Digital Literacies for Higher Education Administration

1. What Skills do we need for the Digital
Age? The future of the digital
administrator
03/04/2012 slide 1

2. Welcome, introduction overview
Myles Danson
JISC Programme Manager
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3. 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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4. 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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5. What are we shooting for?
 The Digitally Literate Administrator
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6. 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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7. What are we shooting for?
 The Digitally Literate Administrator
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8. Programmes, Projects and Capacity for Change
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9. 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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10. Meet the projects
 University of Greenwich  University of Bath
 University of the Arts London  University College London
 University of Exeter  Oxford Brookes University
 Coleg Llandrillo Cymru  Cardiff University
 University of Plymouth  Worcester College of Technology
 University of Reading  Institute of Education, London
03/04/2012 http://www.jisc.ac.uk/developingdigitalliteracies slide 10

11. 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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12. Meet the Associations
The sector bodies and professional  Organisational Development in
associations JISC is working with Higher Education Group
initially include: (ODHE)
 Association for Learning  Standing Conference on
Academic Practice (SCAP)
Development in Higher Education
(ALDinHE)
 Staff Development Forum
(SDF)
 Association for Learning  Staff and Educational
Technology (ALT)
Development Association
 Association of University (SEDA)
Administrators (AUA)
 Heads of Educational  Society of College, National
and University Libraries
Development Group (HEDG)
(SCONUL)
 Learning and Skills Improvement  Vitae
Service (LSIS)
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13. Baselining – what are the key messages
from projects?
Lindsay Jordan via Helen Beetham (Synthesis Consultant)
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14. 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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15. Strategy & Support
Policy & Strategy
 IT/L&T strategies common
 Lack of coherence around digital literacy
Support & Training
 Support 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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16. 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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17. 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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18. Baselining – what are the key messages
from programme Associations?
Myles via Helen Beetham, Synthesis Consultant
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19. 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

20. 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?

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

22. Baseline Highlights - AUA
Philip Wolstenholme
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23. 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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24. 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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25. Group Exercise
Lindsay Jordan and Philip Wolstenholme
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26. 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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27. 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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28. 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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29. Programme Outcomes
 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)
03/04/2012
http://jiscdesignstudio.pbworks.com slide 29

30. Overview of Resources
(see handout)
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31. How did we do and evaluation
Myles Danson
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32. 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
03/04/2012 slide 32

33. © 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
M.Danson@jisc.ac.uk
England & Wales Licence. Philip.wolstenholme@aua.ac.uk
Lindsay.jordan@arts.ac.uk
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/2.0/uk
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