What Skills do we need for the digital age? The future of the digital administrator

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What Skills do we need for the Digital Age? The future of the digital administrator

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Welcome, introduction overviewMyles Danson

JISC Programme Manager

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What are our aims?

Housekeeping

Introductions

Aims and Objectives Share your understanding of what Digital Literacy means for you

Gain an overview of current work JISC is supporting in this area and how you can get involved

Identify outputs from the Developing Digital Literacies programme that will be of value to you and your community

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How will we do it?

Agenda

Contextual Overview (Myles)

Emerging findings (Myles, Phil and Lindsay)

Your input & your needs (group work)

What to take home (Myles, Phil and Lindsay)

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What are we shooting for?

The Digitally Literate Administrator

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Digi Lit – what’s that?

Digital literacy defines those capabilities which fit an individual for working, living & learning:

ICT/computer literacy

Media literacy

Communication and collaboration

Digital scholarship

Learning skills

Life planning

http://www.jisc.ac.uk/media/documents/funding/2011/04/Briefingpaper.pdf

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What are we shooting for?

The Digitally Literate Administrator

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Programmes, Projects and Capacity for Change

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What are projects doing?

Supporting the integration of digital capability into the core activities of educational institutions

Working to normalise digital capability in mainstream practice;

through specialist roles

through the development of mainstream academic, research and administrative staff

through engagement with professional associations and sector bodies, employers and subject disciplines

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Meet the projects

University of Bath

University College London

Oxford Brookes University

Cardiff University

Worcester College of Technology

Institute of Education, London

University of Greenwich

University of the Arts London

University of Exeter

Coleg Llandrillo Cymru

University of Plymouth

University of Reading

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Project Overview

Projects are addressing:

Learners ( FE, HE, FE in HE, AS/A-Level, ACL, ESOL, SEN), research students, post-graduate researchers, students on placement, academic and research staff, librarians and learner support staff, teaching administrators, administrators, managers and institutional support staff, careers staff, governors...across further and higher education

Disciplines include:

Science, engineering, technology and maths

Education and humanities

Arts

Vocational courses

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Meet the Associations

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The sector bodies and professional associations JISC is working with initially include:

Association for Learning Development in Higher Education (ALDinHE)

Association for Learning Technology (ALT)

Association of University Administrators (AUA)

Heads of Educational Development Group (HEDG)

Learning and Skills Improvement Service (LSIS)

Organisational Development in Higher Education Group (ODHE)

Standing Conference on Academic Practice (SCAP)

Staff Development Forum (SDF)

Staff and Educational Development Association (SEDA)

Society of College, National and University Libraries (SCONUL)

Vitae

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Baselining – what are the key messages from projects?Lindsay Jordan via Helen Beetham (Synthesis Consultant)

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Emerging findings from project baselines

Baseline Approaches Looking at… Strategy Support Initiatives/projects Practice

New & existing data from staff and students Surveys Focus groups Interviews Usage statistics

Work in progress

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Strategy & Support

Policy & Strategy IT/L&T strategies commonLack of coherence around digital literacy

Support & TrainingSupport for digital literacies often varied and dispersed

(specificity versus duplication)

Examples of good practice: community-based support ‘clinics’ for students and staff online support systems

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Infrastructure & Practice

Widespread improvements to support personal devices Widespread laptop ownership but portable use less common

(especially if learners carry smartphones) Technology selection a common challenge

(balancing needs and preferences) Variation in use of learning technologies, especially social media International courses create specific opportunities and challenges Many identify desire for better integration of centralised systems

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Range in Expertise & Attitudes

[Reading] Three groups - those who…a. perceive they have sufficient knowledge to complete all necessary tasks

b. will delegate tasks rather than learn new skills

c. are willing to optimise/extend practices

[Exeter] Some challenges… Time - [also Cardiff] Teaching staff believe that using digital technology will cost

them time rather than saving it.

Complacency – staff and students underestimate skills needs

Conflicting beliefs of academic staff

[Plymouth] Need to embed digital literacy into programmes (specification and approval)

Need for HR to include digital literacy expectations when defining roles

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Baselining – what are the key messages from programme Associations?Myles via Helen Beetham, Synthesis Consultant

Key recommendations

Learning professionals are key but need time, resource & recognition to develop skills

More peer learning and peer-supported exploration at all levels and in all roles

More sharing, especially across boundaries (hub/spoke, education/technology, student/staff)

More supportive infrastructure Better support for informal technologies – mobile, cloud,

third party, open source Focus training on mid-career professionals/academics Use and value the expertise of younger staff/students

Questions that remain

How are learning practices, expectations and needs of students changing in response to the widespread availability of digital devices, networks and services?

How are practices of academics and academic professionals changing, including scholarship, teaching, support of learning, and administration?

What challenges face students and staff in becoming digitally literate in ways that are meaningful and relevant to them?

How are institutions behaving more strategically around digital capacity and what is driving them?

What can professional developers do to make a positive difference?

What does it mean to develop staff/students/organisations in a digital university and how are we contributing to that?

Essentially…

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Baseline Highlights - AUA

Philip Wolstenholme

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How digitally literate do AUA members feel?

January 2012: web based survey 713 responses / 25% of AUA members Findings were positive:

– 75% enthusiastic about technology

– 60% have had technology affect their job role positively Skills mostly developed informally and in a mixed setting

– 91% taught themselves digital skills

– 78% learnt from informal training by their peers

– 74% use manuals and help on screen

– 70% of participants developed skills both at work and home

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How digitally literate do AUA members feel?

Institutional support piecemeal:

– 75% said their institution was supportive

– 34% agreed that training was readily available

– 35% felt that they had the ability to implement change Free text comments were revealing

– Answers demonstrated breadth of knowledge

– Suggested that enthusiasm sometimes hampered by IT departments, lack of support, or by top-down reluctance to change

The full data collected is available online: search for Design Studio AUA DL or visit http://bit.ly/AUADS

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Group Exercise

Lindsay Jordan and Philip Wolstenholme

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Your Digital Literacy needs

1. Look over the ‘self-evaluation’ checklist.

2. Take three post-it notes. On each one, write a specific skill or ‘digital literacy’ that would be useful for you, or someone in your role.

3. After three minutes, place all the post-it notes in the middle of the table.

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Your Digital Literacy needs

In your groups, arrange all the post-its in order of priority for your community as a whole, with the most important at the top.

You have three minutes to decide…!

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Your Digital Literacy needs

1. Arrange your top five post-its on a sheet of flipchart paper.

2. In your groups, brainstorm some initial steps you might take to develop these particular skills.

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Programme Outcomes

slide 29http://jiscdesignstudio.pbworks.com

The JISC Design Studio is a developing set of resources for institutions to use and share, including:

Tools

Resources

Research papers

References

Project resources

Project outputs (2012)

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Overview of Resources

(see handout)

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How did we do and evaluation

Myles Danson

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Aims of the session

Delegates will:

• Share your understanding of what Digital Literacy means for you

• Gain an overview of current work JISC is supporting in this area and how you can get involved

• Identify outputs from the Developing Digital Literacies programme that will be of value to you and your community

AUA Evaluation Forms

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© HEFCE 2011

The Higher Education Funding Council for England,

on behalf of JISC, permits reuse of this presentation

and its contents under the terms of the Creative Commons

Attribution-Non-Commercial-No Derivative Works 2.0 UK

England & Wales Licence.

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/2.0/uk

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