Be prepared for change: enable your staff to work more effectively with digital technologies
To remain competitive at a time of rapid change, universities and colleges need to work as flexibly, efficiently and effectively as possible. This requires staff who can adapt quickly and wholeheartedly to new, digital ways of working.
Staff need opportunities to develop their digital skills. However, organisations also need to pay heed to the human and organisational aspects of introducing new digital ways of working.
We have advice and guidance to help your organisation implement new working practices successfully.
- Our research found that human and organisational issues can be as important to the successful introduction of new ways of working as the technical aspects. Our briefing paper provides advice about how to manage technology-led change projects and highlights a framework and toolkit to help your organisation embed new technologies into working practices.
- Together with a number of professional organisations, we've produced a guide on how to implement the UK Professional Standards Framework to help you benchmark your organsation's performance against national standards.
Join our webinar on implementing the framework: see also our other webinars on improving staff digital literacy.
- We’ve also produced resources to support professional development in a wide range of job roles to improve the quality and profile of your teaching, learning and research.
- Our toolkit on embedding technology-enhanced working practices will guide you through the stages of implementing a new practice. First you’ll need to assess its likely impact, then whether your organisation has the right policies and practices in place, and finally how and where to begin building capacity for the new practice.
- You may also find some of our guidance on implementing change in general helpful. Our change management infoKit, for example, will take you through similar stages to the toolkit. We’ve also produced a sustaining and embedding innovations good practice guide which tackles similar issues when the change to be implemented has resulted from an innovation project at your institution.
- Almost everything JISC does helps staff develop their skills and take advantage of the benefits digital technologies can bring. Explore our services at JISC Advance to see some of the advice, guidance, workshops, training, networking opportunities and practical help on offer.
What does the future hold?
We are funding a
programme of work, which completes in July 2013, to support organisational strategies and approaches for improving digital literacies for all staff and learners. Sign up to our
JISC-diglit-public@jiscmail.ac.uk list for programme updates.
Support from JISC Services
Our impact
Our work has helped institutions to develop staff skills for administration, teaching and research in a digital environment. For example:
- The training provided by JISC Advance (including Netskills, Infonet, JISCLegal and Techdis) saved the sector £1,896,000 across the academic year 2008/9.
- A JISC project has enabled dermatologists at Cardiff University to broadcast live surgery to more than 30 countries worldwide over the JANET network. ‘We can only squeeze in one or two extra registrars to observe the procedures going on in the theatres. We have 300 undergraduates but they never got in to see any of it. Thanks to this project, for the first time all 300 can potentially see the surgery and talk to the surgeon at the same time … this type of system has the power to revolutionise how surgery is taught.’ Dr Maria Gonzalez, reader in dermatology and course director at Cardiff University.
- In 2009/10 the JISC Regional Support Centres delivered staff development to more than 10,000 event delegates. This corresponds to training almost 4 staff in every supported learning provider.
- JISC projects also enable institutions to build capacity through staff development. By repurposing content for use within virtual and managed learning environments, the JISC funded SURFWBL project created better awareness of intellectual property and accessibility issues amongst staff in the four institutions involved. It also developed a stronger community of practice in the West Midlands and led to the introduction of a new policy to promote reuse of e-learning content at Staffordshire University (see the full report for more details).