 F assault morning everyone so apologies I'm gonna be doing the same I'm gonna be doing a bit of pricing going backwards and forwards. I'm Beckybagstaff I'm the higher education senior consultant for GESC I support the building digital capability service in the discovery tool. I'm here today and I'm going to be introducing a wonderful colleague from University of Warwick Pんで as well who's going to talk about how they've been using our Discovery tool I'm not going to talk about our services search, but if you did want to catch up with us at all, please come up, you can't really miss me, myself or our head of data, data capability, a digital capability there for that make piece, you know, please come and have a chat with us after. If I'm being honest, the reason behind this session, I was recovering from surgery and I was watching the Big Bang Theory, big fan of that, and I was thinking my background, I come from 19 years working in digital education in HE, I recently joined just two years ago. And having been through the pandemic as a learning technologist and looking at that, that massive change, which we won't talk about too much today, there's always going to be a new Big Bang. There's always going to be a new technology and AI, you know, is definitely something that we are seeing everywhere. And I think it's really important to be able to understand the underpinning all of these new Big Bangs who remember Second Life, put your hands up, it was going to revolutionise teaching. I remember walking around Second Life, trying to figure out how to change my hair. That was the most exciting thing I did in Second Life. And at one point, we pulled out all the things that we're going to do in there in education and engineering, because every time we went in there, people put boxes on our students head. So, these things are always going to come in. And I think it's having that, again, that appropriate use of these technologies. And there's an underlying theme that kind of comes through all of these. So what I'm going to do in the session, I'm just going to talk a little bit about what's happening. So part of my role as a consultant, I'm really thrilled, I still get to speak to higher education people. So there's quite a few in the room today, so I won't single you out. But it's been really good because I now get to be on the other side of this. So I get to hear about how people are using our services, but also understanding the frustrations, the difficulties in creating that kind of digital workplace that are really kind of confident and agile students, but also the staff. Because I think sometimes the staff are getting forgotten a lot at the moment in terms of that. So I'm going to talk a little bit about how that landscape is changing, but more from what I'm seeing across the sector when I speak to our customers. Then I'm going to talk a little bit about that kind of need for how our students, and again, if you're in that session this morning with the students, it was really interesting to say, actually, they're really scared about things like AI because they're worried about being caught out or seem to be being caught out when they've done nothing wrong. So I think it's about really developing really strong, digitally confident students and staff and how we prepare them for the workplace, which let's face it. We're not going to know what's going to be changing. The workplace has changed phenomenally since I started my degree a long time ago. So I'm going to talk a little bit about that, and then I'm going to bring in the University of Warwick to talk about how they've been using the service, but more importantly, how digital skills is embedded as part of that student journey, and then a little bit about moving forward. And I'm going to try and do all that in less than half an hour. So that's going to be good. So I think I've gone past one. So a little bit about the scene. So I expect most people in this room will understand the landscape is changing really scaring boss. So that's on an FBE and an HE. Now looking at the student session this morning, we heard from a student that actually there was a big gap when they came to university and that there's still that expectation that students are the old digital native. I won't talk about that, but actually we're still in the same situation. It doesn't matter what they're exposed to early on. They're still not necessarily the confident students we think they are when they come to the university. And of course, as people obviously in the room today, their job is very much about supporting those students in that. And it's very difficult because it's preparing them that the landscape is changing. The budgets are tightened. Everything is changing a phenomenally fast rate and things like AI that that new adaptive technology is really changing that. And I think it's going to be something that we're going to have to adopt. It's there. It's already there. We have to learn to live with it. But I think it's identifying what we need to support those staff and students. And at the heart of all of these things, again, and I will keep going back to it, is those fundamental digital soft skills. And we are definitely hearing this not only from the sector, but also from the industry as well. So thinking about that digital workplace. So things like AI, you know, that industry 4.0 is really changing that workplace for our students. But I think it's opening some really exciting opportunities. And particularly as we move forward from that recovery from the pandemic. You know, interestingly, what we're seeing from the service is that some of the digital confidancies are actually declining. And we think we feel that that could be because suddenly, you know, that that that turn that we had, everyone had to go online. I think that the end that I was working in digital education at the time. That's what I came to just to recover. It's very much about supporting staff and students. But that recovery, I think staff, particularly staff, are finding that they've lost a bit of their confidancies because they've suddenly had to learn all these new digital technologies. They've had to adapt to that. Do they necessarily have the confidence to try those new things? Because it was kind of forced on them. And there's a little bit of expectation that staff are quite, they're up here and actually they might be down here. So how do we identify what those confidancies are? And how do we look at that from an institutional point of view? And I think the cost of living, you know, it's scary when we go and do our food shopping every week. You know, every time I go into the shop, I nearly pass out, but the same has been seen across the sector. So we are seeing a huge amount of our customers where, you know, the decision-makers will see these beautiful big buildings popping up all over the campuses. Last time I came to Warwick, they know there's more buildings popping up and it's beautiful. But actually when it comes to things like software and things that can actually help support staff and students, you ask for a few thousand pounds for X, Y, Z. And it's like, oh no, that's got to go to, you know, it's very, very different. And I think that cost of living is impacting a lot of things. It's not just about, you know, supporting students, that digital divide and that digital poverty as well. These things are all massively impacting the sector. So I googled a little bit and I thought, actually, looking at the AI, it's very negative. So as soon as you put in there, it's like, oh, it's doing my gloom, it's going to change. I mean, if I was back in my previous institution, I can imagine the conversations I'd be having with academics. They'd be scared, they'd be worried. But I remember we were talking about this the other day when we were like, all the teaching learning is going to go on Facebook. And these things change. And I think it's that nervousness and it's how do we support staff and how do we make them confident in that kind of that adaptability, that agility? It's like, it's OK, it's new technology. Let's take that step back. And as a consultant, that is what I'm seeing a huge amount of now. I'm seeing a lot of institutions where they're going, we need to take a step back. We need to go back to basics. We need to understand. We need to identify where our staff and students are in terms of their digital skills, because at the bottom of all of these things, all of these new technologies, it's those underlying soft skills. So I mentioned this investment in bricks, not clicks. I see that a huge amount and I see that in my previous role as well. I still see institutions that are struggling with being able to adopt that technology because there is always cost involved. I mean, if, you know, Elsie is a great conference because we have a lot of enthusiasm, but not necessarily the people that hold the budget. And that's quite difficult because I think you always have to kind of justify, you know, this is going to transform our students life. Is this going to be really good for our staff? But things cost money and it's quite difficult. There are lots and lots of different technologies that are really changing those different pedagogic models of teaching and learning. And it's exposing students that kind of authentic teaching and experience. And that's really interesting that it's changing that. But underlying all of these things and that student expectation when they come and choose their institution, it's all about digital skills. And that goes back to those kind of very basic skills like digital communication, digital collaboration. You know, how do students know about getting that right data? AI is going to massively complicate that because actually how can students need to know about differentiating between real data and data that might not have to be true and things like that. So all of these things that we are seeing across is all underpinned by digital skills. And that is where we are seeing a lot of institutions taking that step back and kind of reflecting like, right, we need to, very much from that top down approach. And I'll talk about that in a moment, but looking at it from that more holistic institutional level. So again, as I mentioned, one thing, and again, I won't pick on people in the room, but there are teams in here which I know it's always a very small part. Now, if I was to ask you if you're responsible for digital skills in your institution to put your hand up or just to shout or something. We see a lot of institutions where it's seen as a well that would be nice, but it's not a priority. My argument is actually digital should be embedded and ingrained in everything that we do so that we can expose our students and our staff to different teaching different digital aspects so that they have that kind of agility. Because if I was to say, right, our students need to have this technology, that technology is going to change in the next week. So we can't have that fixation on technology. And when they go into the workplace, and again, if we look at that skills gap that the industry is crying out for, it's really important that our students have those digital transferable skills. It used to be the whole, you know, the soft skills, the communication, the team. That's all online now because we have that hybrid approach to teaching and learning. We have that hybrid approach to working as well. So I think about my role as just I spend a lot of my time talking online. But actually there is a there is a digital skill behind that additional communication, digital wellbeing, knowing when to take a break. You know, those things are all things that we need to teach our staff and students. And I think having that understanding of where a person's digital skills lie is really fundamental to that. So we are seeing a lot across the sector about having students exposed to let's see where my digital skills are now. Let's reflect on that. Let's see how I can build that and make that grow with my course because every course has a different discipline outcome. We heard that this morning from the students. If you're in the keynote yesterday, which was fantastic, it was all about having that digital capability at the bottom of it. So just before I hand over to my lovely colleague from Warwick, what I would like to do is just talk a little bit. And again, please feel free to grab me outside of this. We have 238 subscribers now to our service across FE, HE, International, etc. We are seeing huge growth in the adoption of our service. But more importantly, I think what is fascinating is how people are using it. From the student point of view, we are seeing huge growth in this being used. And again, you'll hear a lovely example in a moment on how Warwick is starting to use this. And again, I know that there's a couple of other people in this room which have done some phenomenal work with their student rollout with this. But it's all about creating that agile digital graduate. And I use that word agile because they have to be adaptable. I actually spoke to a student last week from an institution and they were saying it was really important that they could understand what their digital skills were. And their confidances were so that they could then understand that when they go into the workplace, they know that this job would require this kind of transferable skill. And they found it really helpful that they could actually reflect on that. And they found that actually it was interesting that an area they thought they were really strong in was actually an area that they might want to build on. So we're seeing digital skills being looked at right at the heart of the student journey. Straight when they come in from induction, get them to have a look at their digital skills, then you can put those interventions in place. So, again, a lot of institutions are using that data to drive those localised intervention to further support their students. And you'll come to hear about that a little bit as well in part. But I think wherever we see really good success is where it's embedded. So exposing students again to many digital platforms that appropriateness. I don't think it should be particularly technology driven by any one particular one. It's about that bigger picture. So they have that agility when they go into the workplace to transfer that. And again, you heard that importance of peer learning. So we see a lot of student champion programmes being used where digital skills are exposed to students just sharing that knowledge. It could absolutely transform a student's journey to say, I don't know I could do that. So it's really interesting how we are seeing that. I think from the staff side, it's more interesting. So I think staff sometimes are feeling that they're being left behind a little bit. So I think where we're seeing a lot of nice work is where staff are being rewarded. Might be a word not many heard about, but here. But having that reward for, you know what, I've taken that time to develop myself. You know, I've looked at that and having that as part of the staff induction. Now I had a call not that long ago where actually an institution wanted to have it as part of their going for the employment side. And they said, you know, what would we want to put for, you know, we're recruiting staff. So what do we put about digital skills now that that's really interesting because we're seeing a lot of growth in that one institution has actually got someone in HR that's now dedicated to that. So I think wherever you can embed digital skills with processes like HR, PDR processes, that yearly cycle to be able to help staff given them that time as well. I think it's really important. I know it's that time thing, but if you spend three minutes a day watching a video, you know, those sorts of things, it soon builds up quite quickly. And again, it's that peer learning insurance. We're seeing lots of different really interesting use across the sector. I could talk here all day about what our customers are doing. And it's, you know, it's really exciting how it's growing. But again, I think because of things like that, it's really driving that and how that importance of having that digitally confident stakeholders within your institution. That top down approach is really important too. So I'm going to stop talking because I'm probably going to use my voice in it and hand over to you. I'll let you introduce yourself. If this works. Is that going to work? No, it isn't so we'll do it from here. Good morning everyone. So over the next, I don't know, eight or 10 minutes or so. I'm just going to tell you a little bit about what we've done in terms of making the just digital capability assessment available to our students at Warwick. So the capability assessment is made available to all of our undergraduate and master students. So that's a population of about 26,000 students. And this was the first year that we implemented it at Warwick, and we've had just over 500 students complete the assessment. So it's a very small