Abstract

Our session will detail the work undertaken at the University of Lincoln (Educational Development and Enhancement Unit, 2016; Pinny, 2015; Elliott, 2016) to support staff to develop their digital capabilities. We will detail our journey from the adoption of the Jisc framework and development of an institutional digital capabilities strategy, to gaining senior management buy in, piloting of the Jisc Discovery Tool (2016) and support resources, including a Lynda.com pilot.
This session will address all three conference themes, as the ability to connect, collaborate and create are predicated on having the necessary capabilities and skills. Digital capabilities have been defined as “those capabilities which fit an individual for living, learning and working in a digital society” (Jisc, 2014). The use of technology appears regularly in the strategies of Higher Education institutions (HEIs), with a growing expectation that learning and teaching uses technology in increasingly innovative ways. As a result staff are expected to be capable of using a wide range of technologies in new and inventive ways.

Jisc identified a discrepancy between the expectations of HEIs and the support available for staff to develop their digital capabilities. As a result of Helen Beetham’s (2015) work, Jisc created a framework and a suite of support tools.

We will discuss the evaluation of the Jisc Discovery Tool and Lynda.com pilot and how the results have informed our support and development strategy. The findings will be of interest to other HEIs who are considering how they might better understand the digital capabilities of staff within their institution. By sharing the lessons learnt, we hope to help colleagues to implement change at their institutions.

Participants will be encouraged to consider what being digitally capable means and whether their institution can be considered digitally capable. We will invite participants to record their definition of digital capability, share their work and strategies and collect responses using Padlet or Google Docs to facilitate sharing with the wider community.