The building digital capabilities team was excited to bring the community together at Digifest ‘25 to focus on fostering digital mindsets using Jisc’s discovery tool. As the community is made up of leaders in digital skills development from colleges and universities around the world, we aimed to explore both individual and organisational digital mindsets with attendees. The event brought people together to collaborate from a variety of roles within the education sector including digital leaders, academic staff and learning technologists from higher and further education.
Time to think and plan
We decided to use Territory mapping to help people envisage their ‘worlds’ in a different format. By stepping back and drawing their world in a more abstract way, the community could consider what they wanted to achieve by highlighting areas of purpose, or their fire, or what they wanted to protect, hunt for or grow. It allowed the community to pick out the processes, departments or individuals that might help or even hinder progress and provide for themselves a map towards achieving their aims.
Navigating digital worlds
In a buzz of chat and coloured pens, the community split into different groups to draw, talk and digest their reflections. The discussions moved from rivers of support to swamps of procedural or financial challenges and allowed people to share similar experiences to consider new ways of navigating complex landscapes. The chats allowed our community to build new and strengthen existing networks and many shared contact details to carry on the conversations.
The digital capabilities team enjoyed the session too:
‘Territory mapping provided a creative and safe space to explore our roles in enhancing digital capabilities within organisations. The maps I saw captured the local situations really well. Explaining them to others highlighted commonalities and opportunities for broader discussion.’
Mike Cameron, senior consultant
‘The conversations I had led us to discuss the discovery tool in more depth and fostered an interest in getting to grips with using the tool in their organisations to progress digital mindsets’
Louisa Stamatelopoulos, consultant
‘It was great to see the community come together and share their different experiences of embedding and using the discovery tool, or broader digital skills, within their institutions. Hearing about the barriers and challenges they encounter helps us better understand how we can further support the sector. It was heartening to hear how much value is place around people and knowledge’
Cath Foster, head of digital capability
“The community sessions at Digifest are always a fantastic opportunity to connect with our subscribers and hear their stories and experiences in supporting digital skills within their institutions. This year, given the sector’s challenges, it was particularly meaningful to engage with the community on the importance of fostering a digital mindset, not only at an individual level but also across entire institutions. These in-person conversations are incredibly powerful, and meeting our subscribers face-to-face and reconnecting is always my favourite part”.
Becki Vickerstaff, HE senior consultant
Thank you to everyone from the community who contributed to this session – we look forward to seeing you again at Digifest 2026