ARLIS annual conference DIAL slides

Slide presentation, the DIAL project Digital Integration into Arts Learning University of the Arts London. DIAL Project manager Chris Follows ARLIS Annual Conference 2012  29 June. Download powerpoint slide presentation also attached.

Digital technology can enable us to capture, preserve, share, collaborate on, and publish our activities. It can simplify, speed up and streamline processes, and in a wide variety of ways, we can expect it to shape many of our social and professional activities in years to come.

For these reasons, ensuring full participation in digital life for university staff and students is necessary, but also challenging.  With so many different areas of digital activity, and so much variety in levels of confidence and existing skills, how can a university ensure staff and students have the appropriate skills for digital engagement?

UAL’s Digital Integration into Arts Learning (DIAL) project, partially funded by JISC, is a two year project of which 8 months have been completed.  It aims to improve graduate employability and develop confidence and capability in the adoption and integration of digitally enhanced learning for staff and students.

The project method is to identify mutually supportive communities of staff and students within the larger university community (based on courses, disciplines or other naturally occurring communities) who identify goals for improving their collective digital literacies over a six month period, initially with significant support from the project team.  Over the project life-time, processes, resources and toolkits are being developed so the communities can be increasingly autonomous in their development programmes.  Within the community, individual and collective aims and anxieties will be identified, along with current skills and experience.  Community members will collaborate to increase the overall digital literacy of the whole community.