This is a guest blog from Chris Melia, who is the Collaborative and Digital Practice Lead at the University of Lancashire, and a Senior Fellow of the Higher Education Academy, and a Jisc Community Champion.
When was the last time you learned something that truly made a difference to the way that you work with technology? The likelihood is that this was either from someone you work with, or as part of a group learning activity – after all, we are often the most valuable asset in each other’s professional growth.
In education, communities can prove invaluable to staff learning and development. These spaces often break down barriers between teams, open communication channels for academics and services staff, and even enhance productivity and collaborative working.
Since the University of Lancashire’s ‘DigiLearn’ initiative was launched back in 2018, I’ve frequently been invited to speak with organisations looking to model the success of our approach and its outcomes relating to enhanced digital capabilities and confidence.
Recognition for digital skills development
For us, this work extends beyond our thriving community of practice, to a tiered recognition platform providing a structured framework around which colleagues can focus their activities to obtain valuable reward and recognition. To mark these milestones, both digital and physical badges are issued at ‘Practitioner’, ‘Advocate’ and ‘Champion’ levels – helping to increase visibility of skills and foster a tangible sense of achievement.
As reported in the findings from Jisc’s 2024-25 Digital Experience Insights Survey –recognition for developing digital skills remains a sector-wide challenge – with only 10% of higher education (HE) staff and 33% of further education (FE) staff having agreed to being in receipt of the associated support and encouragement.
Collaborative guidance to build staff communities
With all of this in mind, I approached Jisc – as the sector’s leading light for all things ‘digital’, to enquire whether there might be scope to develop some collaborative guidance and support for institutions hoping to cultivate staff communities and embed digital skills recognition.
This conversation led to us identifying a cluster of other organisations operating similar staff development models, and with whom I had previously worked during the conception of their own initiatives. The identified candidates would represent two HE and two FE institutions, providing insights to inform the project and maximise our potential reach.
HE and FE institutional representatives:
- Chris Melia (Co-chair) – Collaborative and Digital Practice Lead, University of Lancashire
- Phil Whitehead – Director of Digital, Academic and Customer Services at DN Colleges Group
- Louise Woodhouse – Head of Digital Education at Weston College
- Patrick Turner – IT Systems Trainer at Leeds Trinity University
Together with a group of Jisc experts in Community, Digital Capabilities and Digital Practice, we would form a project group to share valuable insights and success stories to empower organisations on their own digital transformation and skills development journeys.
Jisc membership within the project group includes:
- Natasha Veenendaal (Co-chair) – Head of Community Engagement
- Carolina Barnes – Community Specialist
- Andrew McFadyen – FE Senior Skills Consultant
- Becki Vickerstaff – HE Senior Skills Consultant
- Catherine Evans – Subject Specialist, Digital Practice
- Kathryn Woodhead – Subject Specialist, Digital Practice
In establishing a shared purpose, we agreed to frame our work around a key question:
“What insights/resources might we have found useful at the start of our own organisation’s journey to developing staff digital skills?”
To address this, we will now work together on the curation of a practical ‘toolkit’ – through which we aim to share useful advice, templates and lived examples with the wider education sector.
And thus, the ‘Community-led digital skills development’ project group has been formed!
Looking ahead, we aim to release content as it comes to fruition, focussing on key themes associated with this collaborative model of staff development and support.
As a community-led project we are keen that our work remains informed by the needs of HE and FE organisations, and would actively encourage anyone interested in subsequent outputs to feed in their recommendations via a member of the project group.
(Picture credits: Chris Melia. The physical recognition badges used in the DigiLearn programme. Carolina Barnes. Various pictures from Jisc collaborative learning events.)