As Maria mentioned, we ran a workshop on Monday, gathering information for our baseline report, including some identification of existing opportunities for improvement. It should be noted that we specifically asked the workshop attendees to focus on things which could do with enhancement. This was so that when they were asked to write letters to Santa the wishes expressed would indicate areas where they felt they would benefit from change.
Over the next few days, I will post the Letters to Santa (in my capacity as Communications Elf). The one I’ll kick off with is a simple heartfelt plea:
Time to explore, accessible support
This particular Letter to Santa brings out an oft repeated theme – that people need time to explore the tools available, to see how they work. They need the opportunity to be excited by what is available, and when they need support it needs to be clear and understandable.
Other themes that come out from the Letters to Santa exercise are:
- awareness of what systems and support are available
- advice about online reputation
- better communications
- training/opportunities to learn
- better connectivity between systems
… and plenty of others. Some of these focus on reducing the need for digital literacies (by simplifying systems) whilst others are more about improving digital skills and competencies. It will be a challenging couple of years, but with the sort of enthusiasm and participation of colleagues (both staff and students) that we had on Monday, it will be much easier to make things happen!