Project: Digital Integration into Arts Learning (DIAL)
Institution: University of the Arts London
Programme: Developing Digital Literacies
"The DIAL model provides a support framework that encourages staff and students to embrace long term digital literacy as part of day-to-day progressive practice at a pace and within a conceptual framework that’s appropriate and comfortable for them"
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.
Summary
The DIAL project was a two-year project (2011 to 2013) at the University of the Arts London. The project set out with a broad aim of exploring UAL's digital literacies landscape, past, present and future, its key aims being cultural change and improvement of graduate employability.
The project method involved communities of staff and students within the larger university community (based on courses, disciplines or other naturally occurring communities) self-identifying with the goals of improving their collective digital literacies, initially with significant support from the project team. Over the project life-time, processes, resources and toolkits were developed so the communities could be increasingly autonomous in their development programmes. Within the community, individual and collective aims and anxieties were identified, along with current skills and experience. In this way the resources produced became a collective and sustainable resource but so too did the project team members. Community members have collaborated to increase the overall digital literacy of the whole community.
DIAL encouraged and supported these self-identifying individuals and groups to articulate their digital literacies goals and aspirations, assess their existing skills and confidence levels, and develop processes to support their development, including the generation of resources. The project attracted a good cross-section of interests from staff, and students from a variety of contexts. DIAL made best use of cross-college collaboration, forming meaningful partnerships between central services, UAL departments, live projects, industry specialists, course teams, alumni, expert groups and individuals. DIAL has been described as the ‘scaffolding’ that supports and integrates interests across boundaries and departments.
The project team acknowledged from the outset that digital literacies (DLs) in art and design practice based subjects could not be a one size fits all solution. DIAL has worked hard to try and understand and be responsive to the different DL cultures found at UAL as evidenced by the project case studies. DIAL has also identified key areas where further work is needed to address UAL DL development needs.
DIAL facilitated the establishment of 9 projects emerging from self identified DL needs across groups that included course directors, academic staff, central services staff and students. Individuals in the groups had varying levels of experience and expertise yet all went on the DL learning journey together regardless of skill or status within the institution. DIAL project teams saw individuals addressing fears, curiosities and digital ambitions together with an aim of making sense of UALs evolving digital landscape. The DIAL CoP (community of practice) model had success in reaching diverse groups that included those unlikely to have been engaged through other means. We feel this is a key success of the DIAL approach.
UAL has committed to continuation of the DIAL approach to DL development beyond the life of the funded project. The distributed approach to DL support and development is one recognized as sustainable and effective for the institution. The DIAL team can be seen here and all DIAL projects and activities have been described and documented.
Headline achievements
The DIAL communities of practice (CoP) model for digital literacies development
DIAL has developed a successful and sustainable cross college model for creating and sharing digital literacies resources and processes. Many of the DIAL communities of practice, resources and processes will continue to develop beyond the project period and many individuals and departments will continue the DL related work in their local areas. Nine DIAL projects were developed and supported. See DIAL projects and activities for details. DIAL also created 6 general interest cluster groups which were open DIAL/community-managed clusters of resources around a recurring theme or existing initiatives DIAL had identified across the colleges. DIAL set these up as a means of pulling together, supporting, promoting good practice and sharing common interests across colleges, departments and DIAL projects.
Production and sharing of open educational resources (OERs)
DIAL has released all its resources as open educational resources (OERs) including video tutorials/workshop documentations, talking head video feedback/reflection videos, conference papers/recordings, case studies, project stories/journeys, workshop templates, surveys, project processes and approaches. As conceived in the original bid these resources are seen as key in spreading expertise beyond the immediate community, creating a sustainable and growing resource base for DL development in an art and design context. Case studies are detailed in the final report. In addition, the extensive dissemination work completed by the project team have also all been made openly available. Please see the dissemination list from the project blog and process.arts and DIAL advisory board.
Development of local expertise
The DIAL project has produced many new and evolving sources of local expertise, namely all those who have contributed to the success DIALs unique DL model. These include individuals involved in the DIAL project from project conception, management, coordination and project development and innovation. All these individuals have brought their own existing and new specialist expertise which, in combination, has created a collective set of expertise that can have impact within as well as outside the initial community focus. The project team and participants have shared their experience and expertise openly online, many exploring open educational practice (OEP) for the first time. This report highlights the complex patchwork of interconnected expertise that makes up the DIAL project.
Influencing and supporting strategic planning through change partnership projects
The project has worked at the local level but has also engaged in connecting services providing DL related support. DIAL projects involved many of these key services and have resulted in new connections and ways of working emerging across these areas. Two examples are outlined below Organisational Development and Learning (involved in the Professional On-line Identities project (POI) collaborative work along with DIAL and the Student Enterprise and Employability unit (SEE) unit within the institution as well as the UAL Library. DIAL has influenced change in the UALs approach to staff training by introducing and demonstrating the DIAL model of staff and students learning and developing learning needs together in CoPs. See the full final report for case study examples.
Contributing to UAL policy development in DL related areas
DIAL are key contributors to the Open UAL proposal (see draft policy proposal) l and group members, having been actively involved in all the UAL open educational initiatives and practising open education throughout the project. DIAL has also been regularly contributing to UAL's new IPR policy, IT strategy Information Strategy Steering Group (ISSG) and E-Learning Strategy Group (ELSG).
Engagement with the digitally scared or the digitally ‘left-behind’.
The DIAL CoP model had success in reaching groups unlikely to have been engaged through other means. The project acknowledged early on that DLs are often not gained through a prescribed set of competences, DLs are complex and sometimes conceptually difficult to understand, they are personal/individual, they area affective as well as skills based, and they should therefore not be over simplified or too prescribed. We need time, space and support to assess our individual DL abilities, anxieties and needs. The DIAL model provides a support framework that encourages staff and students to embrace long term DL as part of day-to-day progressive practice at a pace and within a conceptual framework that’s appropriate and comfortable for them.
Key drivers
“Institutionally, there was a sense that digital literacies were a fundamental requirement to progress institutional goals across multiple fields of activity: Heads of Service in HR, Library and IT, and Learning and Teaching, were all focussing on the digital literacies of staff and students as a potential barrier to the success of numerous areas of work. However, there was a sense of frustration around how to take this area forwards. The Jisc call for projects seemed an opportunity to break through the impasse we were facing” (Professor Shân Wareing, Pro Vice Chancellor Learning and Teaching Buckinghamshire New University and formally DIAL project director and initiator of the DIAL project). Read more reflections from the project Director here.
The DIAL project was very timely for our institution as UAL had just had recommendations from an IT service review which suggested it needed to look at staff development around the use of technology. UAL were looking at culture and transformational change through digital literacies and developing confidence and capability. A major challenge at UAL was dealing with constant change and building staff confidence. UAL has fantastic programmes but sluggish infrastructure and wanted to get beyond expectations and create an environment where experimentation and sharing can be encouraged.
The project aims (from the original bid) were to overcome three significant existing obstacles to the effective development of digital literacies at the University:
- Ensuring students and staff perceive the relevance of a range of digital literacies to their own professional and personal lives, so they are motivated to explore and to experiment, activities which are essential to maintaining currency
- Sustaining change cost effectively
- Providing training and development in a context where skills and experience vary enormously within and between groups of students and staff, and where existing skills are hard to diagnose efficiently and accurately.
Organisational context
UAL is a world-leading university for teaching and research in the fields of arts, design and communication, offering a unique range of courses, which nurture creative ability from across the world. UAL is a specialist collegiate university: each of the six Colleges has a particular academic ethos within a practice-led tradition, informed by its own distinctive history and relationships. UAL Colleges work together to enrich the experience of its student and staff communities across the University, and to increase its impact on the creative and cultural sectors, not only in London and the UK, but also globally.
Old and new media: The emphasis on making skills and crafts are at the core of art and design practice. Traditionally digital integration into art learning has been a complex and controversial issue, many staff and students support the more traditional practices over new digital practices and tensions can arise on the budgetary allocations allocated to digital over traditional making processes.
On writing the bid: Professor Shân Wareing, DIAL Project Director (Nov 11 to Nov 12) based the bid on several years exploring Wenger’s theory of Communities of Practice from different angles and seeing the project as an opportunity to test out/realise a number of ideas arising from that theory, which seemed to address a number of problems Shân saw inherent in more conventional approaches to addressing digital literacies. Problems in developing digital literacies which seemed apparent from Shân's experience included:
- Mobilising staff’s motivation and interest to participate in training and apply newly acquired knowledge
- Difficulty in addressing the logistics and cost of providing training for the number of people who required it, across sufficient applications and processes
- Difficulty in identifying training priorities and approaches, given the complexity of needs, different people have very different requirements, based on disciplines, roles, and their own preferences and goals. Difficulty in maintaining currency: the digital world is changing so fast, that training content is out of date very quickly, and staff need regular retraining.
It was felt that a Communities of Practice approach could potentially address all of these issues. Communities jointly identify goals and directions, provide local 1:1 support very readily and prioritise training needs – for certain people or certain skills – more effectively and strategically than an institution can. Communities can be self-sustaining, once they have learnt how to teach themselves the digital skills they need. They will contain different skills sets and different approaches to learning. As a result, Shân recruited DIAL project manager Chris Follows as he was already working firmly within a Communities of Practice model and was strongly committed to its philosophically, and also had the connections, contextual knowledge, and personal and professional skills to implement such an approach on an institutional scale. Chris has been researching open communities of practice and rich media online content communities for a number of years (see C. Follows SCORE fellowship work and his work with process.arts).
Project approach
The DIAL project employed a variety of approaches and models of engagement. The key approaches included capitalizing on self identifying CoP, establishing partnerships with other projects/units within UAL, building cross college collaborations, fostering project engagement and capacity, employing locally embedded DIAL coordinators, and utilizing students as digital change agents. This is a summary of a fuller description of the approach which can be found in the full final report.
Working with self identifying individuals and groups
As noted earlier, the fundamental premise of the project was to work with and through self identifying CoP. This work was initiated in several ways including engaging with self identifying groups, creating and capitalising on good will, interest and enthusiasm.
DIAL partnerships with reciprocal benefits
DIAL managed the primary day-to-day work of the DIAL project with other wider college demands and expectations well. DIAL did not try to not replicate, reinvent or address all of UALs digital literacy challenges, although DIAL has an obvious common interest in all the DL related projects across UAL and there was a general expectation that DIAL should be aware of/involved in or addressing as broad a DL field as possible. Therefore we found DIAL took on a natural wider consultancy role as it held a unique overview with valuable insights of the UAL digital landscape, across all the colleges of the university and this expertise was called upon many times with expertise from other areas equally informing the work of DIAL.
Networked groups and cross college collaboration
DIAL successfully explored new ways of developing cross college collaborations. These new partnerships proved a valuable and sustainable method of the departmental embedding DLs long term (e.g. Professional On-line Identities project (POI) collaborative work DIAL, SEE, OwnIT and Learn IT)
Building project engagement and capacity
Managing DIAL project engagement, project capacity and expectations is a continuous challenge for the DIAL project. DIAL did not have the capacity to ‘launch’ the project university wide or could afford to be seen as a UAL service. DIAL focussed on meaningful local engagement but simultaneously informally published all its progress and activity openly/publically online, visible and accessible to all. By sharing project progress openly online DIAL could be perceived as appearing like its presenting finished project work, concepts or complete resources instead of presenting work, analysis and experimentation in progress. For this reason ‘open practice’ or communicating the conceptual idea of DL development via open practice became a key focus for the project. Therefore DIAL is equally followed/acknowledged by UAL staff and students as those following outside UAL via its social media, blogs and web networks. The nature of the project means we have been and continue to be in a sense making development cycle. At the time of writing, some projects have completed whilst others are in early stages of development. The project is dealing with many complex issues, all probing and trying to make sense of their chosen DL specialism so the amount of time this takes is unknown. Each group continues to respond and analyse their findings and continues to do this until either abandoning the project (yet to happen) or refining to such a degree that their specialisms can be presented as transferable examples of good practice that others can adapt and use in different contexts. DIAL has been actively engaged across all stakeholders including senior management, college, staff, student, service/department HE sector and sector bodies (CCSkills). DIAL lacked direct employer engagement, however, the project team feel this will follow in the phase of the project. DIAL presented at many internal and external events and conferences (excluding general meetings which happen weekly). See dissemination list from the project blog and process.arts and DIAL advisory board meetings.
DIAL coordinators
DIAL employed two coordinators 2.5 days a week for 6 months. Conceptually this was a difficult role to take on given the nature of digital literacies research and project work. Other challenges within the role included managing a fast and heavy workload and working openly online. Both coordinators found having a clear job description gave focus to the role particularly given the DIAL project was developed along side on-going digital developments across in the institution. See full Job Description here. The journeys of DIAL coordinators Rossella Emanuele and Kaye Pryce are documented in their Confessions of a DIAL coordinator’ blog. It takes the format of a journal, tracking the developments and identifying what in future DL coordinator roles may involve.
Students as digital change agents or pioneers
DIAL’s approach was the same for students and staff - we wanted to try and encourage DIAL engagement by responding and supporting self identified and specific needs. This involved
- Student support, advisors and web developers: We started the project with an enterprise week presentation and a student survey carried out by students (six students + six colleges) to help with the baselining process. Later, student engagement became embedded in projects including; student innovators helping lead projects (Drupal UAL), Students and staff involved in the pilot development of workshops including Video presentation skills project. The PoI project was a direct response to various meetings, panel sessions and focus groups with students, fundamental to its development
- DIAL researcher: To enhance and build on DIAL student engagement and communication we commissioned a student rep/researcher, who helps communicate student perceptions and needs. The DIAL researcher helps with evaluation, video documentation/interviews, devising and delivering student surveys (see/download here) and to create more meaningful student engagement through student social media channels, DIAL students will be developing the DIAL Facebook next term, Autumn 13. The DIAL researcher will also help with the planning of DIAL’S future approach and the roles including the DIAL ambassadors.
- DIAL ambassadors: DIAL recently received funding from the HEA, changing the Learning Landscape. DIAL will commission ‘digital DIALogue’ student champion/online stewards (renamed by students as DIAL ambassadors) for UAL over a period of two months (October/ November 2013, reporting in December via project manager). The DIAL ambassadors will work closely with the UAL DIAL team to gain skills and knowledge to support and encourage other students to explore the wealth of online DIAL project resources and groups created over the time of the project. With the one-to-one support and guidance of the DIAL project manager, the DIAL ambassadors would disseminate the DIAL resources across the six colleges of the university and the sector with an aim of developing student communities of practice (CoPs) online and on location to grow and enhance current groups and create new student led CoPs and interest. Read more here.
- Student designers: The DIAL project has proposed the following design brief for a student designer from the new 20:20 Design funding call an ArtsTemps funded project, aimed at offering more internal design opportunities to our graphic design students and graduates. 20:20 Design offers 20 hours free design work from a UAL graphic designer, towards a project of your choice: Open UAL badges DIAL pilot design project.
Running one of our projects as a programme made it difficult to communicate to lots of students all of the time. Many students did not know about some of the other POI individual sessions or did not know the link between the POI programme and the training they were attending, therefore the context/connection to the wider programme was not always made.We hope better curriculum integration will improve programme communication and participation, course calendar and v-mails should help; tutors should also be reminded or advised to mention the programme at beginning of sessions.
Outputs
Further details on outputs are available in the final report and Jisc Design Studio.
Hundreds of DIAL Online Resources: By far the DIAL communities of practice and the wealth of content produced within the DIAL projects and activities are our biggest resource, as well as producing resources and case studies, the group/community are also seen as a live and agile resource, which continue to grow and become self-sustaining.
The DIAL DL model: we have enquires from other colleges wising to adopt the DIAL model and approach (update on UCL collaboration to follow). DIAL has made its project approach, processes and resources as explicit as possible in order to share with the wider sector: The DIAL blog is being used as a resource and support sector collaboration: Providing specialist perspectives of sector/subject specific DLs (resources of expertise).
Emerging definition of DLs at UAL: To support a wider understanding of DLs at UAL, DIAL have begun a wider UAL debate to help define UALs institutional understanding of terms associated with Digital Literacies in all aspects creative practice; including media literacies, information literacies, digital practice, digital citizenship, online identities, digital/social/cultural competencies, participatory culture, digital attributes, open practice, digital fluency etc.
Prototype: The Things unlimited project focuses on digital information literacy, addressing this initially through a process of discussion and confidence building with Library Services staff. A prototype has been developed see examples here.
DL attributes for employability: (specifically attributes for developing professional online identity and presentation skills). See DIAL researcher information and Digital literacies in the arts where these details will be published.
Video Resources: A range of resources on video presentation skills, workshops, Student Teacher videos, IPR videos and resources.
Workshops/teaching templates: e.g. Video presentation skills (VPS) and new approaches and methods, (LSP Lego Serious Play), Online reflective practice (ORP). The monthly activities for the two core units, with examples of participants’ posts, have been published under a CC 3.0 license (links below): Learning & Teaching for Art & Design in HE unit: Monthly activities & examples Teaching Development Project unit: Monthly activities & examples.
Open Blogs and resource CoPs: DIAL projects and activities and DIAL Project Outputs: Online Reflective Practice group see here.
Case studies: including (ORP) Online Reflective Practice case studies, Digital literacies for open education. We are also in the process of gathering DIAL vox pops videos and student feedback from the DIALogue student researcher.
Open Scholarship Policy – Draft document
Open Practice unit development
POI training programme
DIAL coordinators job descriptions and a case study pilot
Developing Badges model and designs
Survey templates: An all staff/student online survey is currently being developed/used to collect data and
Survey for Impact study ‘The use of Digital in creative & educational practice’
Infographic: Assessing digital literacy levels of pre-degree students
Baselining: Baseline report and continuing baselining process throughout the project including digital baseline blogs
DL Focus Groups
Glossary of Terms
Benefits and beneficiaries
The project final report details the benefits and impact from the Nine DIAL projects (section 7: Deliverables p. 19-28):
Professional Online Identities project
Things Unlimited project
Video Presentation Skills project
Open Education and Flexible Learning group
Online Reflective Practice group
Drupal UAL project
Assessing Digital Literacy level of pre-degree students project
Using video for messages information and personal tutorials
Using iPads in technical workshops
Other impacts
Organisational
Improved understanding of the relevance and importance of digital skills and professional online identities for finding and sustaining work, employment and creative practice has influenced strategic decisions.
Cultural and attitudinal change
- Open practice: Raised the profile of UAL in this area through open development and OERs and supported a process of engagement with OER production, cross UAL within individuals and departments.
- Reciprocal benefits: DIAL has highlighted how multiple DL projects directly related or not can have reciprocal benefits and this type of sharing should be encouraged and exploited to its full potential.
- Improved curriculum model: “The Project has enabled us to take more responsibility for developing learning materials in an incremental manner rather than always looking externally for solutions that are often one-offs and not specific to our needs. Hence, it has introduced us to a more empowering and efficient delivery mode for staff and student training… It has enabled greater networking with colleagues engaged in similar activities, and many useful exchanges with the DIAL Project Team, as well as with colleagues in other institutions doing similar projects.” (Pat Christie, Director of Information Services) Read more
- External collaborations: DIAL and SEE met with the organisation Freeformers and looked at possible collaborations with them and UAL students and alumni with an aim of delivering web code training and industry connections. This was a great collaboration pilot with an external company, the first pilot session ran at LCC, it was a great day and the students all seemed to be having fun and learning lots. The turn out was amazing and it would be great to have the UAL Communications teams talk about this and give advice to other UAL Coms teams for future sessions generally? Read more here
Unintended outcomes
How the DIAL projects and activities could support existing and developing UAL initiatives by providing a specific DL context for their objectives e.g. Own IT IPR & copyright, Development and learning, SEE etc.
The project has also led to further pilot initiatives and new partnerships which may otherwise have been overlooked.
Sustaining and embedding
DIAL will continue into 2014: The institution will fund DIAL until December 2014. DIAL will have an eLearning DL focus, building on work to date in this area. Many of the DIAL projects will be further developed and new projects created.
Student involvement: DIAL will commission and encourage more voluntary support and research from students as DIAL researchers and DIAL ambassadors.
Curriculum integration: The POI programme will be embedded into the Performance, Design and Practice, Stage 2, Unit 5 curriculum in Autumn 2013 following its early piloting success.
Local adoption of projects:
- Library Services things Unlimited project: This model will be used for future staff training and information management. Read more
- Organisational, Development & Learning: Student & staff training Read more.
- Departmental partnership between Learn IT- Learn-it strongly believe that UAL promoting and supporting students and staff with the professional online experience, should be a high priority within the student experience. The work involved in piloting this project and the content could effectively be evaluated and developed further into an optional or mandatory part of the curriculum across ALL colleges.
- SEE: is currently reviewing its entire support and service programme at UAL and will continue to ensure professional digital skills are reflected within our support and service offer to students, graduates and staff. SEE will also continue to utilise the internal network of staff to enhance and support our programme delivery utilising and engaging staff in our events, workshops and programmes where possible and strategically valuable.
Video Presentation Skills: Possible curriculum integration, Induction support ISHE and badges). These resources will be embed into other presentation skills projects on the curriculum via: speakingoutevents.com/education/lcc/ . Project owners will identify further steps including devising staff training and trailing out the resource packages with tutors, who would use them to teach their students video presentation skills.
Badges: SEE and DIAL and looking into the development of a larger badges model for employability attributes please see UAL: Badges. DIAL applied and received a small amount of funding to explore badges designs, following our first meeting there seems to be great potential for badges use with SEE future work. DIAL will pilot the design and integration of badges on some of the DIAL projects.
Mini MOOC: Seek funding for a DL Mini MOOC possibly in collaboration with Own-IT, SEE and OD&L.
Celebration/benchmarking event Nov 2013: Between August and December 2013 the UAL DIAL will continue to run with the support of CLTAD at UAL. Over this period we aim to celebrate, embed, share, critique and raise awareness of the Jisc DIAL project work carried out over the Jisc funded period (Nov 2011 to July 2013). We also aim to lobby for further internal funding to continue DIALs digital literacies work beyond 2013. See Glossary of terms and acronyms for digital literacies at UAL.
Online reflective practice project, Future actions: Capitalise on the driving force of summative assessment and use this to ensure the regularity of reflective activities is maintained throughout the two core units Use good examples of collaborative reflective practice in the induction stage Experiment with introducing an e-portfolio tool rather than a blog tool for early activities, as a stepping-stone to completely open practice.
