JISC Digital Students Skills

Consultation Event 17/02/2016

The Jisc team (Sarah Knight and Jane Edwards with colleagues Giles Pepler and Nick Jeans from Sero Consulting) led an innovative and informative consultation event in Bristol. Located in the At-Bristol science centre and access to the museum included, made for a very appealing event.

The themes under consultation attracted a diverse range of participants, broadly themes around workbased learning; adult/community learning and offender learning. It was interesting to note common themes across the groups, around poor /locked down equipment and wifi access; a variety of skills in groupings of learners, and, indeed with their staff. A significant future was the paucity of literature and evidence based research with the learner voice. Workbased learning literature for apprentices tended to be based around the US community colleges, and offenders work located within the Australian literature.

This gap is being addressed by JISC, who are currently consulting on the skills sector – within the parameters of 16 upwards; on a very wide variety of courses/aims/objective; thus, as we already know about the skills sector, not a homogenous group. The most important findings coming out of focus groups is the priority of ‘fast wifi that is easy to connect to and a device to use on your own when you need it. Provider supplied email addresses, digital storage etc were not seen as essential to supporting study, and neither was social media.

The day was entwined by encouraging u to use different media – padlet, twitter, electronic polling, textwall, and our twitter feed has been consolidated into a ‘storify’

The day was facilitated by http://tinyurl.com/hwfdlsn

All research work can be found at http://digitalstudent.jiscinvolve.org; including previous consultations around the HE and FE sectors.

CEL colleagues Debbie Holley and David Biggins attended, and would be happy to provide further information/