Top tips

1. Develop your own digital literacy and that of your team. Identify skills gaps and consider if support staff, staff from other curriculum areas, consultants, professional mentors could help fill them.
2. Take up relevant CPD and training opportunities, then ask for recognition for the digital expertise you bring to your role. Look for support from staff/educational development, the appraisal process, peers, students. Short-term secondments are a great way to update your own skills and extend your horizons.
3. Relax. You don’t have to be an expert in all things digital so long as you keep up to date with developments in your subject community (one size does not fit all).
4. Know who, how and when to ask for help, including from students. Students value your subject knowledge, not your technical know-how.
5. Identify what digital literacy means in your subject area or professional context. Think practices, not tools. What do students need to be able to do? What role can digital technology play in allowing them to do that?
6. Find out about your students – what access needs, skills, preferences do they have?
7. Carry out a programme/module level audit of digital capability and/or a needs analysis. Start with the skills students have already, and the technologies they are comfortable using. Introduce new technologies to them with a clear rationale, and be prepared for them to take a while to be comfortable learning with them.
8. Make sure course and module level outcomes express digital literacy requirements, or adapt them to do so.
9. Assessment gives powerful messages to students about what you expect. Consider assessments based around use of digital technologies and media, or requiring digital collaboration.
10. Model how you want learners to behave in blended and online environments, and also make your expectations of them explicit.
11. Build collaborative activities into the curriculum, allow space to experiment with different environments, and have students discover what works for them.
12. Don’t limit your thinking to information handling. Students can become more digitally literate through communication tasks, creative production, capturing and reflecting on their learning, using professional tools, developing their online profile, collaborating with others.
13. Why should learners be using particular technologies? Ensure there is a clear rationale that makes sense in terms of their learning outcomes and long-term study goals. Harness their motivations.
14. Embed opportunities to assess and progress digital capability.
15. Engage with employers and alumni through representation in course design meetings, involvement in placement activities or as online mentors. What uses of technology are going to help students succeed in the workplace?
16. Consult with students, including prospective students (expectations) and recent alumni (experiences).
17. Involve other professionals early in the course design process, eg careers, e-learning, library, learning development, IT teams.
18. Learn from what’s happening in other course teams, and in other institutions, but make it relevant to your subject and your students. Be ready to revisit your assumptions. Rethink both what students need to learn, and how they need to learn it (eg blended learning).
19. Share what you are doing. Ask for feedback from other staff and share resources with other curriculum teams where possible.
20. Be adventurous and have fun!

1. Develop clear policies, in collaboration with students, that support and do not unreasonably penalise digital practices.
2. Consult about fair access, appropriate use policies and ensure they remain up to date and fit for purpose – do not unnecessarily restrict innovation, help to build trust.
3. Consult about the appropriate balance between security and innovation – include innovators in these consultations – remembering that open technologies are often educationally powerful.
4. Make sure the systems and networks (inc. wireless) support highly connected forms of learning.
5. Involve students in the development and testing of new services and apps based on the institution’s data infrastructure.
6. Communicate essential course information via means chosen by students eg to mobile devices or via web services.
7. Bring forward BYOD policies which are fully consulted upon. Assume students will continue to require desktop computers and printers even when they bring their own devices and services.
8. Loan devices – 500+ were distributed by the Digital Literacies in Transition project.
9. Continue to focus on usability, integration and well designed interfaces (ICT services in collaboration with students) but …
10. Inform students that game-changing technologies (‘threshold practices’) require investment of time and effort (learning and teaching staff).
11. Support learners’ own devices and access to their own external services – as far as practical.
12. Build ICT requirements into all new builds and renovations. Storage facilities, plug sockets, cable safety, furniture all need to be considered.
13. Support use of personal services etc in institutional settings – but consult with students before full integration.
14. Ask students to help make core institutional systems more usable and personal.
15. Focus on institutional technology that really meet students’ needs: access to quality resources, collaborative tools, technologies in workplace settings.
16. Provide guidance on open source alternatives to expensive professional/academic systems.
17. Ensure key technologies are integrated and assessed in the curriculum.
18. Work with teaching staff to understand their needs, and make sure the technology works for them, especially in teaching rooms.
19. Be responsive to learners: consider the needs of pioneering technology users and those who have poor access or skills.
20. Involve learners in providing ICT support.

1. Become digitally literate yourself – not to be able to do everything but to be able to provide leadership of an institution in the digital age.
2. Develop a vision for digital literacy in your institution or area of strategy – be creative and innovative – use digital literacy to help define institutional reputation.
3. Put in place mechanisms for continuously involving students and teaching staff in the vision for digital literacy – iterative engagement not one-off consultation.
4. Think long term. Digital literacy isn’t something you can do once and have sorted. An incremental approach, linking multiple projects, riding on other agendas – the effect is cumulative.
5. Develop the vision into a strategic overview that helps to join up what is happening across the institution. Recognise that achieving a digital literacy vision will require breaking down barriers.
6. Consider both the value of digital literacy to individuals (digital capital) and the benefits to the wider community the institution serves.
7. Give digital literacy a context – how does it relate to other agendas? Align agendas to give a coherent message. Embed digital literacy into learning and teaching strategies, and graduate attributes.
8. Make the strategy flexible – this is an area that changes rapidly.
9. Carry out an audit of current provision, practice and policy. How does the institution shape up? Use the available tools to do research – large and small scale.
10. There will be costs. These can be mapped to benefits – look to other institutions for evidence. Gather evidence of your own by reviewing the impact on staff and student experience.
11. Balance capital with revenue spend – in this area expertise will do far more for you than kit – but good ICT infrastructure and support is critical.
12. Prioritise the support for innovation, and take some calculated risks.
13. Make it easier to innovate the curriculum.
14. Ensure there is credible reward and recognition for innovation and for developing digital expertise – for staff (appraisal, progression) as well as for students (assessment, extra-curricular awards, payment).
15. Invest in staff training and CPD. Support secondments, champions and mentors. Consult widely within the institution, recognise expertise.
16. ‘Learning raids’ on other institutions are a good way of becoming aware of what’s possible and sharing best practice.
17. Encourage student-led initiatives and work directly with student representatives, not only to find out ‘what they want’ but actually to bring about change eg students recording lectures and uploading to VLE.
18. Develop robust mechanisms for identifying external opportunities including funding and sharing of expertise. If externally-funded projects work, find ways to sustain them.
19. Digital literacy means rethinking practice: there needs to be time, space and resource to do this, especially for teaching staff and for learners.
20. Give freedom to experiment.

1. You can’t google your way to a degree – but your ‘google brain’ (and your ‘Facebook brain’) can help you, if you use them intelligently.
2. Think about how you can use your own technologies and resources to support your learning e.g. Facebook, Twitter. Learn to use your own technologies fully, explore what they can do.
3. Be open to trying a range of new technologies and resources – experiment but be discriminating about technologies. What works for you? How can you personalise it to work better for you? Find your own environments for learning the way you want.
4. Be critical of technologies and the information and messages they carry. Why is it designed that way? Does it do what you want it to? Is it distracting or does it help you to organise your life? Understand what technologies do badly and well.
5. Bring your own technology with you and use it (with permission). If you feel you are being unreasonably excluded from using technology that works for you, raise it as an issue.
6. Learn how to use the online library catalogue early on. But explore online resources, not limiting yourself to those recommended by tutors. Find academic/learning portals you can trust, learn to identify authoritative resources.
7. Be critical of what you find: discriminate those resources that can support your studies and those that can be misleading or lacking credibility.
8. Be aware of what copyright means to you – if you use somebody else’s work without acknowledgement or permission it’s always wrong. Some things on the web can be used without permission, but always acknowledge the source by referencing.
9. Understand that tutors are constantly learning too – technology changes the subject you are studying, they have to stay up to date as well. That’s what makes it exciting.
10. Tutors are not the only sources of support. Other students, support staff, online help and forums can be equally valuable when it comes to effective use of technology for learning.
11. Who you know is as important as what you know. Establish your own networks. Don’t be afraid to talk to people on your course or join online networks in your subject area.
12. Understand that all your actions online potentially leave a trail. Find out about your digital identity and learn ways to build a positive profile – employers will look at it.
13. Think about your personal and professional reputation when you participate online – begin taking positive steps eg using LinkedIn, separate Facebook identities for public/private use..
14. Be safe and respectful online. Consider the safety of others.
15. Think less about what you can copy and more about what you can create and share. Learn how to comment on other people’s blogs, contribute to wikis, share documents. Build your own blog or website. Use aggregation sites and social bookmarking. Share material on eg Flickr, Youtube, SlideShare, and learn how to create groups.
16. Support others – comment, review, give feedback, mentor technology use. You learn most when you teach others.
17. If you don’t understand what is expected of you, what is appropriate, what technologies or resources you should/could be using, ask.
18. Be prepared to be challenged sometimes – using technology is difficult, learning is hard.
19. Imagine what you’d like to be doing in the future and what technologies and skills will be needed in that context.
20. Be aware of your own strengths and weaknesses and where you need to improve your skills

General

1. Develop your own digital literacy, relevant to the role you have, and to the changing demands on the students you support and act as a digital champion in your area of professionalism.
2. Ensure you support the devices and services learners use.
3. Understand that learners differ in their experience of technology and the preferences they have – offer alternative means of accessing support where possible.
4. Help to manage learners’ expectations – of your service, and of the study experience in general.
5. Support learner voice initiatives and engage students actively in shaping the service you provide, eg through the students’ union, course reps.
6. Plan service delivery at the point where it is needed – evaluate service delivery at the point of use.
7. Work in partnership with curriculum teams – get involved early in the process – instil a sense of shared responsibility.
8. Build relationships with senior managers to raise the profile of what you do and your contribution to digital literacies.
9. Develop resources that curriculum teams can use to check they are considering digital literacies (from your service perspective) as they plan and review programmes.
10. Involve students in the development of resources and communications about your service – draw on their digital skills.
11. Build links with other support services eg through cross-referral, shared projects, involvement in a digital literacies audit or development of a cross-service digital literacies strategy.
12. Advertise what you do – to staff and students – so they are clear where to come if they need a specific kind of help. (Use links with other support services to ensure communication is coherent and roles/responsibilities clearly defined).
13. Advertise what you do in a diversity of ways to reach staff and students with different communication/media preferences.
14. Include digital literacy assessment and self-assessment, introduction to core skills, and access to services, in the induction process.
15. Use audit tools and diagnostics to identify skills gaps and development needs.

Learning developers

16. Focus on developing skills for study (and then) graduate skills. How do learners progress (through what kinds of experience)? How does your service support those experiences?

Staff and educational developers

17. Support staff/educational development as inquiry, scholarship, communities of practice, as well as (rather than) training sessions in new technologies.
18. Embed digital literacy considerations into CPD and PostGraduate Certificate programmes for lecturing staff.
19. Collect case studies, exemplars, vox pops – make them short, relevant and accessible.

Librarians

20. Be involved in curriculum and module design – students are most motivated to engage with a digital literacies agenda in the context of the subject they have chosen to study