What are digital capabilities?

We live in a very technological world. You can order your supermarket shopping online, video chat with friends on the other side of the world, study new subjects, and even make and break relationships with technology. But we need to get the technology to work for us.

How do we do that? By being Digitally Capable. Digital Capabilities are those skills that allow individuals to engage with digital technologies to not only enhance and support their learning and teaching activities but to effectively engage with an increasingly digital world.

Digital capabilities look beyond functional IT skills to describe a richer set of digital behaviours, practices and identities. What it means to be digitally literate changes over time and across contexts, so digital literacies are essentially a set of academic and professional situated practices supported by diverse and changing technologies.

The Digital Capability frameworks sits at the centre of Jisc's work. It is augmented by a Digital Leadership course, a diagnostic tool, and a range of online resources.

The diagnostic tools allow individuals to determine what their current digital capabilities are, and then use focussed online resources to work on their development. The diagnostic tool will also provide anonymised, aggregated information about the overall staff profile of an institution. This information will provide excellent evidence for the development of an internal CPD offering and help focus resources where they are most needed.

The Jisc Digital Leaders course was run as a beta in late 2015, and equipped staff with the confidence and skills to lead their institutions towards a more digitally-capable future.