Developing Digital Literacies programme

 What is expected?

Helen Beetham

October 2012

What is expected from DDL?• Who is expecting?• Challenges and priorities• Developments in DL• What are we really offering?• The asks and offers process

2

Who is expecting?

• We are here in a representative capacity• Institutions - why did they support your bid?

what’s in it for them? how does your project support institutional priorities?

• Staff in the sector - through the Associations and the different staff involved in Projects - what do they expect? what do they need?

• Students in the sector• JISC and other sectoral bodies

Institutional challenges

• Attract enough of ‘the right’ students: e.g. AAB, non-restricted, ‘new markets’, regional

• Retain students by meeting their needs/expectations

• Progress students to achieve graduate attributes/employment

• Build capacity from existing resources (including restructure/new roles)

• Generate long-term partnerships• ...

Institutional challenges

What is your institution asking for?

Systemic challenges

• Demonstrate value (to individuals and society) including value for money

• Remain globally competitive as new providers gain market share

• Update offer (‘relevant’) while remaining distinctive (‘traditional’ ‘academic’)

• Deal with multiplying uncertainties• Student as consumer - new contract,

challenges for development?• ...

Systemic challenges

Sector challenges

What can we offer ‘UK HE’?

Challenges for peoplein the system

• Staff– insecurity, restructuring, job losses– need to ‘future proof’ role and career but...– less time/space/reward to innovate?

• Students– power/choice depends on grades– developing identity / career path in uncertainty– less time/space/inclination to innovate?– debt = study+work (for most) – relevance of digital skills to life goals?

• What are the challenges of developing people in this context?

Personal challenges

What do your stakeholders really want from this programme?

Developments in DL

• Our six themes: academic practice | professional practice assessing/progressing DLs | bring your own skillsstudent pioneers | digitally literate leaders

• International convergence: EU Digital Competence project, digitalliteracy/gov, Digital Champion (MLF), etc

• More awarenessDL as ‘embedded in everything we do’

• ... more cynicism?‘nothing special’, ‘happening anyway’ ‘kids are alright’

• More enhancement (RoI?), less WP?

What are we really offering?

• Conceptual frameworks - understand DLs / your DL setting

• Competence frameworks (for staff and students) - map what you’re doing already and fill the gaps

• Staff development resources - try these• Student development resources - try these• Case studies, examples - this is what ‘doing DL

development well’ looks like• Themes, findings and lessons learned - this is how

it was for us• Models and methods for embedding digital literacies

institutionally - recommendations and alternatives

What are we really offering?

Design studio pages

The asks and offers process• Refine your asks now and keep them handy

institutions | people | sector• Projects: assign 1 person to making the offers

and 1 to asking - you can swap halfway• Associations: focus on asks for your members• Askers: visit as many stalls as you can, and fill

in feedback slips for each item you review• Offerers: collate your slips - and use them to

refine your offer later• We will reconvene to discuss: what we’ve asked

for, what we’re offering, what the gaps are14

Developing Digital Literacies programme

 Interim report guidelines

Helen Beetham & Jay Dempster

October 2012

Some general philosophies/goals

• Synthesis and evaluation is in itself part of the change process

• Accountability is a growing area of need for funded programmes.

• Clarity, relevance of key lessons/messages not needless complexity

• Inspire & inform - illustrate & animate your findings, link to outputs

• Offer useful, meaningful, actionable

Gathering, analysing, reporting outcomes

collating & evidencingquantitative ‘deliverables’ (accountability >> institutions/

partners/funders)

making sense of & verifyingqualitative ‘lessons’

(knowledge transfer >> programme/funders, the HE sector)

gathering feedback on project processes, practices and outcomesacross the Programme

(developmental >> programme team/funders)

Writing the report narrative• 1. Be interesting – this is not just a day job, unexpected, exciting or aggravating

things happen, communicate the ‘human’ element, use examples, avoid waffle/needless detail, convey the excitement of change rather than just writing to sub-headings.

• 2. Be research-like – investigative as well as pragmatic, micro-theories based on observations, hunches and conversations as well as on findings and solid evidence. Record them. This is what makes projects interesting.

• 3. Be communicative – the first audience for reports is the rest of the programme, use them as critical friends, feedback from them is evidence of what is interesting & useful.

• 4. Be meaningful – think about what project activities, outcomes and lessons might mean for people beyond your organisation, the wider sector (graphic above might help).

• 5. Be opportunistic – look for ways of recording what you need to record that don't take up too much time (iterative reporting, blogging, capturing conversations/outputs, routine monitoring/usage, turning the best bits into an 'update')

• 6. Be pragmatic – in terms of rigour (reliable, valid data/methods determine the quality of the evidence produced)

• 7. Be ‘big picture’ esq – related to baseline evidence, seek overarching relevance/value

Checklist questions - 1• Is your evidence facilitating discussion or

decision making/action taking?

– What kinds of discussion & feedback is your project generating and how are you recording/capturing this?

– How useful is it? (to the work of your project, institutional change, partners/associations engagement/contribution, to students, to the wider sector)

– Is your synthesis of findings and evaluation

Checklist questions - 2• What kind of outputs are you producing?

–  What ways are you providing ‘snapshots’ & ‘sense making’ on processes & outcomes synthesised across your project?

– Are you tagging topics and key audiences of findings for later synthesis/dissemination?

– How are you critiquing the data/evidence you are gathering?

Checklist questions - 3• Does the evidence add up to something?

– Is it fit-for-purpose and supporting claims you are making about change and impact?

– Are you communicating outcomes/benefits or defending a situation or finding in the project?

– How are you filtering/tagging what is valuable and relevant to your project/strategic objectives and stakeholders as you go along?

– Are you generating an overall picture of the (emerging) impact of the work?