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Technology, as we all have experienced, is a double-edged sword. It brings great promise of improved efficiency, enhanced productivity and creativity, yet also usually brings its own problems and added complexity. We might need to be trained on the new systems and tools; they might not work well with our other systems or need considerable work to get them to 'inter-operate'; and not least of all, there can be a real financial challenge with adapting to the now dominant subscription model of cloud-based software. Rather than simply buying a piece of software, we now have to rent it on monthly or an annual basis and what was a once-off cost becomes a recurrent demand.

The real-world complexities of higher education institutions and the multiple responsibilities of academic and professional staff, working at pace and in time-constrained (semester/term deadlines, etc) contexts are significant constraints on how technology can be implemented and used. In addition, in many countries, academic staff have considerable freedom to choose how they teach their students and that can incur resistance to change or inconsistencies in the student learning experience. Variety in teaching is a virtue rather than a weakness, but it can sometimes be used to justify a lack of willingness to consider alternatives.

For the head of a unit or a team, dealing with such diversity is not unusual, but developing strategy and coordinating actions requires at least some insight as to the skills, perspectives, and levels of confidence of each of your individual team members. We might refer to this combination of skills, attributes, and confidence as ‘competencies’ and by identifying a set of these and levels of attainment, we may be able to take a systematic approach to identifying the skills profile of an individual and the combined team.

In this course, we will outline some ways in which Agnetha can gather such information, pull together other relevant information and begin the development of a strategy for further development of her team.

Throughout this course we will pose 'reflection' questions for you to consider. These are designed to help you develop ideas for your own strategy. The best way to approach these is to open up a document to have alongside that can serve as a Learning Journal in which you can keep the questions and your responses. Of course, if you are doing this by self-study you might prefer older technology such as a notebook and pen, the choice, in that case, is yours!

We will begin with just a short (one page) exposition of some key ideas around technology and pedagogy in recognition that this relationship is a complex one, but also to point to ways in which we can harness a framework for digital competence in education to enhance how we teach and how our students learn.