This academic year has been busy for the Digital Learning team and our work building staff and students’ digital capabilities. Here’s a review of some key activities and events:
Workshops
The team ran sessions for students and staff throughout the year including:
- Discovery Tool digital capabilities workshops: For ‘New students’, ‘Current students’, ‘Overall digital capabilities’ and ‘Teaching in HE’. For a workshop, please Book a consultation to discuss your staff or student needs.
- ‘Taking the Strain Out of Digital Wellbeing’.
- ‘Planning and preparation tips to consider when giving online presentations’.
- ‘Increasing interactivity with Teams, Polls and Forms’.
- LinkedIn Learning (LiL) events: For staff and students.
- PhD Thesis support: Digital Learning ran multiple seminars for PGRs to master efficient and effective use of Word and Adobe Acrobat for thesis formatting and PDF/A-3 conversion.
The year in numbers
- 50: ‘Build your digital capabilities with the Discovery Tool’ workshops for students and staff.
- 2600: Staff and students attending Discovery Tool workshops.
- 37: Minutes of our new ‘Build your digital skills with the Discovery Tool’ recorded workshop for students. You can find this in the ‘Training and workshops – Digital skills’ section of the Academic Skills Hub.
- 5,336: People who accessed LinkedIn Learning.
- 8,186: Hours of LinkedIn Learning content consumed. Of this, 3,249 courses and 125,520 videos were accessed and 191 learning paths completed.
- 396: PGRs and staff attending PhD Thesis training seminars.
- 103: Support tickets from PGRs and staff on topics relating to using MS Word and Adobe Acrobat in creating thesis documents. The Library, iSolutions staff on ServiceLine and the Tech Hubs also handle many issues – thanks to those teams for all their help.
- 200: Visits in the first few months to ‘Research thesis – How to produce it in Microsoft Word and converting it to a PDF/A-3’. This new Knowledge Base article, launched with the help of Marco Cattelan (Digital Coordinator, iSolutions), has reduced complexity for those receiving direct support.
- 5: Top skills being learnt in LinkedIn Learning are (in descending order):
- Microsoft Excel
- Python (Programming Language)
- Data Analysis
- Project Management
- Artificial Intelligence for Business
Activities and events
- DigiSkills day took place in November 23 with involvement from multiple teams including the Library, Tech Hubs and Academic Skills Service. A multi-day event is in planning for November 24 with a wider skills focus and additional involvement from Careers. Anna Hvass (Head of Curriculum Engagement, Library):
“Working with Digital Learning and the wider teams involved in skills development has been really beneficial – there are a lot of us, but it is great to come together and put the student at the centre of what we are doing like running the DigiSkills day which we are planning on expanding this year – watch this space.”
- Library staff have used the Discovery Tool widely within their CPD programme and Digital Learning helped signpost the skills-building resources available. Lucy Marr (Library Learning & Development Lead) explains the role of the tool and resources:
“We identified that digital agility was one of our learning priority areas for Library staff, so that we can continue to be at the forefront of new technology and support all our customers. The Jisc Discovery Tool has been a core part of our approach. It’s helped us to get an initial measure of digital skills and identify potential areas for development. The learning resources from Jisc and the DigiSkills Metro Map with all the relevant LinkedIn learning pathways are extensive.”
- LinkedIn Learning has been integrated with Blackboard Ultra with the Education Application team’s help. Support for instructors and learners is available: Blackboard Ultra – add LinkedIn Learning content and Blackboard Ultra – engaging with LinkedIn Learning content.
- In collaboration with the Strategic Business Partners and iSolutions communications, the University of Southampton Student IT skills induction 2024-25 was produced for new students. This guides learners to short videos on using Teams, Outlook for the Web and signposts resources to develop wider skills.
- Digital Learning worked with the Quality Standards & Accreditation team, the Doctoral College and Library to revise the thesis Guidelines and Code of Practice. This emphasises the need to consider archiving and accessibility more thoroughly – and earlier in the write-up process.
External activities/events
- The owners of the Discovery Tool, Jisc, approached Digital Learning to present a Building digital capability user group webinar on our implementation story as ‘super-users’. They published a Southampton case study which you can access alongside others here: Jisc’s case studies: Building digital capability.
- Digital Learning and the Library’s Curriculum Engagement team were shortlisted for our LILAC ‘Information Literacy award’ submission. This focussed on using LinkedIn Learning paths to curate / signpost digital capabilities resources within the University’s DigiSkills Metro Map.
More information/contact us:
- Visit the Discovery Tool information sheet and Discovery Tool interactive help guide for further details about the tool and our capabilities-building resources.
- Contact digital-learning@soton.ac.uk for details on any of the above.
Digital Learning’s ‘Digital capabilities review of the year’