Thank you to all colleagues who have been able to complete the Digital Experience Surveys for academic and professional services staff – so far we have received 190 responses across both surveys. There is still time to complete the surveys – if you have not shared your experiences please click the relevant link to go directly to the survey:

 

In this blog post, I’ll share a few highlights of the feedback so far.

Who has responded so far?

So far almost three quarters of responses have come from professional services teams. It would be great to hear from more academic colleagues before the survey closes on 9th August – please do share this post and the links to the surveys with your colleagues if you’ve not yet had a chance to reply.

Most useful systems and tools

When asked to give an example of a useful tool, the most common responses among professional services colleagues was MS Teams and the Microsoft 365 suite. However, academic staff frequently mentioned interactive teaching tools such as Padlet and Mentimeter. This will be useful information to support the development and promotion of training and support with these tools – but it will also be useful to identify University tools which were not mentioned in this part of the survey!

A word cloud displaying a range of responses. The largest text, and most common responses, are Teams and Microsoft.

Digital Skills development

Responses show that staff across the University where aware of various mandatory, or recently-published, training opportunities such as data security, accessibility, and online working. Both academic and professional colleagues felt that they would benefit from more guidance, and that they needed more time to invest in developing the skills required to make the most of digital tools. When asked where they would like the University to invest funds if this were possible, the second most common response was IT Support.

A bar chart displaying the training respondents felt was currently available to them. A full table of response is available at the end of this post*.

The nature of the Jisc survey means that we can’t get into the detail of which tools and services colleagues would like more support with, and which tools they found most difficult – so this should be an area for future investigation. It was possible to see the top 3 sources of support with digital tools:

  • colleagues in my team/department
  • online videos and resources
  • IT staff

There were some differences in the support tools and services used by colleagues in different teams, which can be seen in the chart below.

A bar chart displaying the proportions of support services/tools used by professional and academic services staff. A full table is displayed at the end of this blog post**.

 

This is definitely something to look into – and is part of the work of the Digital Capabilities Project. It’s helpful to understand existing support systems in order to work with these in future.

What next?

This post is just a snapshot of some questions so far! There are a number of free text responses to review, as well as questions about working practices and accessibility tools. These will be fully reviewed after the survey closes in August, and results will be shared through the Digital Capabilities Project.

If you have any comments, or if you would like to find out more about the project, please contact the Digital Capabilities Officer.

Tables used to produce the charts in this blog post

 

*Which of these skills have we offered support or training for?

 

Which of these skills have we offered support or training for? Professional Services Academic Staff Total
Keeping data secure 83 29 112
Working online 43 29 72
Handling digital information, data and media 50 19 69
Creating accessible digital content 47 20 67
Behaving safely and respectfully online 37 11 48
Basic IT skills 29 19 48
Appropriate use of artificial intelligence tools 18 17 35
Specialist software for your subject/role 27 3 30
None of these 21 4 25
Digital copyright, IPR and licensing 14 9 23
Supporting digital assessments 10 10 20
Managing social media or public web pages 14 2 16
Online publishing 7 1 8
Data analysis 3 3 6
Coding or scripting 3 2 5

**Who or where do you go for help with digital skills?

 

Where do you go for help with digital skills? (as a percentage of responses from each group) Professional Services Academic Staff
Colleagues 25% 23%
Online videos and resources 21% 22%
IT staff 19% 18%
Friends and family 8% 12%
Department or team leader 10% 2%
Other professional staff 6% 3%
Teaching and learning/e-learning staff and/or technician 3% 10%
Artificial intelligence and tools likely to include AI 4% 4%
Library/learning resources staff 3% 5%
Other 1% 1%
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