percentage of the overall population, but a large enough sample size to provide useful information that we can then use to position our services and our responses to student needs. What I'm hoping to do is next year grow that to around about 20 to 25% so that we've got statistically reliable data. And we've got a lot of experience that you know that we've gathered this year from the implementation that we can build upon that should help us secure that greater level of engagement. The way that we've made the digital capability assessment available to our students is by recognising it through the Warwick Award. The Warwick Award is an institutional level award that we make available. It's optional, but we make it available to all of our students. It's an award that they can gain alongside their degree to evidence to employers that they've taken their development of their employability skills seriously, whilst they've been with us over the three or four years for an undergraduate and the year for the master students here at Warwick. And what it's based upon is the core skills framework. So you'll see there that in the middle circle we've got 12 core skills categories, the sort of skill sets that I think you know all of you would say, I would hope that all of you would say that regardless of your discipline and the future life that you're positioning yourself for after university, all of those skills are going to be useful to you in your future life. And you'll see that over here one of those 12 is digital literacy. And so the just digital capability assessment sits within the digital literacy group. And what we found is that through the Warwick Award, we've got about 8,500 of our students actively engaged in working on their core skills development of which so that's what about 33%, about a third of our students are actively engaged with this programme and working on that Warwick Award alongside their degree programme. And that involves 100 hours of investment by the student if you're a master student and 300 hours of investment in your skills development over the three or four years that you're here with us as an undergraduate so it's not inconsiderable. And part of that is making sure that you've got a good selection of digital skills that you can potentially offer to future employers and position yourself well in the future employment markets markets as well. Some of this is guided by the objective set out in our employer employability strategy at the university. And we also take guidance from other sources as well so a number of you will be aware that on the fourth of July the Russell group issued a set of new perspectives on AI to guide universities on how to appropriately position the use of AI tools, both for students, one to make them aware of the opportunities and two to make them aware of the pitfalls and you know where problems could arise and Mr Meaners could be could be committed to make sure that everybody is not worried about using it but I'm using it appropriately and we're full awareness of both potential and pitfalls as well. So, the award it's been incredibly useful in getting the message act to our students to encourage our students to complete the assessment and to make sure that it's completed by students from right across the disciplines that it's not one particular group of students within the university but right across from medicine, all the way to the business school engineering, social sciences and the humanities as well, humanities and arts. So one of the things that we found so in terms of some of the skill areas that students are particularly strong on. And it's probably not that surprising bearing in mind that the current cohort of students that we have are individuals who've lived with digital technologies all of their lives. In fact, many of them are living much of their current life online. They have communication digital identity management digital digital proficiency. You can see that many of our students have a reasonable amount of confidence in their capabilities. What's more concerning though is down the bottom here we've got in terms of the lower levels of confidence digital participation, digital creation problem solving digital learning activities. What's more concerned about those is that in the sort of post pandemic hybrid learning environments. Those are the very capabilities that the students need to be able to thrive on their courses. And so this is what we're highlighting to our colleagues in the IT services training team to say, hey guys, you know that there is some early indications here that there may be a whole group of skill sets, digital skill sets that might need information, particularly with the new incoming students as part of the onboarding activity, but also making sure that tutors have the information so that when they're setting up their courses perhaps, you know on Moodle, that they're very clear about how they want the students to engage with the course and how they want the students to participate and what are the appropriate behaviors that they want to see and what perhaps is inappropriate. Another aspect that's been incredibly useful is from the information entered by those 500 students, we can produce the heat map against the digital capability assessment areas that are listed on the left hand side there. For each of the disciplines, I'm very fortunate. I've got a team of skills developers who all face a portfolio of schools and departments across the university. And they work very closely with the academics within those schools and departments to embed employability skills into the curriculum, into the academic modules. So when we were talking to an individual