Transcript
SARAH JONES
My name is Sarah Jones. I'm Head of Academic Services for University of Wales Trinity St. David. I'm based within the library and the library is then based within the digital services directorate. So, my team is the teaching and learning arm of the library and also for digital services, in a sense. It includes the digital skills advisors, the digital skills development support, and also the digital information literacy skills that sit with the academic liaison librarians. So, we deal with a whole variety of skills development.
It's hugely important that we raise the digital capabilities of students and staff for a variety of reasons. Most immediately is that we're preparing our students for a very digital workforce. So digital skills have to be integral to the curriculum. For staff to be able to deliver this, and for professional services staff to be able to support this, they also need to have those same levels of digital skills. We're sending people into a increasingly digital environment. Most jobs that primary school children now will be going to do not exist.
SSo, we're also preparing them for a continuous development approach throughout their careers also. The main challenge for doing this is the buy-in of your users, of your staff, and students. Because if they can't see the relevance, if it's not something that works for them, not something that's built with the barriers that they might face in mind, then it won't succeed.
The most important thing for us is the conversations that we had along the way, listening to our user, having conversations with them, finding out what the barriers that we – unique barriers to them were and responding to that as reflectively as possible. And if you can do that, you will take people along with you.
HEIs can support their own staff to prioritise developing their digital skills and capabilities by prioritising it themselves, by creating these opportunities for staff to engage with their digital skills and to develop a continuous development mindset within the institution. They can also support staff by investing in it.
We were very fortunate in that we were provided with new posts. We were provided with time and space to think out what we needed to do and do it in the most sensible and useful way. Not everybody will have that luxury. However, there is a middle ground. And I think having that top-level support is crucial.
HEIs this can support the wider community in developing the digital skills and capabilities by being as open and as accessible as possible. For example, our libraries are available for the public to come in and use. If they don't have access to technology at home, they can come in and make use of it here.
The DigiCentre is a one-stop-shop for staff and students to upskill and to develop their digital skills. The purpose of it is to provide one location where they can come to assess their digital skills using the Jisc discovery tool, and then to use a wealth of resources to fill any training gaps. And we also provide some structured learning routes so that people can come in, follow a short course, earn a digital badge, and develop their skills as best fits them.
The university decided to map to the Jisc digital capabilities framework because, essentially, the mapping has been done for us. Digital capabilities, digital skills, is a very broad area, from creating a Word document, logging into your email, doing your online shopping, engaging online up to more complex tasks like programming. Just learning in a digital environment poses skills barriers, for some people.
So Jisc having done that work already made it easier for us and also some of the resources that we were using, for example, LinkedIn Learning have also already mapped their own resources to the Jisc digital capabilities framework. We worked with Jisc to create the digital centre.
We worked closely with our account manager who was able to provide us with a wealth of advice as to what Jisc could provide us with to get us started. They also were able to provide us with case studies and feedback from other institutions who had already done what we were trying to do. They have communities of practice that we were able to join and to learn from the experiences of others.
The key learnings from developing the DigiCentre are really that digital skills and digital capabilities are not so much about the digital, they're not about the technology. They're about people. They're about people's fear, about people's willingness to engage, about people understanding what they're doing and things working for them.
The DigiCentre has been received very well by staff and students. We've started with a gradual roll out to different groups. That means that we can tailor what we're providing, starting with teaching staff. So, we've engaged with a huge range of teaching staff over the last few months. And the feedback that we've received so far has been overwhelmingly positive.
We're in the early stages. So, we're in the process of evaluating some of the usage data that we have and some of the qualitative data we have from some of the semi-structured interviews that we've been doing with staff also. The main benefit of the DigiCentre is that we've been filling a gap that people want, that people need. There is huge demand for our roll out for people to know when it would be available. And we feel that we've provided something that, during the pandemic, people have really discovered quite acutely that they needed. So that would be the main benefit.
We use the Jisc discovery tool as a starting point for staff and students to evaluate their digital skills levels. So, they would be suggested that they – it would be suggested that they complete the discovery tool. The discovery tool then gives them a personalised report that is private to them. We don't get to see it. And it evaluates their current digital skills levels against the Jisc criteria.
This then allows them to consider what upskilling they might need, which areas of strength and which areas of weakness that they might have. From this, as an institution, we also have access to a dashboard within the Jisc website that provides us with data, anonymised data, so that we can use this to spot trends and to spot improvements, spot areas of need across the institution, to help us to tailor the support we provide better.
The Well-being for Future Generations Act recognises that digital skills are one of the areas in skills for the future that need to be concentrated on. It also recognises that digital poverty and digital exclusion in Wales is higher than it is in the rest – in the whole of the UK as an average. Therefore, for me, that's where the key issue is. You can't transform if you can't provide the access and the skills to the whole of your population or as much of it as you possibly can.
Also, whilst developing the DigiCentre, we try to make as much as possible freely available rather than behind a login screen. At some times, that's unavoidable. For example, where there are licensing restrictions that mean you can only provide access to resources to your own staff and students. But as far as possible, we try to make everything available.
We're also working on packaging up our services for the school transition, because as we see it, we have a role in the community to support the development of digital skills from childhood up to old age, throughout people's careers, not just at 18 when they start education or at whatever time they start education.