Improving a Virtual Campus for teaching and learning during COVID-19 and beyond guided by a digital transformation strategy

COVID-19 has accelerated digital transformation of universities by giving them no option but to immediately undertake important technological and methodological changes to guarantee instructional continuity. In addition, faculty and staff have made a great effort to improve their digital capabilities. From a strategic point of view, it is very important higher education institutions to take advantage of these advances as the basis to further adapt and improve their teaching and learning model to fulfill the expectations of learners in a digital society beyond COVID-19. In this paper, we describe the evolution of the ICT ecosystem of University of Murcia (Spain), with a strong focus on our Virtual Campus. In particular, we describe how we have continuously enriched our teaching and learning ecosystem as we were transitioning from emergency remote teaching towards the "new normal". Moreover, we also explain how we are capitalizing the effort in responding to COVID-19 to support the long-term goals of our digital transformation plan at the same time we fulfill the immediate need of offering our faculty an ecosystem adapted to the new needs that can support different teaching models and methodologies.