Digital transformation process impact on students, teachers and non-teaching staff satisfaction

Digital transformation is one of the key directions for improving business operations in all economy
sectors with the aim of increasing efficiency and improving the quality services provided, which also
includes the education sector. At Zagreb University of Applied Sciences (TVZ), digital transformation
has been implemented for the past few years, trying to significantly contribute to the improvement of all
activities in which participate all students, their teachers and non-teaching staff. Digitalization of the
student’s enrolment process, digital monitoring of exams results and integration of new equipment and
ICT technologies used in different teaching models are just some of the results of the implemented
digital transformation.
In order to discover the causes of (dis)satisfaction with these digital transformation results, it was
conducted a survey via a WEB questionnaire. The obtained results show that teachers are significantly
more satisfied with the integration of equipment and ICT technologies, digitalization of the student’s
enrolment process and digital monitoring of exams results than non-teaching staff. With the digitalization
of the enrolment process, students are even more satisfied than their teachers. Such different
perceptions towards these elements arise from their different roles in these processes. While teachers
and students are end users of these processes, non-teaching staff ensure and implement all these
processes and therefore experience them from a different perspective.
In terms of different teaching models, hybrid teaching has proven to be the most preferred model for
both students and teachers. During the COVID-19 pandemic in the academic year 2019/2020, classes
were forced to be conducted online, requiring both teachers and students to adapt to a new mode of
teaching within a very short period. A survey conducted at TVZ in the spring of 2021 showed that
students had significantly more positive attitudes toward online teaching compared to teachers, who
preferred traditional classroom teaching. Despite this, even then, an absolute majority of both teachers
and students expressed a preference for a hybrid model of teaching. Today, attitudes are largely the
same as they were five years ago, with a slight decrease in preference for exclusively online classes.
The hybrid model continues to enjoy the highest level of acceptance because it combines the benefits
of face-to-face classroom interaction with the flexibility and technological capabilities of an online
environment. It can be concluded that a positive perception of digital tools and infrastructure represents
an important basis for the acceptance of the hybrid teaching model. The level of digital maturity of the
institution, as well as the experience gained during the pandemic, has shaped more stable and balanced
attitudes toward different forms of teaching, with the hybrid model proving to be a sustainable and widely
accepted long-term solution.