Implementing the Digital Equity Charter

Our Digital Equity Charter marks an important step forward, setting our intentions for digital equity. All staff are encourage to familiarise themselves with the Charter and would be grateful for your help in embedding access to the Charter and accompanying resources for our students. It is strongly advised for our teaching staff to include reference to the Charter and available support within Programme Handbooks and information as relevant.

The following summary details existing support and our next steps across each of the contributing elements towards a digitally inclusive teaching, learning and student experience. We recommend reading the following summary alongside the Charter.

Teaching, Learning and Assessment

This section of the Charter commits to embedding:

digital capability development;
digital wellbeing support;
accessibility and inclusion within our curriculum design and delivery.

Supporting Digital Capability and Digital Wellbeing

We have been working with colleagues and students across the University to implement digital capability support for our students.

Resources for our students

You can signpost students to our Develop your digital capabilities student-facing website, which promotes a range of helpful resources to support their digital capabilities and digital wellbeing.

Resources for you

We have collated a range of internal and external resources to support you with embedding digital capability and wellbeing in the curriculum, and how to design teaching content for accessibility and inclusion:

Leveraging our data to enhance the student and staff experience

Programme/Unit leads can request the anonymised institutional data from the Discovery tool to inform curriculum developments.
The Career Skills Pathway data – colleagues can request data insights regarding students’ self-reported skills at discipline/school level from the Careers Service (subject to student use).

Next Steps: Expanding support for student and staff digital capability

These include:

The introduction of LinkedIn Learning for all students and staff through a two-year Flexible Learning Programme pilot. Further information will be shared to support students and staff to get the most out of this comprehensive development platform in due course.
As part of the Flexible Learning Programme, we launched the Jisc Digital Experience Insights surveys in 2023 offering tailored surveys to our students, professional services and teaching-focussed staff. Our data from these surveys will be fed back to colleagues across the university to inform and enhance our digital experience.

If you have queries about support for student or staff digital capability, please get in touch with the Flexible Learning Programme and we will make sure your query finds the right colleague.

Access to hardware, software, connectivity and infrastructure

Our student-facing 'Access computers, software, and the internet' webpage includes a range of resources to students including Student IT Support, connecting to our free Wifi, and accessing computers on campus.

We encourage you to promote to students that free WiFi is available on campus (alongside IT policies and guidance) during pre-arrival / induction / return, as appropriate.

From recent work by Jisc exploring international students’ digital experience a lack of awareness of eduroam and free WiFi can result in a detrimental experience:

“Provide information about how to access the internet on and off campus, including what eduroam is and the common use of reliable wifi versus mobile data in the UK. Without clear explanations about the routes to free or low-cost access, a clear understanding of all the university-supported resources available to them and an explanation of which additional resources are licensed, legal, recommended and low-cost, international students are at a disadvantage.”

Suitable space to study

You can signpost students to our Your Study Spaces webpage where they can learn more about and book study spaces on campus.