Team members Rachel Bancroft, Rachel Challen and Rosemary Pearce have written a literature review on the emerging concept of digital confidence. This has been particularly relevant in recent times due to the rapid change in the sector, with the pandemic forcing more learning and teaching online. I spoke to Rachel, Rachel and Rosemary to find out a little more about their research.
Emily: One of the main themes of your research is digital confidence and adaptation to change, particularly through the lens of the pandemic. Why did the pandemic bring digital confidence to the fore for you?
RC: We all know the pressures we faced to move our teaching online, and as a team we were in the fortunate position that we already had great relationships with colleagues, meaning we already had a sense of people’s practices, barriers and boundaries surrounding technology. By the time the pandemic hit, we had already been building on digital skills meaning we had a head start when it came to transitioning to online learning. This also helped in areas where colleagues were struggling with the transition; our knowledge of them meant that we could quickly identify what was holding them back digitally, so that we could strategise ways to help them transition to online teaching quickly.
RB: Something we noticed in this process of transitioning to online learning was that some colleagues were still feeling uncertain about the move online despite their strong digital skills. This is where we really identified that digital confidence was a crucial area to explore (for more about this, see our 2021 article ‘Locating opportunities for building digital confidence in staff’), which really goes beyond simply knowing which buttons to press to make a tool work.
Emily: I got the sense from your paper that digital confidence is a term that people use widely, but perhaps don’t really explore what it means in great depth. What does digital confidence mean to you?
RC: For me, confidence trumps capability every time. If you’re confident, you can’t be held back by your perception of your capability. It’s the ability to say, ‘I think I’m confident enough to click a few buttons, and see what happens.’. In a sense, digital confidence is the precursor to capability.
RB: I would say that asking for help is also an example of digital confidence, because it’s recognising that there might be potential for you to try something new, and feeling confident enough to ask for the help needed to get there. It doesn’t really matter what your digital skills are. If you’re not feeling digitally confident to have a go, this can be an initial barrier to people transforming or developing their digital practise.
Emily: It’s clear from your research that there’s a strong link between staff and student digital confidence, making this a really important area to uncover. Are you able to expand on this?
RB: We’ve found that this growth in staff digital confidence has accompanied lots of new digital experiences for students, exposing them to new, innovative technology as part of their courses. Another aspect of this is that the digital confidence in our staff, the willingness to ‘have a go’ at new technology, has a really positive impact on student digital confidence, too.
RC: Also, we see it goes both ways. When staff are open to it, students have developed staff skills in many cases. Students bring to the table new ways of doing things, which staff can learn from.
Emily: What do you think the team do best, in terms of supporting our staff in their digital explorations?
RB: I think we aim to give colleagues a platform to explore their ideas. Just talking with them about what it is they want to achieve with their students, and then exploring together how they might get there; letting them explore their own thoughts rather than telling them what to do. I think one thing that’s making a difference at the moment is moving away from specific training on different technologies, and instead lots of support as colleagues try out new digital approaches. It’s about focusing on their context, and exploring what’s possible with the tools we have available, rather than creating lots of general training on tools and then hoping that people have time to come to it.
Emily: Thank you everyone for your time and thoughts today. Before we wrap things up; what are you hoping readers will take from your lit review? What’s next?
RB: We want to start people talking more about digital confidence. We want people to explore it more in their context, to help us reach a shared understanding of what it looks like to different people. It would be great to start really discussing digital confidence and competence as separate terms and thinking about the difference there.
RC: We’ve also got a book chapter forthcoming which looks at what digital confidence practice and research has taught us about supporting digital change.
RP: Yes, I think it would be great to explore further the concept of digital confidence in terms of adaptation to change and turbulence. Following the pandemic, changes to teaching and learning are still unfolding and institutions continue to adopt digital transformation strategies. It’s a great time to see how supporting digital confidence can help facilitate this transition smoothly.
Emily’s final thoughts
Since joining the team, I’ve been considering digital confidence and finding ways to apply it to my own practice. For example, something I do in support sessions is to encourage staff to walk me through their thinking, sharing their own screen, when trying to solve a problem. Through conducting this interview about digital confidence with my colleagues, I can now see how this approach shows the staff I support evidence of how much they already know, which in turn can help to boost their digital confidence.
If you enjoyed this post, feel free to share with friends and colleagues! Got questions, or want to know more about digital confidence? Get in touch with us at AAH.LTSU@ntu.ac.uk – we would love to hear from you!
