Foreword

With around 26,500 students, more than 400 professors and over 5,300 employees, JLU is the second largest university in the state of Hessen. Digital services and products become increasingly relevant to students, teaching, research, and the administration. To target the increasing demands of digital transformation on everyday university life, JLU has initiated a campus-wide dialog. This has made it possible to take into account the relevant perspectives of all university areas and to transfer them into a holistic strategy. In the fields of action Research, Teaching, and IT Governance, IT Infrastructure, and Administration, the requirements that affect the entire university are specified with the help of subgoals and measurable indicators. In addition to internal and external target agreements, strategic development planning and specific substrategies in JLU’s priority objectives serve as the basis.

Digital technologies are therefore of central importance for future-oriented development of the university. They permeate all areas, ensure seamless transitions, avoid non-digital disruptions, and create holistic, variable solutions. However, digital transformation is not understood as an end in itself; it only makes sense if a real benefit and added value are created.

JLU is ready to meet the challenges of this extensive transformation process and supports the development towards new forms of academic teaching, learning, advising, and the accumulation of knowledge. The development and expansion of technical infrastructures fully support the possibility to work and study digitally (in selected degree programs), which can be used to create synergies, to support saving measures, and to contribute to securing the university’s competitiveness. Learning, researching, and working with digital and virtual formats take place independently of location and can not only create a better work–life balance but also offer internationalization, sustainability, equal opportunity, and communication prospects.

At the same time, JLU also sees itself as a place of encounter and personal exchange. Hence, our goal is to continue to offer teaching, learning, and working on site but also to develop location-independent options and to realize an individual work and study design. In particular, this includes the possibility of designing purely digital study programs and expanding teaching formats in the digital field. In addition to integrating digital competencies into the students' curriculum, such a project also requires a transformation process that assists JLU members in digital transformation, uses the available expertise, and further develops this expertise.

With these joint measures, JLU is not only responding to regulatory requirements such as the Online Access Act (Onlinezugangsgesetz, OZG) but is proactively shaping the university's digital future with the aim of increasing its attractiveness as an employer and educational institution. On behalf of the entire executive board, I would like to thank the university and its members for their contribution to digital development. I would also like to thank all those responsible for their support in the conception and creation of this Digital Transformation Strategy.

Prof. Dr. Joybrato Mukherjee
President of Justus Liebig University Giessen