Navigating modern life with confidence
‘Digital capabilities’ is a tiny phrase that covers a huge array of skills, knowledge and practices. Far from being the latest buzzword, it relates to how we navigate our way through modern life – in and out of the university, staff and students alike.
A digitally connected world isn’t just about smartphones and apps, but all the ways in which we interact with the platforms and sites we visit, and the people we find there.
This includes Solent Online Learning, and one of the goals of Learning Technologies is to help make it an exciting place in which your students can learn, whether they are at home or in the classroom.
We want students to think creatively and innovatively, and there are plenty of digital tools available that can enable this. But we also want them to be confident in exploring those tools, and as members of a learning community we encourage them to share their knowledge with others. This kind of skills exchange can be transferred to other domains, including our teaching and learning resources.
The digital partners scheme is a great way to support this. Running throughout this term, it pairs up a student partner with a member of staff who needs help creating resources for their SOL pages. The students get to learn more about the systems we use and their functionalities, and the lecturers get a collaborative assistant in their resource development.
While this is about staff and students supporting each other, the digibuds scheme is a peer mentoring programme run out of the library that provides the services of digitally confident students to those who are less confident. They can be found at the Learning Technologies helpdesk on floor 2 and they have their own SOL page, as well as a Facebook page where students can ask questions.
Finally, you and your students can take control of your own digital capabilities by accessing Lynda.com, either via SOL or the library catalogue. These high quality tutorials cover a whole range of topics, and if you find something good, in the spirit of collegiality you can share the link on the SOL page.
Learn more about digital capabilities at Solent by catching up on the full livecast. For the next few weeks you can also check out all the resources on the livecast page.