The document discusses building digital capabilities for staff and students. It provides an overview of a session on the Building Digital Capabilities service and discovery tool from Jisc. The discovery tool is a self-assessment quiz to evaluate digital skills and provide personalized feedback and resources. Pilots of the tool found it easy to use and provided useful insights. Next steps include making the tool and service freely available to help more organizations develop digital skills.

1. Building the digital
capabilities of your
staff and students

2. Overview of the session
»Overview of the Building digital capabilities service and
Discovery tool
»Sarah Crossland, Academic Services Manager, Doncaster
College and University Centre
»Jonathan Eaton, Acting Academic Registrar, Teesside
University
»Q&A
»Discussion tables
»Feedback

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»Your digital super-power
› What one digital thing are you really
good at? What do your friends ask you
to help them with?
› Add in your superpower to our word
cloud
»Go to menti.com
»Enter the code 66 63 46
»Enter up to 3!

4. The Building digital capability service

5. What is it and why is digital capability important?
» We need all staff and students’; to
acquire the digital skills and
capabilities for living, learning and
working in a digital world
› Changing world and working
landscape
› Changing expectations of learners
› Digital capabilities are key
employability skills – and we need to
go further
» Graduate work is being transformed
by digital technologies and data (IPPR
2017: Managing automation)
» 72% of large firms are struggling to
recruit workers with digital skills
(ECORYS UK 2016: Digital skills for
the UK Economy)
» Young people in the UK are less
digitally literate than in many
OECD countries (OECD 2016:
Survey of Adult Skills).

6. What the students are telling us
» 80% of HE learners feel that digital
skills will be important in their chosen
career...
» … but only 50% agree that their
course prepares them well for the
digital workplace
» Half of learners didn’t know or weren’t
sure what digital skills their course
required before they started it
» 40% agreed that they have been told
what digital skills they need to
improve

7. What is the Discovery tool?
It is:
» A self-administered quiz about digital
practices in education
» Designed to give useful feedback
including 'next steps' and links to
resources
» Reflective, informative and
developmental
» Continuing to develop
It isn’t:
» An objective measure of digital
competence or performance
» A complete learning resource or
course of study

8. Navigating the user dashboard
Menu
Evaluation feedback form link
here
This icon takes the user to the
six-elements of digital capability
framework where all the
elements are explained
Data
dashboard

9. Each assessment has three question types
1
2
3
Confidence
Best fit/Depth
Breadth
1
2
3

10. Each element has:
» Level: developing | capable | proficient
» Score: how you assessed yourself to
achieve this level
» Next steps: what people at this level
can try to develop further
» Resources: links to selected resources
for further exploration
Individual report
PDF download
Report navigation

11. » Provides institutional leads with anonymised
data on:
› Overall number of staff that have
completed assessments (by department)
› Scoring bands by organisation (developing
/ capable / proficient)
› Scoring bands by department
› Sector comparisons for both
Institutional data dashboards

12. » Over 100 organisations participating in our
Digital discovery tool pilot – recently closed on
the 31st May 18
» Access for the pilots continues until Friday
13th July
» The discovery tool, as part of the Building digital
capabilities service will continue to run as a full
Jisc service from September
» If you are interested – register your interest at:
ji.sc/register-digital-capabilities
Discovery tool – where are we now?

13. Evaluation – headline findings
» Total completions for staff stand at
4,812 (as of 31st May), made up of:
› 1352 FE and skills
› 3042 HE
› 418 Other
› From 66 institutions (staff pilot), 11
institutions (learner pilot)
» Total completions for students stand
at 413 (from April – May)
» Overall experience of the tool
› HE and FE staff and student
feedback broadly similar
› 8 out of 10 felt tool was easy to
use and the interface was well
designed.
› Over 7 out of 10 staff rated the
tool as either ‘good’ (median) or
‘excellent’
› Students were slightly more
negative, median judgement
was also ‘good’ but more likely
than staff to say it was ‘average’

14. Positive comments
‘I enjoyed using it. The
report accurately recorded
my strengths and
weaknesses’
‘Did give me an
idea of specific
areas which would
be worth working
on, targeted action’
‘I thought the data and insights
it provided just based on a
quick assessment was really
good’
‘I thought the data and insights it provided
just based on a quick assessment was
really good’
‘Made me think about
things in more detail,
and actually assess
responses’
‘[I’ve] shied away
from this area, so
having an
abundance of
help/ feedback
was great’
‘Really useful, and I particularly like how
it is relevant to skills for both my course
and my future career’

