Last week I had the pleasure of co-presenting a seminar organised by Emma Thompson at the University of Liverpool with my colleague, Esther Barrett, on what does it mean to be digitally capable? The event was an excellent opportunity to showcase Jisc’s digital capability framework, which comprises of the following six key elements:
When we begin to unpack what it means to be digitally capable we inevitably find ourselves drawing on our own experiences and values and so the model above really helped to provide an underpinning backdrop in which to frame the discussions. During the workshop we took each of these six elements in turn and asked attendees to draw on their own examples of how digital technologies have not only enriched learning, but also their lives.
One of the key challenges for any institution looking to advance the digital capability of their staff across the organisation is to arrive at a shared understanding of what digital capability means to them. Crowdsourcing examples of good digital practice from attendees is one way of democratising the discussions around digital capability and also ensures that the focus remains situated in their own practice. We used a range of discussion-based activities and collaborative tools during the seminar, such as Twitter (#UoLDigCap), TodaysMeet, Padlet and Google Drive, to surface these examples. The feedback from these discussions helped to not only broaden everyone’s understanding of the issues, but also informed that shared understanding of what it means to be digitally capable at their institution.
What I love about these types of seminars is that we all learn from each other and with a topic like digital capability there’s always something new and exciting on the horizon!
If you’d like to find out more about the discussions and resources we explored at #UoLDigCap take a look at our Storify.
