In one of the case studies featured in the guide, a globally ranked university wants to reimagine its online portfolio while protecting its academic reputation. Rather than diving immediately into course production, the institution first examines student demand, labour market trends, competitive positioning and its own areas of strength.
Stakeholder workshops are used to challenge assumptions, clarify opportunities and build alignment. This leads to the selection of three priority degree programmes, a roadmap for sustainable domestic and international growth, and greater internal confidence in the direction of travel.
The lesson is simple but important. Progress accelerates because the strategy creates focus.
As Joe Lynch, Learning Experience Lead at OES UK, puts it: “The value of Strategy First is that it gives academics and professional teams a shared framework for deciding what to prioritise, and how each decision contributes to the bigger picture.”
Strategy first does not mean strategy alone
Now imagine the same meeting described in the beginning of this article a few months later. Academic leaders, enrolment teams, student success teams and technology teams are still approaching digital education from different areas of expertise, but they are now working from the same strategic frame. The institution knows which learners it wants to serve, which opportunities matter most, where digital provision can create value and how each initiative contributes to a wider purpose.
That is what Strategy First makes possible. It does not remove complexity, but it gives institutions a way to organise complexity around mission, evidence and learner success.
A clear direction still needs genuine academic collaboration, agile delivery processes, consistent learner-centred standards and systems designed to evolve. This is why Strategy First is only the first of SCALE’s five pillars.
The full framework shows how these elements reinforce one another. Strategy establishes purpose, collaboration creates ownership, agility turns intent into progress, learner-centred quality protects outcomes and evergreen innovation ensures that the institution can continue to adapt.
For universities seeking to strengthen digital capability, the goal is to build a resilient and repeatable way of working that connects mission, people, process and learner success.
Download the full Leading with SCALE guide to explore the Strategy First chapter in greater depth and see how all five pillars work together to turn digital ambition into enduring institutional capability.
