Fundamentally speaking, the use of technology in education is to enhance educational quality, and in the case of open and distance education (ODE) institutions, primarily to assure quality and broader access, leading to new models of learning and teaching. As more and more sophisticated and powerful digital technology is integrated into the world we inhabit, digital technology is now taken to be a holy grail by ODE institutions that are keen to digitally transform their institutional operations in hopes of enhancing and assuring quality as well as maintaining competitive advantage in widening access.

In “Digital Transformation Signals: Is Your Institution on the Journey?”, EDUCAUSE defines digital transformation as “a series of deep and coordinated culture, workforce, and technology shifts that enable new educational and operating models and transform an institution’s business model, strategic directions, and value proposition.” Therefore, it is self-evident that simply using technology in education, no matter how cutting- edge it is, does not lead to digital transformation, as is best exemplified by traditional dedicated ODE institutions.

Ever since their establishment, ODE institutions have distinguished themselves from conventional higher education (HE) institutions not merely by their technology-enhanced means of delivery. They are distinct in many other aspects, including “business model, strategic directions, and value proposition”, among other things. An explicit message from the history of ODE institutions is that the transformation of an education system involves a systemic change whereby change in an element is experienced by the whole system, most probably catalysing reactions in other elements. This systems approach to ODE was first adopted by Charles Wedemeyer in his Articulated Instructional Media project in America in the 1960s. It was later further developed and elaborated by Michael G. Moore in his distance education theory. The systems theory informed the foundation of the Open University in the UK (OUUK) and subsequently the establishment of other open universities around the world.

This is a lesson that should be valued but unfortunately tends to be neglected today, not only by conventional HE institutions seeking to take advantage of digital technology but also by ODE institutions themselves. Reviews of research in ODE including educational technology have repeatedly indicated that the field is characterised by one-off, short-duration, isolated studies. Given that digital transformation implicates systemic change, a systems approach to ODE research and practice is essential to ensuring the generation of meaningful research results and the productive application of these results to practice. This argument is echoed by Professor Mike Sharples at the OUUK. He made a case for a systems approach to AI in education in his 2025 paper “A Systems Approach to AI and Education in a Post-Digital World”.

“Taking a piecemeal approach in adapting to an AI-infused future (for example, regulating how students must use AI in their assignments, or attempting to reduce staff workload by introducing AI into the administration process) is unlikely to be successful. Education is a strongly interconnected system, with many mutually dependent components, including recruitment, registration, teaching, student support, assessment, careers, and administration,” says Sharples.

Drawing upon the Russian-born American psychologist Urie Bronfenbrenner’s Ecological Systems Theory, Mike Sharples proposed a systems approach to AI and education in a post-digital world, an approach that is intended to show the various layers of interaction centred on a student in formal education. According to the embedded systems approach, the student is situated in four layers of systems. The innermost is the microsystem (e.g., class, materials and exams) which is surrounded by the mesosystem (e.g., library, calendar, student community, labs, and meeting rooms), the macrosystem (e.g., admissions, student services, procurement, quality assurance, IT support, career advice, and staff training), and the exosystem (e.g., internships, social media, technology companies, government regulations, educational technology vendors, careers, and education providers). These four systems are concentric. According to Mike Sharples, “[e]ach layer interacts with and depends on others, so changing one component affects the entire system.” For example, adopting a new technology “will impact IT support, staff training and workload, procurement, design of teaching materials, exams, quality assurance, and so on.”

Mike Sharples then listed ten agendas with respective key actions for education institutions of all types (see Table 1). He argues that education institutions must adopt an embedded systems approach to educational innovation in order to survive and prosper in an AI-infused world.