The Digital Student is a Jisc-funded project which is working with a number of partners (UCISA, SCONUL, RLUK and RUGIT) to investigate the expectations incoming students have of technology provision in further and higher education. Here you can explore findings and recommendations from the phase 1 (HE) study: Students’ expectations and experiences of the digital environment and emerging findings from the FE and Skills study. The blog is used to coordinate a number of consultation events and to provide ongoing updates and materials emerging from these activities. We welcome your involvement and will be using the blog as an active part of the consultation process.
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2 replies on “Welcome”
This is a really interesting project – but I wonder if you have looked at another critical aspect as to student expectations of digital? And one they will not know about until they leave.
This is the expectations of employers as to their understanding and integrated use of digital in their thinking, learning and activities?
On Friday I helped a Masters student from a top academic university in his research into PR companies and our interconnected networks – eg our supply chains. The questions completely ignored how most PR companies now do a significant amount of business – ie through social media.
The student asked questions such as did we met our suppliers before or after starting to work with them; how do we find new suppliers – and the options were so old fashioned such as geographical or national events. As an example, when I needed to find an intranet developer I just put it out on LinkedIn and Twitter and within 24 hours had 5 or 6 fantastic recommendations. I don’t know where half of our suppliers are even based – we just email, Skype, tweet etc.
I actually tweeted about how frustrated I was on behalf of the student and the university ended up ringing me and criticising me for assuming an academic had been involved in helping design the research.
The point here is that academics are not teaching/supervising to ensure that digital is completely integrated into thinking, understanding and practice; and you then have to question whether the academics themselves are up to speed to help students be relevant and useful to employers when they leave?
This issue is certainly high in our minds (although we are being careful to not define higher education as only functioning as a pathway to employment). You will see that we have considered the the role of potential employers in our recommendations from phase 1 including:
“Consult with employers to encourage two-way understanding of what graduates can contribute to the changing workplace and of the workplace digital environment graduates need to flourish”
The full recommendations can be found here: http://goo.gl/j2Ph7Q