Project: Digidol
Institution: Cardiff University
Programme: Developing Digital Literacies
"Digidol project set out to establish an institution-wide, strategically-driven, systematic and sustainable approach for contextualising and embedding digital literacy into Cardiff University’s core activities"
This is an edited version of the project's institutional story (final report). Please refer to the original for details of all references and additional information.
The Digidol project set out to establish an institution-wide, strategically-driven, systematic and sustainable approach for contextualising and embedding digital literacy into Cardiff University’s core activities. This included consideration of the development of academic staff, undergraduate and postgraduate taught students, researchers and administrative and support staff. Such a broad remit required us to take a multi-pronged approach, focusing on both strategic and operational interventions.
At a strategic level, the project has had significant influence, with the result that digital literacy has become a fully integrated component of the University’s Digital and Social Media strategy and a new Digital and Information Literacy strategy has been approved within Information Services. The project started at a point when the University had just approved an Education strategy that included a commitment to “Learning Literacies”, comprising information, digital, academic and professional literacies. This provided a positive springboard to push for the inclusion of digital literacies in other strategies and ensured that digital literacy was viewed as intrinsically linked to other literacies.
In operational terms, the project has influenced practice at a number of levels. The project’s broad remit meant that it was impossible to reach all the constituencies directly. The University has 27 schools, each operating independently, and no central staff development programme. We therefore focused attention on working through intermediaries wherever possible, to ensure both a wider reach and a sustainable process. This has led to changes both in the practices of service staff and of the students and academics with whom they have been working. In particular, focusing on raising the digital literacy of others, has highlighted the need for development of their own digital literacies.
Finally, the project has developed a number of useful artefacts and resources. These include a development of the Beetham-Sharpe framework, which maps information and digital literacy descriptors required for key generic tasks; an online Knowledge Hub, which provides access to a wide range of resources, tools, and examples, organised by practice; and a series of reusable workshops relating to digital literacy.
See Digidol - Headline Achievements.
The headline achievements of the project fall into four categories:
There were three main drivers for undertaking the project:
The organisational context include:
See Digidol - Approach
The approach includes:
The project has produced a number of deliverables, all of which are available for others to use. These include:
See Digidol - Benefits. These include:
See Digidol - Impact. These include:
See Digidol - Sustainability. Strategies include:
The four key lessons are: