Effective and appropriate use of technology by university and college staff is vital in providing an enhanced student experience and in realising a good return on investment in the digital environment.
What we’re doing
We’re working with stakeholders and sector bodies to:
Provide clear guidance on the digital skills and capabilities that are required for a range of staff roles
Equip leaders and staff with the tools and resources they need to improve digital capability at a local or institutional level
Building on our previous work on developing digital literacies for staff and students and through a consultation with a range of stakeholders using our co-design approach, we identified the current challenges institutions face when developing the digital capabilities of their staff and students.
Our digital capability framework (pdf) describes the skills needed by staff from a wide range of academic, administrative and professional roles to thrive in a digital environment.
Supporting resources
Our model is supported by the following tools and resources:
Digital discovery tool (beta)
Our ‘digital discovery’ tool (beta) has been designed to support individual staff (and soon students) working in universities, colleges and training providers to reflect on their digital capabilities.
The tool presents a series of reflective questions that relate to the different elements of digital capability as defined in our digital capability framework (pdf). These are followed by a visual profile of their capabilities, feedback and suggested actions and resources that might help staff and students progress.
Following feedback gained from this pilot, the tool has been redesigned and developed in a new platform. The new beta tool is being piloted by 100 organisations across FE, HE and skills from January to May 2018. The evaluation of the pilot will be used to inform the future of the service.
Stay up to date
To find out more and keep in touch with the work visit our project blog.
The next opportunity to get involved with the tool (outside of the pilot) will be September 2018. Please contact the team (digitalcapability@jisc.ac.uk) if you’d like to find out more.
Role profiles
We’ve designed a series of role profiles, which align to the framework and highlight the digital capabilities associated with particular roles. The profiles have been developed collaboratively and mapped to relevant professional frameworks. They are designed to support team leaders in identifying the digital capabilities their teams need.
Our guide to developing organisational approaches to digital capability has been created to support organisations with developing their culture, infrastructure and practices to grow organisational digital capability and enable individual digital capabilities to flourish.
We've also developed a checklist for curriculum developers (Word doc) to help course teams assess how well a course of study is preparing learners with the right kinds of digital capabilities.
To share your experiences, hear from others and continue discussions around staff and student digital capabilities, join our community of practice via the digital capabilities JiscMail list.
Stay up to date
As of September 2018, this project will transition to a full service. If you are interested in the service please see our building digital capability website. If you would like to receive a quote for your organisation please fill out this form.
If you would like to be kept up to date with progress please subscribe to our community of practice mailing list.
Creative Commons attribution information
Digital capabilities framework 