academic team, or the directors of students employability and student experience, we're able to drill down into any area on this heat map. So you can see for example that some disciplines, for example the biological sciences, what have we got, we've got education, where the colours are quite deep, then we've got high levels of confidence. So typically anything that's sort of above seven indicates that a disciplinary area has a broad cohort of students who are fairly confident in their skills. But then you'll see that right at the other end of the spectrum, we've gotten a number that are scoring sort of 6.59, 6.4, 6.51, et cetera, where there's greater white space on there. And what we can do is we can click on in one of those tiles and drill into the students' responses from that discipline to the individual capability area questions that they're responding to. And we can see very specifically what were their responses that are indicative of their self-perception of their confidence with regard to that capability area. That's really useful, that's powerful, and that engages our academic colleagues because, like on many different issues, they're interested in their domain, aren't they? So any information that's specific to their domain is what they will particularly focus on. And then finally, I just wanted to share with you the comparison of Warwick results with the broader higher education sector. And so what you can see there is that Warwick students generally follow the same sort of trend in terms of their level of confidence as the national picture where nationally students are reporting themselves as having a high degree of confidence in their skills. You'll see that Warwick students are also reporting a high degree of confidence, perhaps a bit overconfident, perhaps in some cases, but then equally right down the bottom where students nationally are indicating that they would probably welcome some assistance in developing skills. That's also mimicked by the Warwick students as well. Some of the things that we want to do, and I've fed this back through Becky as well, is more generally on the Warwick award, we are skills profiling right across the student journey longitudinally over the three or four years that undergraduate graduates are with us. So what we're doing is we're profiling their skills as a self perception inventory as part of the onboarding process at the beginning when they first join us. And then we're repeating that each academic year. And then finally we repeat it two months prior to graduation as well. So we should get a pretty good picture of what the skills development journey has been over the time that they've been with us. I'd like to do the same with the just digital capability assessment tool as well. I think you know we might see some interesting patterns there, where for example, you can see there you know that the Warwick students are reporting themselves a little higher than the national picture. They might just be overconfidence in their own capabilities. And what they might find is that if we do, if we are able to segment this by academic year, you might find there's suddenly a dip in the second or third year, as they realise their true capability. And then perhaps as they start addressing those capabilities by attending the appropriate interventions and training that it picks up again. I don't know that at this moment. I suspect that's probably is the case, but who knows. I just like to commend the capability tool. I mean it's a tool that's in development. We are finding it incredibly useful. I'll be happier when I've got the participation rate up to about 20% or so, so that's statistically reliable data. But I'm very happy with the first year implementation of both the award and the capability assessment to have this data that I can share with colleagues. Thank you. Thank you. And I think that that's really interesting to see kind of at the start of that journey. And as Pamela mentioned, we are doing continuous work to grow the discovery tool in response to sector demands as well. I just wanted to quickly finish on this final side. So our whole service, our discovery tool is based on our digital capability framework, which has used and recognised both nationally and internationally. But we are seeing huge growth in that being used and adapted actually at localised level with institutions. I think digital skills should be everyone's responsibility. We still see it's always like one little team in institution and they're expected to throw it out. Normally as part of a tiny part, I remember in my last institution, it should be everyone. It's that top-down approach and we are seeing huge success when actually you get that by it. And once they understand that if you've got a really digitally agile and confident workforce, you're going to get the same for your students because they're going to all come up to that same level. But it needs to continually evolve and it needs to be continually assessed. My final one, again, it's that digital first. It's just exposing those different methods, those different technologies, those different models of assessment, et cetera. And thinking about what digital skills are needed and there will be some very similar themes and all of that. So I'm going to pause there because I think we're very close to the end to try and make sure there's time. So any questions at all? And thank you. So everyone wait for lunch. I have a question about the important tool available. So if your organisation is not using it, but you want to use it in a particular department, then you can make it a part like this. So we have department level reporting on the discovery tool. So we have some, we have some, we don't just have HEFB. We also have some commercial customers as well. And we see a lot of them, they will customise their departments. So like you said, we see a lot of institutions as well that will actually have pilots. So we're working with an institution at the moment. They're going to do a bigger rollout later, but they're focusing on one school. So the department level reporting at the moment is quite small, but then they've got their localised ones. So you can use it in obviously a smaller group as well. It's that the pricing for that is based on the branding as well. But please come and have a chat with us after, if that would be helpful. Any other questions? Well, I'm interested in that on the scoring, digital communication right at the top, and then participation right at the bottom. So what's the distinction in the kind of, in the tools, and do you have any insight on why people feel they can communicate relatively but not participate? That's a good question. So in our report, the users get a personalised report on the discovery tool. And each of the digital capabilities is broken down and contextualised. Mae'n ddweud yn ddweud o'r ddweud o ddweud o ddweud. Felly, mae'n gweithio'n ddweud o'r linkys i'ch gwaith o ddweud. Mae'n ddweud o'n ddweud o'r ddweud o'r ddweud o'r ddweud o'r ddweud o ddweud. Dwi'n credu i'n ddweud wedi bod y cyfnod arall. Ond y cyfnodol ymddirionedd mor gyffredigolol, felly byddai'r ddweud o'r ddweud o'r ddweud o ddweud o'r ddweud. I don't think they might struggle with that, maybe because they're not exposed to that, particularly as students, say I've been out of the sector for a couple of years now, but actually when I was working in the sector, a lot of our academics struggled with that. Even just using the interactive whiteboards, I won't even talk about some of the more technical disciplines really struggle with annotations and things like that, so that digital participation I think is still an area that they struggle with. And I think the communication is right up there because it's something we've had to do quite quickly, you know, and we're all on WhatsApp and we're all on teams doing that all the time. So I think naturally that's always one that's got and if you look across the sector, it has got that very strong kind of competencies. Becky, can I just add a comment with regard to participation? So one of the things that we're finding is that particularly amongst the international students, you've got the factors that are brought in by cultural expectations and cultural norms as well. And cultural communication styles or expected communication styles. So, for example, some students are quite shocked that students can be so robust in perhaps, you know, when they have an academic argument on an online platform. That students can be so strident sometimes and they're not as polite as perhaps they would be in their own culture. That can be quite daunting for a student to dive back in again once they've experienced something like that. Also having the confidence to be able to post your opinions as well, you know, takes takes a bit of, you know, yes, absolutely. And so there's an awful lot that an academic colleague can do in trying to perhaps, you know, build the cohorts before you expose them to that sort of environment. Perhaps have a face to face session before you take them into the online world. Any other questions at all? Digiwets? Hi, I've been doing a team of management teams there. There we go, we've tolerated so much digital in all the collaboration. Once they took on more digital skills, it was at the expense of taking on a deal with loads of other. That's a really good question. So I do work across a lot of, so I look after all the higher education. I think it varies between each institution. You've got some institutions that are like hugely brought into it. I think where it's simplified and you have those different kind of stakeholders. So we will have people like from HR, student employability. I think what what the fear is sometimes I think sometimes maybe with the more senior management like and I speak from experience in my previous role. There was that or we, you know, maybe we shouldn't let them do this or we lockdown. I mean, you know, authentication, things like that. We locked down something so tightly so that no one can use it. And is it's I think there is a fear, but I do think that we are seeing a lot that actually they do understand that there is that student expectation. They want that digital. They want the variation and how they consume their learning. And I think that it doesn't really matter what platform you use. It doesn't matter. And again, what Zach was saying, it doesn't matter what really using it's how you use it. What's on there and how you engage and how you engage your stakeholders. I don't think we're seeing a fear of digital. But what I think is I think we're still seeing that it's a responsibility of a digital skills team. It's a responsibility of the land technologist. How can a land technologist, I speak from experience, support thousands and thousands of staff? It should be that top down approach to support that digital and having that that more holistic view and and short cover, getting different silos and institutions to talk to each other, which I know is really difficult because everyone has great knowledge, but actually there's common themes and the common theme again should be supporting digital skills and it should be everyone's responsibility, which I always heart back to, but it is really true. I'll stop there because I appreciate everyone's going to want lunch. I think it's lunch now. So, yeah, thank you so much.