Summary
LEaD Light Lunch, a monthly event in the Learning and Teaching community, focused on students' digital skills in November. The sessions covered the Digital Student Support Team's efforts during Welcome Week and their self-assessment tool, a pre-sessional math course for actuarial students, and a digital induction course for the legal profession by the Solicitors Practice Programme
November’s theme in the Learning and Teaching community was students’ digital skills. So the first LEaD Light Lunch of the month was led by the fabulous Student Digital Team in LEaD, who for the past few years have provided crucial support, steering students toward resources such as Linkedin Learning and City’s own student guides.
During welcome week, the team was busy promoting their one-to-one digital skills tutorials as well as a self-assessment tool for students. They distributed leaflets, delivered workshops, and were active on the Student Teams community site. The outcome was great, 185 students participated in workshops, and over 70 engaged on the Teams community sites. Sumayya Islam (Digital literacies assistant) shared some intriguing insights, revealing students’ preferences for tools like Google for research and notes, and YouTube for video guidance.
Continuing with the theme of student digital skills, Russell Gerrard (Head of Faculty Actuarial Science & Insurance at Bayes) provided an overview of a pre-sessional O365 Teams space he designed for incoming undergraduates. The advantage of using a Teams space over Moodle for an induction course was that new students could access the Teams sites as guests while their full enrolment was being processed. This meant that access to these pre-course materials was much more inclusive and it was a good way of setting up expectations on what skills were needed for the course. As Russell argued it was important to ensure that all new students had a solid understanding of any challenging elements before commencing the actual academic year. Russell also shared some data from a poll he had carried out where students indicated overwhelmingly positive feedback towards this approach. Overall a successful induction where students were able to prepare themselves, both academically and psychologically, for the challenging degree course they were about to embark on. Watch the recording.
The monthly theme culminated with Danon Pritchard (Programme Director for the Solicitors’ Practice Programme at CLS) discussing the design and delivery of a programme-specific digital skills induction session. Recognizing the need to equip new students, not only for the course but also for future employment as solicitors, Danon covered various competencies, from document scanning to advanced features like tracked changes and Excel skills. Importantly, she underscored the significance of cultivating digital well-being and time management skills as well.
Expressing gratitude for the support from the Student Digital Team, Danon emphasized their role in assisting with the previously mentioned self-assessment tool, designed to gauge students’ digital competence. This session showcased the SPP’s dedication to preparing students for success in their future legal careers as digital competency continues to gain prominence.
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