Slides on the UCISA Digital Capabilities Survey undertaken in 2014 across the UK Higher education sector. Shows the state of the nation on digital capabilities.
1. 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
2. Tweet
2
• 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
3. 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
4. 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)
5. Survey sections
• Definition
• Strategy
• Delivery, Implementation and Practice
• Bring Your Own
• Supporting Differentiation and Inclusion
• Looking to the Future
7. 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
7 www.ucisa.ac.uk/digcap #ucisadigcap
8. 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.
www.ucisa.ac.uk/digcap #ucisadigcap
9. 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 on
Technology in HE
Jisc InfoNet
'Developing
Digital Literacies'
infoKit
Jisc Students as
Change Agents
resources
Jisc 'Learning in a
Digital Age'
report
Jisc Digital
Student resources
HEA Digital
Literacy in the
disciplines
resources
HEFCE 'Student
Perspectives on
Technology'
report
Other Independent
'Towards
maturity'
resources
Students Staff
10. 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.
10 www.ucisa.ac.uk/digcap #ucisadigcap
11. 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
www.ucisa.ac.uk/digcap #ucisadigcap
13. 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.”
13 www.ucisa.ac.uk/digcap #ucisadigcap
14. 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
14 www.ucisa.ac.uk/digcap #ucisadigcap
Option Avail.
100% 32%
75-99% 50%
50-74% 5%
25-49% 10%
1-24% 3%
15. 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
15 www.ucisa.ac.uk/digcap #ucisadigcap
Option Avail.
100% 32%
75-99% 50%
50-74% 5%
25-49% 10%
1-24% 3%
16. 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.”
16 www.ucisa.ac.uk/digcap #ucisadigcap
17. 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
17 www.ucisa.ac.uk/digcap #ucisadigcap
18. Faculties/Schools
TEL/eLearning Units
SMT
Library
IT Depts
Academic Development Unit/Teaching
Enhancement Units
Human resources Depts
Research/Graduate Units
Careers, Employability & Enterprise
Student services/study skills
Other
Where responsibility sits
18www.ucisa.ac.uk/digcap #ucisadigcap
19. 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.”
20 www.ucisa.ac.uk/digcap #ucisadigcap
20. • 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
21www.ucisa.ac.uk/digcap #ucisadigcap
22. Tweet
23
• 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
Hinweis der Redaktion
The survey follows much work on digital literacies/capabilities by organisations such as Jisc, Higher Education Academy and National Union of Students, and comes at a time of increased competition within the HE sector, where there is much focus on improving the student experience and producing highly employable graduates.
UCISA Digital Capabilities Survey
We used the (2010) Jisc definition, it’s a much-disputed term, but the concept struck a chord especially in 2012-13.
In 2014-15 we are being asked to address ‘digital capability’ in HE and FE as a priority challenge.
Great deal of similarity in definitions.
Common themes were:
ability to choose appropriate technologies,
embedding digital tools into teaching or research,
and ensuring that infrastructure and support are adequate.
Some comments acknowledged that digital capability requirements vary between roles and subject areas.
Adopt a standard definition - internally and externally. The discussion raises awareness.
Benchmarking – designing and completing raises awareness, results show gaps and areas to focus on and identifies where training and support is needed and shows how it has progressed.
Role specific competencies
Baselines – ASG and minimum standards of technology use
Student expectations and requirements (for staff and students)
Student Experience Survey (for staff and students)
USE TO INFLUENCE
http://repository.jisc.ac.uk/5872/1/JLF0002_digitalstudent_POSTERS_ALL.pdf
Overall the mean scores for all external reports were low with maximum scores of 1.50 and 1.83 for students and staff respectively, far lower than for the “factors driving development” (section 2.1.1) and institutional strategies (section 2.1.2)
Ask to give a digital overview to the various strategic documents.
Encourage key people to “get it”, send summaries of the key reports, this, UCISA TEL Survey, the House of Lords report, the Digital Skills workforce, the Richard Dimbleby lecture, Gartner reports, Mintel (rise in mobile, social media,)
Tie it in with teaching, learning and assessment.
LinkedIn have recently bought Lynda.com – it’s pretty obvious they will be promoting digital capabilities training which will have a positive effect for us.
From the report:
For students, the most frequently-cited areas for mandatory training included course-specific software delivered through specific degree programmes (9 citations), information literacy training (8 citations), and the use of learning technologies such as the VLE or e-Portfolio (8 citations) to either get started at university, or to support degree-critical activities such as uploading of assignments. Other mandated training examples included IT and library inductions, use of MS Office, and use of mobile technology for learning. Necessarily, mandated training was not ubiquitously applied across institutions, but rather tailored to suit particular degree programme requirements.
For staff, training on using business systems before access is granted was by far the most frequently cited type of mandatory training required (22 citations). This included staff systems such as finance, procurement and SAP, use of Excel for financial management, student business systems, and content management/web publishing software. Data Protection and Information Security training was mandated in six institutions, as was compulsory IT Induction. Other mandated training examples included learning technologies, newly deployed telecommunication systems, and, in one institution, a training needs analysis:
“During induction new staff are requested to attend a development session called “Staff Systems Induction” which covers a broad overview of key University systems and a training needs analysis producing an action plan for further development activities. This plan is returned to the new staff member and copied to their line manager.”
The Library, IT services, Academic study skills support and elearning units were most heavily involved in supporting students and staff to develop their digital capabilities, and we expect to see this continue and strengthen.
Coming out top by a clear lead is library services, represented in 270 different ways across the 63 responding institutions (STUDENTS), which represents nearly a third (29%) of all responses received (excluding the ‘not involved’ responses); only 5 institutions stated that the library is not involved. The library services seemed to be by far the most progressive, most often making use of new communication methods such as Twitter, social media and videos, in addition to established ones.
Second with 234 responses and a quarter (25%) of the total responses (excluding ‘not involved’) was IT Services, with 7 institutions indicating it is not involved;
both significantly outstripping the other services, with academic study skills accounting for only 150 or 16% of the total responses (excluding ‘not involved’).
Drop in clinics/appointments and telephone/email/online chat were the most frequently cited methods of support offered by core services for students.
The use of videos was also widespread, particularly by eLearning units for staff, but a suite of options were made available to suit different needs and requirements.
It will be increasingly important to offer differentiated support and opportunity for staff and students as the breadth of tech increases, and the range of knowledge and experience continues to diversity.
Support for the digitally disadvantaged will also be important – lack of access and lack of skills. Current focus is on disability, but even this needs revisiting, in terms of benefits to all, r.t. benefits to a small minority.Adapting spaces and tech platforms to enable people to work how they wish – with their own tech, in ways and with s/w that suits them.
Q 4.4. ‘How are learning spaces adapted for a variety of activities with teachers’ or students’ own devices? e.g. connections for devices to projectors, flexible working spaces, ubiquitous wifi etc.’.
Q 4.4. ‘How are learning spaces adapted for a variety of activities with teachers’ or students’ own devices? e.g. connections for devices to projectors, flexible working spaces, ubiquitous wifi etc.’.
GRAPH: The responsibility for developing the culture of digitally capable staff and students, was in most institutions located across a number of teams.
The three areas with most responsibility were Libraries, IT departments and academic development/educational development unit or teams. Very few respondents cited only one area.
Interesting or notable job titles for those cited as having responsibility for digital capabilities for students and staff included: