Communities in action at Digifest
The community hub at Digifest has quickly become a highly valued space where members can accelerate their professional development and grow their peer network.
At this year’s event, over 300 members from 16 communities of practice came together in person to explore specialist topics - such as accessibility, digital capabilities, and AI - and to discuss sector-wide challenges through meetups, workshops, and forums.
In this feature, we’re exploring how the extended opportunities for peer-to-peer support at Digifest help our communities maximise the impact of their work, from the perspectives of three of those communities.
Nurturing the spirit of collaboration
For the past four years, the FE library LRC community has worked with its 450 members to celebrate best practice and address challenges common to teams working in and around FE libraries and learning resources.
Putting together the workshop for Digifest, it was clear to community manager Lis Parcell what their activities should focus on this year.
“Our community members can sometimes lack access to peers with similar professional backgrounds and roles within their colleges. At the same time, to support their students’ success and wellbeing it’s vital they work as closely as possible with staff in other teams, especially when it comes to reaping the benefits of digital.”
Community chair for the group, Jacinta Jolly, agreed, saying, “we all felt united by the need to find creative ways to collaborate with academic staff.”
Together the 27 participants explored the issue of collaboration from every angle. It was clear that to achieve organisational objectives, library staff needed to build a broad spectrum of connections – not just with teachers and lecturers, either.
Library staff identified the need to connect with digital learning staff, IT, additional learning needs, careers, marketing and wellbeing professionals within their organisations.
Stronger links across these areas make it easier for library staff to meet an evolving and expanding set of departmental requirements. These can include everything from e-book platforms and Jisc-licensed content such as JSTOR and Gale, through to organisation-wide themed events for International Women’s Day and work experience for students in the libraries.
Participants worked together to outline the factors most crucial for collaborative success. These included things like co-location for ‘one-stop-shops', and use of student voice, alongside wider organisational factors like access to faculty meetings and more centralised systems.
Reflecting on the success of the workshop, Jacinta pointed out how spaces like the Digifest community hub provide invaluable support in tackling organisational challenges.
“I'd emphasise how important it is for us to collaborate - within the community, between institutions and within our organisations. Libraries or learning resource centres can tend to be seen as siloes, but to flourish we really need to get out and talk with others in our colleges and universities. Then we can build those links, to ensure that we are best supporting our students and staff to promote all the amazing services and resources we already have, and forge bonds with others to discover what more we might offer.”
Read the FE library LRC community Digifest blog
Sharing experiences to improve access to game-changing technologies
Extended reality (XR) is a technology with immense potential to improve teaching and learning outcomes in many FE and HE subject areas, including STEM subjects, health and social care, arts, humanities and social sciences.
However, many of the issues identified in our 2023/24 extended reality (XR) in learning and teaching report continue to act as a brake to widespread adoption. A sector-wide lack of funding and specialist skills is a deterrent for many institutions. The pace at which XR technologies develop (rendering devices outdated much more quickly), and questions about accessibility for some learners also present substantial barriers.
All of which demonstrates the importance of the role that the Jisc UK XR community plays.
Whether enabling institutions to pool licences to reduce costs and increase availability for users, or compiling a reference library of member institution’s medical XR simulations, the XR community is an essential source of support for tertiary educators looking to explore this technology.
The turnout for the community meetup at Digifest reflected the growing sector-wide interest in XR. Co-host Kathryn Woodhead gave us a rundown of some of the meetup highlights:
“There was a lot of discussion on the trialling and piloting of XR hardware and software and the need for more support in the early stages. Being able to share access and test resources before making them available on a larger scale is important, and if this was made easier it would improve the process.
“Jisc facilitated trials - for example, the Bodyswaps pilot - were useful in helping organisations make decisions about the software before purchasing it. Sharing experiences at events within the XR community is incredibly valuable, especially for those in the early stages of adoption.
“Scaling XR use from focused applications in specific areas to broader, cross-disciplinary adoption remains a challenge that requires further support.
“Repeatability is also an important factor to consider – will learners be able to continuously use the software, increasing its value for money, or is it a one-off experience?”
Read the XR community Digifest blog
Sharing perspectives and looking for a future-proof consensus
While many of our communities focus on specialisms, some groups – such as the artificial intelligence community – are grappling with global issues, and how they impact the entire tertiary education sector.
The AI in FE Digifest 2025 community meetup was primarily focused on AI literacy for learners – but inevitably the initial focus served as a jumping-off point for community members to enjoy a frank and wide-ranging discussion on the impact of AI technologies.
Attendees were also free to share their perspectives via the AI in FE Digifest padlet, which remains open for anyone who couldn’t attend to give us their thoughts on the questions raised.
Contributions from community members revealed that, when it comes to AI, the FE student population harbour a diverse range of opinions and feelings.
Beyond the obvious difficulties caused by inconsistent messaging around proper and improper use of AI, and the difficulties AI presents for assessment, there were even thornier questions to answer.
Some participants highlighted the concerns their students have around the ethical, environmental and social impacts of AI. Expanding on this, one padlet commenter pointed out, “creative arts and media subjects tend to be opposed to AI, due to concerns around job loss and creativity loss. It can be hard to find common ground with subject areas that are more excited by AI.”
So how can FE leaders build consensus and establish a baseline for AI literacy with students?
The participants weren’t short of suggestions. Ways to increase engagement included holding focus groups to help understand different opinions. Another suggestion was engaging learners by highlighting specific AI technologies that are relevant to their lives and possible careers, in areas like coding, healthcare diagnostics, satellite navigation, and simulators.
Some contributors offered teaching and learning strategies, such as workshops to demonstrate the limitations of generative AI, prompt training, and planned learning activities where students are given opportunities to experiment and fail.
Read the artificial intelligence Digifest blog
Coming together to harness the best ideas from across our sector
Want to get involved? Our communities represent the very best of what Jisc is about – providing peer-to-peer support and sector-wide insights to tackle and solve the biggest challenges facing tertiary educators at the individual, organisational and national levels.
Published late in 2024, our collaboration for a sustainable future report lays out the blueprint for how our institutions can support each other to thrive and provide the best possible educational outcomes for everyone.
Blogs from community members are a great way to explore the wider conversations from Digifest. Take a look at the mapping processes used by the digital capability community to help foster a digital mindset. Chris Thomson’s insightful reflections from the digital storytelling community on how storytelling can help us humanise learning are also well worth a read.