Digital literacies for open education
Looking forwards, the ALTO UK project found that the creation of OERs provides an excellent diagnostic opportunity to identify digital literacy needs (both hard and soft) in the context of a practical environment and that it would be sensible to build such activities into staff development and student curricula. The benefits of this would be to develop embedded understanding of digital literacies/fluencies amongst students and staff and help participants better understand premise of their professional digital trace and consequent profile. At UAL a policy proposal that would include measures to link open education and digital literacies in such a way (working title Open UAL) is being discussed by senior management, this is directly based on the experience of the ALTO UK and DIAL projects. Read more about the Open Scholarship Policy – Discussion Document
Old and New media
DIAL would have liked to explore more OEP and DLs from the non-digital perspectives, its part of what we do as practice, take the open studios, studio critiques, open exhibitions etc. for example. The DIAL project model relies on supporting self identifying individuals and groups to meet face-to-face as well as to share resources, processes and support online, if we can get the two working together I think this will be ideal. DIAL project would be interested in exploring non-digital practice and it s relationships with digital practice?
Lessons learned and reflection
Tools:
- Bring your own Device: College digital spaces: Different colleges have varying resources and open access ‘digital spaces’: can be difficult to run training or integrate with courses as an outside project or even a department.
- Course staff equipment: Building a ‘use case’ for right tools for the job, not iPad for sake of an iPad.
- Bring your own environment: Online Infrastructure: In-house UAL digital tools and processes and 3rd part tools and processes need to meet somewhere in the middle. Need good digital/web Infrastructure
- Finding a balance between face-to-face and digital: Don’t rely on one or the other, find a mutually complementary processes, always have back up/alternative strategies.
People/ Individuals & development:
- Managing Expectations: essential in everything you do from project management to one-to-one development, it’s a daily task.
- Guidance and support for DLs: Staff and Students need training; guidance and support in DLs specifically web literacies.
- A deeper Understanding of what student DLs needs: DIAL learnt that students from across all years preferred and appreciated being asked/supported and encouraged into developing their 'specialist learning and professional practice' digital literacies and skills.
- Student support: Via DIAL ambassadors and DIAL researchers works well, read more.
- Open practice and online reflection: Very useful for others and hugely rewarding but challenging for most.
- Alumni need DL support: DL training seems to be an important need to stakeholder group looking for support.
- Staff and students working DLs out together: encouraged to learn and teach DLs together, experimenting with different approaches and combinations of virtual and face-to-face interactions.
Delivery College/department integration & Processes:
University Integration:
- Trust and confidence: Dealing with DLs can be tricky and sensitive work; It’s OK to make mistakes, even if you’re an expert. Be persistent and keep trying, DLs do not come as a one size fits all solution; no one has the all the right answers.
- Small steps towards local strategy: Once the trust and confidence starts to spread across a community/department and ownership of DLs expands.
- Partnerships for sustainable growth, exchange expertise: Developing and delivering DL training and resources try and avoid becoming another short course department use in-house departments to your advantage.
College integration:
- Understand the disciplines, culture and processes: DLs are complex, understanding or having team’s who understand the disciplines, culture and processes are essential.
- Defining DLs and competencies: needs to be an agile on-going process.
- Proof of concept/use case:With tensions between funding allocations/focus between old and new media, colleges should be sensitive to how and where money is spent and encourage fair systems of ‘proving a case’ for funding, the DIAL supports this model.
Curriculum integration:
- How/do we need to embed DLs: Courses may see DLs as optional extras as an optional add on of day or two training at the end of a course rather then integral part of professional practice. Should DL development and training sit inside or outside the curriculum?
- Communication email and course calendars: We found emails to be the least successful, course integration; officially via course & calendar most successful
- Context: We found many of the students taking part in some POI training sessions were not told about or were aware of the wider POI programme, students need to be more aware of the training if in context and the rage of training available to them.
- Little time for DLs with busy courses & teams: The difficulties of running these projects with busy course teams and department staff
