{"id":4426,"date":"2023-06-22T09:37:56","date_gmt":"2023-06-22T09:37:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/LTAcademy\/?p=4426"},"modified":"2023-06-22T09:37:56","modified_gmt":"2023-06-22T09:37:56","slug":"digifest-2023-digital-transformation-and-digital-confidence","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/LTAcademy\/digifest-2023-digital-transformation-and-digital-confidence\/","title":{"rendered":"Digifest 2023, Digital Transformation and Digital Confidence"},"content":{"rendered":"

David Crowther<\/a>, Learning Technology Support Officer, Digital Education team within the Learning and Teaching Academy<\/a>, tells us about the JISC Digifest conference he recently attended.<\/p>\n

My experience at Digifest 2023<\/h2>\n

Back in early March this year, I attended the JISC Digifest conference<\/a> in Birmingham. Since joining the Digital Education Team<\/a> in 2020 during the covid pandemic, all the conferences I have attended have been online. Whilst I like the convenience of attending a conference online from the comfort of my own home, I do find it difficult to focus. Sat in front of my computer with multiple monitors, it\u2019s easy to get distracted by other things such as emails, Teams messages, and other work. This year\u2019s Digifest was my first opportunity to attend a conference in person and I was very much looking forward to it.\u00a0 For two full days I would be in full conference mode where I could be present, focussed, and attentive.<\/p>\n

This was my first time attending a conference of this kind and I was very impressed. The conference was incredibly well organised, ran like clockwork, and the venue was superb. I was quite taken aback by the scale of it.<\/p>\n

After arrival and registration, I took the time to orientate myself and explore the main conference room. There was a bewildering array of activities going including lightning talks, fireside chats, product demonstrations and more. Despite being a little overwhelming, the main conference room was well laid out and easy to find my way around. The catering at the conference was excellent, with a wide selection of food to suit all tastes.<\/p>\n

After a light breakfast and coffee, my colleagues and I headed off in separate directions for our first talks of the day. I had a packed itinerary planned for the two days, attending talks and discussions on a variety of technology and digital education related themes covering everything from AI, authentic assessment, VR, innovation and inclusion, digital confidence, student-led learning, hybrid teaching and more. It was impossible to retain all the information from the various talks I attended, but I came away from the conference with a few takeaways in relation to my own practice as a digital education professional at Cardiff University.<\/p>\n

One talk entitled \u201cEveryone’s an innovator – facilitating the growth of digital confidence to realise new approaches to learning and teaching\u201d particularly resonated with me, especially in the context of my role as a learning technologist supporting teaching and learning at Cardiff University through digital technologies. This is especially the case now as we go through a big change to our digital education offer through the move from Blackboard Original to Blackboard Ultra courses, where we\u2019re trying to encourage course leaders to do things differently, change their digital education practice, embrace digital technologies, and innovate.<\/p>\n

Perhaps one of the biggest challenges we have in encouraging change and innovation in digital education practice is a lack of digital confidence. We work with academics and professional services staff across the university, who have varying levels of confidence and skills when it comes to educational technology. It can sometimes be difficult to convince someone to change their practice and try something new if they are afraid that something might go wrong and that it might reflect badly on them in front of their students. We need strategies and approaches that can help foster digital confidence and support innovation. How can we achieve this? There were several useful suggestions from the talk that I have noted and will try to bring into my own digital education practice.<\/p>\n

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  1. One method to help foster digital confidence could be to suggest to educators that if they want to try something new, they try it in a low stakes space where the risk of failure is less of a concern. For example, encouraging different forms of formative assessment that can support learner attainment. If student expectations are managed, this can be a useful way to try something out. Even if it goes wrong, it can be a useful experience to learn from. Having that safety net can give people the confidence to experiment in relative safety, and such activities can support digital confidence. To drive innovation, I think it\u2019s important that we foster the mindset that although things sometimes go wrong, recovery is possible, and hiccups are normal, but it\u2019s also a good idea to have a plan B when things do go wrong. It\u2019s important to focus on the learning and teaching that needs to go on in those times when things do go wrong and think if there are other ways of achieving that.<\/li>\n
  2. It’s also a good idea to try and get behind people\u2019s rationales behind trying things. As digital education professionals, if we are encouraging educators to try new things, we should follow up and ask them how it went, what went well, what didn\u2019t, and encourage reflective practice. Fostering self-reflection, spotlighting good practice, and sharing experiences can be a powerful tool to encourage innovation and give people confidence to try things for themselves. It can often be a case of \u201cWell if they did it, why can\u2019t I do it too?\u201d.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    Digital confidence vs Digital skills<\/h2>\n

    I think there is a relationship between digital confidence and digital skills. We need the digital confidence to be able to go through digital transformation and achieve our goals. When we think about digital confidence and how it relates to digital skills, we could perhaps ask the following two questions as an example:<\/p>\n

      \n
    1. Are you a confident<\/u> user of xyz software?<\/li>\n
    2. Are you a competent<\/u> user of xyz software?<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

      We must ask ourselves if a lack of digital confidence leads to an unwillingness to acquire new digital skills, and gain digital competence required for digital transformation.<\/p>\n

      In addition, trust in and reliability of the digital tools used for learning and teaching can sometimes be a barrier.\u00a0 If we\u2019re not confident that the tools are safe or will work well, will we be willing to use them?\u00a0 It can also be easy to get stuck in a \u201cIf it isn\u2019t broken, why fix it?\u201d mentality where you think \u201cWhy do I need to use this new tool now? I wasn\u2019t using it before, and everything was fine.\u201d\u00a0 As learning technologists, it\u2019s part of our role to help educators see the value in adopting digital technologies for teaching and learning. We do have to consider carefully though, the rationale behind encouraging adoption of a specific technology for learning and teaching.\u00a0 There needs to be a good reason why we are suggesting to educators that they try something, and we should ask ourselves some important questions:<\/p>\n