Change management in higher education: stop the PowerPoint trainings

I’ve deployed digital tools across 6 campuses in 3 years. LMS platforms, assessment tools, digital signature systems, grade management software.

The finding is always the same: technology is never the problem. Adoption is.

The PowerPoint training syndrome

You buy a tool. You run a 2-hour training in a lecture hall. You send a 40-page PDF. And you wonder why nobody uses it 3 months later.

I call this the “PowerPoint training”: information transfer disguised as support.

What actually works

After failing at my first attempts (yes, me too), here’s what I learned:

1. Start with the problem, not the tool

Nobody wants to “use an LMS.” People want to stop wasting 3 hours a week sending emails with attachments. That’s the entry point.

2. Train in real situations

Not in a lecture hall. Not with fictional cases. Take the instructor’s actual course, put it online together, in 30 minutes. They leave with something concrete.

3. Create ambassadors

In every team, there are 1 or 2 people who love testing new things. Train them first. They become the local support — far more effective than any helpdesk.

4. Measure usage, not satisfaction

“The training was great” means nothing. What matters: how many people use the tool 30 days later? 90 days later? That’s the only KPI worth tracking.

The real job

Change management isn’t a slide in a consulting deck. It’s fieldwork. It’s patience. It’s accepting that adoption takes 6 months, not 6 days.

And above all, it’s understanding that behind every “resistance to change,” there’s often a legitimate fear that nobody took the time to listen to.