More than 90 digital capability specialists and enthusiasts came together for the launch of our Community of Practice at the University of Aston last week.
Delegates heard from Sarah Knight about the resources Jisc has developed for the community, including the new Developing organisational approaches to digital capability online guide launched last week. But this was very much a working meeting, with the focus on sharing ideas and developing things together. In a rapidly emerging field, strategies need to be kept in development, and resources produced in an agile way. So a lot of the day was given over to workshop sessions where we mapped the landscape and planned next steps
I gave an overview of where we are in the UK, and how we got here (including some international perspective). Then we heard a pair of inspiring organisational case studies from John Hill of the University of Derby, and Richard Fullylove of Coleg y Cymoedd. John described an integrated approach to staff and student development, incorporating the Jisc framework and profiles, and self-assessment tools. Richard showed how the use of infographics is helping to get the message across in his college, along with 30 full hours of CPD provision for staff.
You can access the Periscope recordings from these sessions here and also review a Storify of reactions on Twitter.
Next we split into groups to paper-prototype four ‘toolkits’ for embedding digital capabilities. 
You can find our ideas and resources on these four Padlets:
- Approaches to developing staff
- Approaches to developing students
- Building organisational capacity
- and Developing the digital curriculum
After lunch, Gillian Fielding gave a summary overview of the findings of the 2017 UCISA Digital Capabilities Survey. You can access the Periscope recording here.
Then it was back to groupwork, with groups working in parallel on the same three issues this time – barriers and drivers to digital capability development, and available resources. A write-up from the activity is available here and will be further analysed in the coming days to decide on priorities.
At a final panel, representatives were put on the spot with challenging questions such as ‘what makes for a digitally capable organisation?’ and ‘what is the one thing an organisation needs to get right?’ Luckily the day had lent us all inspiration and ideas.
You can find a periscope recording of the plenary panel session here.
The findings of our Mentimeter polling are also an important resource for thinking about where we go next.
- What one thing should the community do? (Open question)
- Which activities would you prioritise for the community? (Closed question based on results of 1.)
To join the Building Digital Capability community of practice visit http://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/jisc-digcap-ug. Follow #digitalcapability on Twitter and for more information on the Building digital capability project email digitalcapability@jisc.ac.uk.