reviewing graphs

Image, clearly produced by DALL-E2.

OK, so let's return to Agnetha's situation. She is new to the role, and new to the department of which she is now the head and really needs to get a picture of her team's strengths, interests, and capabilities, as well as being aware of what particular challenges they may face (both individually and collectively). In regards teaching, we know that she would like to take the opportunities afforded by technology in enhancing the student learning experience. To do that, one of the first actions she could consider is undertaking a review or audit of current skills, dispositions, and attitudes of the colleagues in her department. Given the cultural sensitivities of many academic communities, the language she uses in describing this process may have to be appropriately nuanced if she is to avoid potential misconceptions and even possible resistance. In some countries, the words 'competence' and 'audit' can evoke negative connotations amongst staff, so it can be helpful to explain that we each have different strengths, experience, training, and interests and so producing a profile of 'digital competence' is about reflecting those rather than being judgmental or a performance metric.

DigCompEdu allows us to produce a personal profile of our skills. Agnetha should definitely do this for herself first of all (if she hasn't already) to understand how DigCompEdu works and to appreciate the time it can take. She could do this using an online tool and an easy one to get started with is available here, developed by the CUTE and EDTL projects. This provides a nice graphical profile as its output, though note that she will have to make a copy of this in order to retain the results since this software does not record individual user information (in the interests of privacy and data protection).

So how might Agnetha get this information about her team? There are a few ways in which she could manage this, which others have done.

She could ask each of her colleagues to complete an online self-assessment, profiling tool. There are a number of these available. Note that for many it is a case of working through each of the 22 competences listed and deciding what level you are at. This can take quite a bit of time, and for those particular examples which are simply text-based it can seem a little 'dry'. Nonetheless, this would be the most detailed, individual information. The nearest to an 'official' tool is the CheckIn tool for Higher Education (scroll down on this page) https://joint-research-centre.ec.europa.eu/digcompedu/digcompedu-self-reflection-tools_en . There are some other options available from a range of European projects and you may be aware of some of these if your institution is a partner in such. The one above can of course be used by anyone, but if she is asking her colleagues to do this then she may need them to save and share their results).

Use an adaptation of one of these tools or a local version which collates the results (in some cases this has been done recording the individual staff member's name along with their profile, in other cases it was preferred to gather the information anonymously (allowing that the individual however is able to know their own profile!).

Do this in a workshop session or other meeting. How this is done exactly can vary to suit what is judged most likely to succeed with any particular group, but in some cases it has been done by asking people to work through (perhaps in pairs or small groups) printed out versions of the DigCompEdu definitions and note where they each lie on the scale for each competence. In others, an online tool was used in the session with everyone going through it at the same time, allowing some scope for comments, clarifications, etc. The results are then collated and compiled into a spreadsheet or table. Doing it this way, if carefully facilitated can help to build a sense of collective endeavour towards building a digital strategy - and perhaps also remove any fear of performance measurement.

Later in this course we'll provide you with some suggestions and tools for running a workshop style session and provide you with some tools that you can use for this, or just in general to gather information. If you are in an institution with a Teaching & Learning Centre, Staff or Academic Development Unit, or similar, you might consider partnering with them to facilitate a session with your team. They will have experience of facilitation and managing events and they can also avail of any of the materials we have shared with you. Whatever you decide, you should complete this course before jumping into action. Use this as a means of developing your own ideas, plugging any gaps in knowledge or awareness, and in anticipating any questions or issues that your team may have. We will explore ways of working with colleagues on your team in the last lesson of the course, after you have more of an understanding of each of the areas of DigCompEdu.

Additional contextual information before we begin

It is of course important for Agnetha, particularly since she is new to this institution, to be aware of some basic information about the technology landscape that she is working in. So as a 'checklist' type preparation she should make sure that she is aware of basic information such as:

The scale of her institution in terms of numbers of students and numbers of staff
Where her particular department/unit fits within the structure and how many students (at undergraduate and postgraduate levels) are taking programmes managed by her department
The institutional LMS/VLE (Learning Management System/Virtual Learning Environment). Almost all universities and other higher education institutions have such systems as part of their core infrastructure, and this might be a product such as Canvas, BrightSpace, Blackboard, Moodle, etc.
Whether the institution has licensed Google or Microsoft for enterprise level availability of software such as email, word-processing, spreadsheets, etc
The extent to which the institution makes use of open source products as alternatives to commercial tools
Whether or not there is technical support provided for technologies centrally or on a devolved basis within Faculties/Colleges/Departments

An example of such a checklist is available here:

Reflection

There are two useful things you should do now.

Complete the Context Checklist for your own situation. Feel free to add any more information to it that you think should be included. Keep this in your learning journal.
Consider completing the DigCompEdu profile so that you can have an idea of where you stand at the start of this course. Whilst we are going to go through each area step-by-step, it could be really useful to compare your level of confidence before and after the course. It does take a little time (about 15- 20 minutes maximum) and you should (whichever tool you choose to use (eg the graphical one or the CheckIn) record/copy/save your results into your learning journal.