Category Archives: News and Events

Getting started with Digidol

Today marks two weeks since I started as interim project manager on the Digidol project and I am starting to get a handle on things so I thought it was a good point to reflect on my first impressions of the project, progress to date and where we are heading.

In terms of project management, things couldn’t have been made easier. When Joy went on maternity leave, she left things well organised and documented, making it straightforward to find everything and see what has been happening and who does what. This has made the first fortnight a lot more productive than it might otherwise have been so thanks Joy!

I have joined the project as it enters a new phase. Extensive baselining activities looking at the current extent of digital literacy among academics, students, admin and researchers is complete, providing a picture of a mix of both enthusiasm for and uptake of technologies. Digital literacy has been recognised at an institutional level as an important element and is embedded in core strategies as one of the essential “learning literacies” students and staff need to possess. An initial organisational model to support change management has been proposed. So far so good. The project is on target and there is the essential institutional will to see it succeed.

The new phase focuses on facilitating and supporting that process of change to enable staff and students to make appropriate use of technology to enhance their work practices. Facilitation is happening both through workshops and online resources but therein lies the challenge. Such support – whether provided in the short term by the project – or longer term by services – needs to be contextualised to practice in order to be meaningful and relevant – and digital literacy means being able to identify and exploit the right technology at the right time for the particular job. So traditional generic, technology-focused interventions are not enough.

Our challenge over the second phase of the project is therefore to develop a working and sustainable process that can be taken forward by our service providers to enable staff and student to understand when and how technology would make their work more effective and provide them with the support they need to be able to take it forward. We have started trialling a mixed-media workshop process, which combines short, focused face to face interactions and an online community to explore detail. We are also developing a resource bank, which can be accessed via multiple views to help to surface the possibilities offered by technology for different practices and tasks.

Attempting this for the whole institution and all the possible practice and technology combinations is not feasible so we are concentrating on illustrative exemplars: working with a handful of different disciplinary areas and focusing on a number of representative task areas (such as presentations, meetings and assessment). These will allow us to demonstrate proof of concept and evaluate our model and process.

All this is happening in the context of institutional change so we are mindful that we need to keep one eye on that and how it may change things for us. But all the signs are that the new leadership team will be supportive of our aims.

So an exciting time to join the project and I am looking forward to working with Joe and the team on the next phase.

New Project Manager

Hello, I just a quick post to introduce myself and to let you know what is happening on the project. I’m Joy Head and I’ve recently started as the new Project Manager. I was previously working on the Welsh Information Literacy Project (a wonderful project to be part of) but as Digidol starts to take shape I’m already feeling really excited by the potential that it has to enable growth in so many key areas such as employability, widening access, independent learning and pedagogic innovation.

It has been a busy first few weeks but we have put together a detailed project plan which has been agreed and submitted to JISC , established our steering group and held our initial meeting . Joe and I are now working away on our first deliverable which is to establish a baseline for digital literacy across Cardiff University learning and teaching. Joe has been working with the schools and already we have had several meetings with partners from other related projects around the university including PCUTL, PALET and Lean. I’m really enjoying the engagement side of the project and I’d just like to thank you, if you have been one of the many individuals who has supported us so far and to invite you to contact us and be part of the project as it develops. You can follow us on twitter @DigidolProject or alternatively all of our contact details are shown under the ‘About’ tab. Looking forward to working with you, Joy

Developing Digital Literacies – A free workshop

Developing Digital Literacies: A series of national workshops on developing learners and learning organisations for the 21st Century

A free workshop from the JISC e-Learning Programme on developing digital literacies is taking place on 4th November in Wales, organised in partnership with JISC RSC Wales.

 

The workshops will be held in three locations connected by video conferencing:

 

  • Swansea University
  • Aberystwyth University
  • Deeside College

 

These workshops will offer the latest in organisational thinking and educational development around digital literacies. Participants will hear the outcomes of recent JISC-funded activity in this area and be given the chance to share their own experiences through structured activities. Proven resources in support of staff and curriculum development and institutional change will be available to download, adapt and use in participants’ own contexts of work.

The workshops will be suitable for:

Educational professionals with an interest in and responsibility for digital literacy. They may be located in: e-learning teams; library/learning resource teams; educational or learning development; academic departments; careers/employability teams; outreach teams; other support services; quality; senior management.

The workshops will be facilitated by Helen Beetham (consultant) and author of JISC’s recent review of digital literacies and lead consultant on the Learning Literacies for a Digital Age1 (LliDA) project Dr Greg Benfield (Oxford Centre for Staff and Learning Development, Oxford Brookes University) of the recent JISC Supporting Learners in a Digital Age2 (SLiDA) study.

Further information together with the registration forms for the workshops, is available from http://www.jisc.ac.uk/whatwedo/programmes/elearning/developingdigitalliteracies/4thNovWorkshop.aspx and resources from the national workshops are now available from http://bit.ly/jiscdiglit

For news and information about these events, follow the Twitter tag #jiscdiglit

We look forward to seeing you there!

Introducing Project Digidol

Project Digidol aims to embed processes and practices that enable the development of Digital Literacy in all staff and students across all areas and levels of the University. It is understood that this will be as much about changing attitudes and beliefs, as it will be about realising practical knowledge and skills. Organisational change and effective change management will be key aspects of the project.

Cardiff University recognises Digital Literacy as being of fundamental importance to developing the future capability of its work force and graduates. Such highly transferable knowledge and skills are seen as essential if organisations and businesses are to become agile and adaptive in a rapidly changing world.

A range of top-down and bottom-up approaches to enabling change will be explored. Senior managers will be involved to help realise broader engagement and to develop and drive forward the strategic imperative for addressing Digital Literacy. We will work directly with students and staff to design and develop resources and learning activities so that they become integrated aspects of undergraduate and postgraduate curricula and programmes of staff development.

The project will develop an exemplar organisational model for embedding Digital Literacy across courses and curricula which can be adapted and delivered across to other HEIs. The project will include a comparative before and after analysis of the extent and suitability of digital literacy provision, a repository of learning materials and a post implementation review of the organisational change processes and the development of institutional thinking on Digital Literacy that will form a toolkit for use by other HEIs.