EDUCATION DIGITALIZATION REQUIRES ECOSYSTEM CHANGE

When digitalizing education, having a new information system is not enough.As always in a digital transformation, the tasks, practices, rules and processes must also be changed.The problem is that too often the technology point of view is stressed, and pedagogical management and organizational change are neglected [1].However, especially in developing economies, to make successful and sustainable digital transformation in education, even having technological, pedagogical and organizational change is not enough.There must be supporting organizations taking care of implemented solutions and further developing them whenever needed.In developing economies, there are examples of successful education digitalization projects where new information systems have been taken into use, and the schools have changed their organization and pedagogical approaches.However, after the funding of the development project ends, no one is left to support and maintain the systems.Over time, when problems occur, the system gradually deteriorates.In the worst case, classrooms full of computers are abandoned, although the teachers found the system useful.As a solution, we propose an alternative approach to make sustainable and persistent digital transformation in education.We consider it important to take care of not only information system development (or acquisition) and changes to pedagogy and organization but also the ecosystem supporting the change.The education ecosystem must include organizations getting financial benefits (profits) from taking care of the digitalization operations implemented but also should include those receiving benefits from supporting further development of education digitalization.Therefore, our main research question is: "What is the role of the education ecosystem in education digitalization, and how should it be taken into account in education digitalization projects?"Building a completely new ecosystem is challenging, and in our proposition several approaches are used to accomplish only the most critical objectives with minimal effort.Firstly, the steps of education digitalization must be understood: not everything is needed at once.In the very beginning, when schools are taking their first steps with education digitalization, there is limited need for expertise and skills.Secondly, supporting organizations do not have to start from scratch.Although there might not be any companies already supporting education digitalization, there might be organizations with enough knowledge to help.Those organizations should be persuaded to test new business models.Thirdly, there are several ways to support local startups and encourage them to find business in the education sector, and here the experiences from other countries can be applied.In the Eduditra (education digital transformation) project, we have cooperated with two education organizations, Eduix Ltd. (Finland) and Glowdom (Namibia) to start education digital transformation in Namibia.Here we introduce preliminary results and experiences from the first year of our project.We also present preliminary information about new stages of the project.