Digital Capability: How digitally capable are we?

Gillian Fielding, Digital Skills Manager, Uni of Salford

Chair of the UCISA User Skills Group

g_fielding g.d.fielding@salford.ac.uk

ucisa.ac.uk/digcap #ucisadigcap

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Background

• From the UCISA Technology Enhanced Survey (TEL) Survey

• Development of digital capabilities across the UK HE sector

• Benchmark

• Inaugural biennial study

• International opportunities

• Stimulate discussion

Coverage

• 156 UK HEIs institutions invited

• 96 institutions provided a survey rep

• Ran 1st August - 19th September 2014 – (5 weeks + 1 week extra)

• 63 surveys returned – 41% response rate

• Online survey (used licensed UCISA survey tool Vovici)

Survey sections

• Definition

• Strategy

• Delivery, Implementation and Practice

• Bring Your Own

• Supporting Differentiation and Inclusion

• Looking to the Future

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Definitions: Findings

6

Definition: Recommendations

• Adopt a standard definition

• Use for benchmarking

• Make sharing resources and exemplars using common terms and standards more easy

• Specific competencies and baseline measures can be developed from this, to enable competency or fluency to be demonstrated

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Strategy: Findings

• Most important factors driving digital capability development:

– Student expectations and requirements (for staff and students)

– Student Experience Survey (for staff and students)

– Development of innovative pedagogic practices (3rd for students)

• Of low importance:

– Develop a unique selling point or use as a marketing tool

• Other strategies

– Estates and Staff development (mid-table)

– Marketing was least important

• Only 11 institutions expressly cited a member of their senior management team as having responsibility for digital capabilities.

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Use of resources

9

0.00

0.20

0.40

0.60

0.80

1.00

1.20

1.40

1.60

1.80

2.00

NUS Charter onTechnology in HE

Jisc InfoNet'Developing

Digital Literacies'infoKit

Jisc Students asChange Agents

resources

Jisc 'Learning in aDigital Age'

report

Jisc DigitalStudent resources

HEA DigitalLiteracy in the

disciplinesresources

HEFCE 'StudentPerspectives on

Technology'report

Other Independent'Towardsmaturity'resources

Students Staff

Strategy: Recommendations

• “Institutions should adopt a whole-institutional approach and embed digital capabilities into all strategies, including Estates, HR, Finance, as well as Library, IT, Academic Development etc.”

• “Institutions must obtain active senior management sponsorship to drive the successful embedding of digital capabilities throughout the organisation.”

• Utilise existing resources, Jisc, NUS, HEA, UCISA.

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Delivery, implementation and practice: Findings

• Emerging practices in:– students - curriculum-based initiatives, integrating digital capabilities into

learning outcomes, inclusion in handbooks and the curriculum, and extra-curricular activities, including using students as change agents and digital champions

– staff - included integration into annual appraisals, managing a digital profile, digital scholarship practices and induction processes

• Mandatory training– Students (40%) - on VLEs and Turnitin, IT and Library induction– Staff (41%) - systems training before access is granted, IT induction and

mobile learning/VLE

• Certified training– Students – 54% offered no certified training– Staff – 38% offered no certified training – ECDL was the most popular for staff

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0

10

20

30

40

50

60

library IT Services Ac/StudySkills eLearning

Supporting staff and student

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Delivery, implementation and practice: Recommendations

• “Institutions should develop digital capabilities through a range of opportunities and emerging practices which motivate and reward students and staff and positively change culture. Impact can be maximised through the sharing of resources and working in partnership.”

• “Institutions should create digital curricula which is holistic, relevant and innovative for students and all staff, i.e. academic programmes and development activities, to encourage effective study, work and digital citizenship.”

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BYO: Findings

• BYO practices vary

• % of learning spaces available for BYO use (table)

• AV facilities becoming increasingly flexible

• Easy and secure access to campus networks largely available

• Challenges remain in some areas:– network or code of connection policy restrictions (75%)

– (in)flexibility of space and furniture

– wi-fi saturation and bandwidth

– accessible wi-fi printing

– support provided to users

• Admin rights cited frequently as a barrier

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Option Avail.

100% 32%

75-99% 50%

50-74% 5%

25-49% 10%

1-24% 3%

BYO: Findings

• BYO practices vary

• % of learning spaces available for BYO use (table)

• AV facilities becoming increasingly flexible

• Easy and secure access to campus networks largely available

• Challenges remain in some areas:– network or code of connection policy restrictions (75%)

– (in)flexibility of space and furniture

– wi-fi saturation and bandwidth

– accessible wi-fi printing

– support provided to users

• Admin rights cited frequently as a barrier

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Option Avail.

100% 32%

75-99% 50%

50-74% 5%

25-49% 10%

1-24% 3%

BYO: Recommendations

• “National organisations should collaborate with heads of service and users to develop coherent policy guidelines for the use of personal devices. Institutions should review how to provide a robust and flexible digital environment to enable personalised ways of working.”

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Looking to the future: Findings

• Most significant barriers for future development of digital capabilities:– Students - lack of money, department culture, competing strategic

initiatives and institutional culture.

– Staff - competing strategic initiatives, institutional culture, lack of money, and department culture.

• Key initiatives coming up:– Reviews of teaching and learning systems

– A range of digital literacy projects

– Infrastructure, training and development projects

• Key agents (depts) of change:– IT Services, Academic Development/Learning Technologies, Library

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Faculties/Schools

TEL/eLearning Units

SMT

Library

IT Depts

Academic Development Unit/TeachingEnhancement Units

Human resources Depts

Research/Graduate Units

Careers, Employability & Enterprise

Student services/study skills

Other

Where responsibility sits

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Looking to the future: Recommendations

• “Institutions should encourage staff-staff and staff-student partnership to co-create digital resources and experiences in learning, teaching, assessment, research and administrative practices.”

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• See the full report – published in May

• Watch the webinar

• Join our Training Community:– http://digitalskillsanddevelopment.ning.com/

• Future events: – “Spotlight on Digital Capabilities” – 3 & 4 June

http://www.ucisa.ac.uk/groups/dsdg/Events/2015/digcaps.aspx

– Change Agents Network webinar – 27 April

http://can.jiscinvolve.org/wp/webinars-upcoming-webinars-and-recordings-of-past-webinars/

Finding out more

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Thank you

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• What can you as an individual, and your team do to further the digital capabilities agenda?– Tweet your thoughts to #ucisadigcap.

www.ucisa.ac.uk/digcap #ucisadigcap