15. Organisational perspectives
» Sarah Crossland, Academic services manager, Doncaster College
and University Centre
» Jonathan Eaton, Acting academic registrar, Teesside University

16. Next steps
» Building digital capability service,
including discovery tool
› Approval to run as a full service
from September 2018
» The full service will include for the
tool (as part of the wider service):
› Free (reduced) version available to
staff
› Full version of the tool at a charge
to institutions
» If you are interested, register your
interest at: ji.sc/register-digital-
capabilities

17. Discovery Tool @ Doncaster:
Experiences of a Pilot+
College
Sarah Crossland

18. »Approached by Jisc quite late in the project
»Closure of HE campus and relocation to main College site
»Merger with North Lindsey College
»Developing a digital vision for the DN Colleges group….and OFSTED!
»Staff had a lot of change to cope with in a very short space of time
(c.12 months)
Background and context

19. »Period of significant organisational change, therefore decision
taken to pilot certain areas (support and academic), recognising
that institutional buy-in could be problematic
»Areas targeted within College, would be involved in rolling out the
tool more widely post-testing phase
»All areas felt that the support resources contained within the
individual report, made the tool a much more attractive proposition
and would help with staff engagement
A pilot within a pilot
Approach taken

20. »On the whole, staff valued using the tool and found the
experience positive
»The visual nature of both the tool and the report, made it easy to use
and understand - staff responded extremely positively to this
»Resources and next steps were identified as a key strength of the tool
by the majority of staff
»The differentiation of the resources based on level was identified as a
basis for developing meaningful staff development and training
Outcomes

21. “The middle is fine, the top and the
bottom need a bit of work”.
HE Lecturer

22. »Staff identified as developing - some found the information
overwhelming, or at too high a level
»Staff identified as being proficient - some of the resources/next
steps too generic, with the emphasis on institutional
recognition
»Focus is on technical competence - need to ensure that critical
information literacy skills don’t get
left behind
»Some staff who had recently qualified as teachers - felt
excluded by some of the content within the tool given their
limited exposure to some of the applications
Thoughts and reflections

23. Reflections continued
»Resources signposted within
individual reports already being
used and shared
»Raising awareness, particularly
in relation to information literacy
skills gap
»Staff reported that the
emphasis on confidence as well
as competence made for more
meaningful reflection

24. Next steps
»Consider how we recognise
competencies within our institution
»Develop level-specific training and
standards, using the tool as part of a
wider digital literacy framework
including a Centre for Digital Learning
»Support (convince?) staff to see the
tool as developmental - some staff
expressed skepticism regarding
performance management
»Opportunity for our two colleges to
collaborate and use the tool to support
staff (and eventually students)

25. “The focus is often on technical competence, critical
information literacy skills can get left behind”.
HE Lecturer

26. Group discussions
»On your tables, discuss ‘one
thing we can do to help
you move forward?’
»Share your journeys so far
»Plenary discussion and
feedback / questions from
tables – what one thing will
you take away?

27. New digital capability resources
» Senior leaders briefing
paper on Delivering digital
change: strategy, practice
and process
› http://bit.ly/jisc-leaders
» How are HR departments
supporting the development
of staff digital capabilities?
› https://bit.ly/2ImZY4o
» Four new institutional case
study videos:
› https://ji.sc/digicap_films

28. Community of practice
» Launched in May 2017, ran again in
November 2017 and May 2018 with 100
delegates at from across FE and HE
» Next event – November 2018
» See our summaries of these events at:
› May 2018: http://bit.ly/digicap-cop3
› Nov 2017: http://ji.sc/community-of-
practice
› May 2017: http://bit.ly/2CKZu1e
» Join CoP mailing list
› www.jiscmail.ac.uk/jisc-digcap-ug
‘Valuable for inspiring new ideas
and making new contacts, for
sharing resources.’

29. Follow developments
» Interested in the service?
› Sign up at: ji.sc/register-digital-
capabilities
» Follow developments
› Project blog:
https://digitalcapability.jiscinvolve.org
› Visit project page
http://bit.ly/jiscdigcap
Communication
› Email the project team at:
digitalcapability@jisc.ac.uk
› Follow #digitalcapability on Twitter
» Resources
› Online guide – Developing
organisational approaches to digital
capability
http://bit.ly/digcapguide
› Six elements framework:
http://ji.sc/digicap_ind_frame
› Digital capability institutional videos
https://ji.sc/digicap_films
› Senior leaders briefing
http://bit.ly/jisc-leaders
› Digital leaders programme
http://jisc.ac.uk/training/digital-
leaders-programme