We are pleased to be holding Digital Skills Week once again in 2023, from 20-24 March.
Digital Skills Week is a University of Hertfordshire community event. It provides an opportunity for staff and students to learn together, and from one another.
The week gives everyone the opportunity to explore, develop and share digital skills, to excel in your course and career and thrive in the digital world.
The lively and engaging programme features students, staff and external guest experts. It is a fantastic opportunity for staff and students to share knowledge, skills and expertise.
You will then receive a calendar invitation containing the link to join the online session or with details of the on-campus location. Please allow up to three working days to receive your calendar invitation(s).
Monday 20 March
How to do keyword research for your online business
This session will share ideas about search engine optimisation:
What is a keyword?
How to install and find SEO tools for research.
How to find/ generate keyword.
Keywords competitions analysis.
How to identify low competitive keywords for your business.
Time: 10.00 - 10.45
Location: online
The world's first robot lawyer, ChatGPT and the modern lawyer
Gone are the days when lawyers bury their heads in stacks upon stacks of physical books in the name of research. Based on a recent paper The Future of Law, this presentation, led by Latifat Abdulmajeed-Isah studying for LLM in Intellectual Property and Information Law, will explore how law professionals can work smarter rather than harder by benefitting from the wide array of digital opportunities and tools.
Time: 11.00 – 11.45
Location: online
What is digital capability?
In this interactive workshop with Becki Vickerstaff, Higher Education Senior Consultant at Jisc, we will take a look at why understanding and developing digital capability is important for all who study and work in higher education. We will explore the research informed key skills and priorities, summarised in the Jisc six areas of digital capability model that all students and professionals need to continuously develop their skills and thrive in the digital world.
Time: 14.00 - 15.00
Location: online
Digital tools for systematic searching
This session, led by Becky Scott, Information Manager, is designed for postgraduate students and staff who wish to utilise digital tools as part of their workflow in searching for their literature review.
To get the most benefit from this session, it is recommended that you are already using a reference management tool and have some experience in searching the literature for your subject.
Attendees will be introduced to three digital tools and explore whether these will positively benefit their workflow.
Research Rabbit
Systematic review de-duplicator
Citation Chaser
There will be opportunities for attendees to share their own experiences of using digital tools in their workflows.
Before the session, please find 5-10 papers on a topic of interest. It will be helpful if you have easily accessible:
citations and preferably with DOIs
a RIS file with five-ten citations (no duplicates)
a RIS file with a collection of references (ideally with duplicates)
Please note: This session will not cover how to structure a literature search.
Time: 15.00 - 16.00
Location: online
How cybersecurity aware are you?
Cyber criminals want to steal our money, information, time and reputation, and may aim to disrupt an organisation's ability to function. Human error is often the biggest factor in data being shared inappropriately and the success of a cyber security crime. In this interactive workshop with Suzath Hussein, Head of IT Operations, we will take a look at some basic principles to adopt to be cybersecurity aware, and practice skills to identify cybersecurity threats in our life and work and what actions we should take when we encounter them.
Time: 15.00 – 16.00
Location: online
Tuesday 21 March
How to create a narrated PowerPoint presentation video
In this workshop led by Richard Matovu, Educational Technologist, attendees will learn about:
Preparation and set-up required to create a narrated PowerPoint presentation video
How to use PowerPoint to record a narrated presentation.
How to export the narrated PowerPoint presentation into a video file (MP4 format).
How to upload the exported MP4 video file onto a Canvas assignment portal or Canvas page using the Panopto software.
Attendees will also be shown examples of extra editing that can be done to a narrated PowerPoint presentation video to improve its quality.
Time: 10.00 - 11.30
Location: online
Chat GPT panel discussion
This panel discussion will draw upon their expertise and experience to explore how Chat GPT and other artificial intelligence tools are likely to impact higher education and the world at large. Panel members: Kara Webb, Senior Educational Technologist, Stephane Farenga, Director of Student Participation and Success (HLS), Suzanne Fergus, Associate Dean Learning and Teaching (LMS) and Christoph Salge, Senior Research Fellow.
Time: 11.00 – 12.00
Location: online
Develop and showcase your talents with LinkedIn and LinkedIn Learning
LinkedIn Learning is the world's largest and leading online learning platform with 18,000+ courses and over 250,000 videos in creative, business, and technical skills. The University of Hertfordshire provides all staff and students with 24/7 access to an incredible library of courses delivered by industry experts.
This webinar hosted by Steph Elliott, Senior Customer Success Manager at LinkedIn will:
Introduce you to LinkedIn and LinkedIn Learning
Highlight its many benefits for digital and employability skills
Short platform walkthrough
Time: 11.30 - 12.30
Location: online
Wednesday 22 March
Excel in Excel
Microsoft Excel can be a powerful but sometimes intimidating tool. Used for data calculation and analysis, Excel spreadsheets can be an incredibly useful way of not only working with numbers, but also presenting data in a clear manner. This session, led by Kevin O’Connor, Senior Educational Technologist, will cover areas such as gathering, calculating, analysing and presenting data in useful bitesize scenarios.
Time: 10.00 - 10.45
Location: online
Using Handshake and the Careers website to develop your career plans
In this session, led by Jo Eaton, Career Development Manager, the team will highlight some of the key tools that are available in Handshake and the Careers and Employment website to showcase the benefits in actively using the platforms for career planning.
Time: 11.00 – 11.45
Location: online
Become quicker with Power Automate
Power Automate by Microsoft is a service that helps you create automated workflows between your favourite apps and services to synchronize files, get notifications, collect data, and more. This session, led by Kara Webb, Senior Educational Technologist, will demonstrate how you can utilise this tool to help you make your work processes more effective.
Time: 13.00 - 14.00
Location: online
Exploring Digital Wellbeing
In this session, led by Samantha Clarkson, Digital Capabilities Manager, we will explore the meaning of digital wellbeing. Use the Jisc digital wellbeing model to consider the positive and negative impact of digital on our mental and physical wellbeing, and explore steps we might take to manage digital stress, workload and distraction.
Time: 14.00 – 15.00
Location: On campus
Using Zotero - manage your library of references for your research and publication
This session, led by Jane Bilson, Information Manager, will show you how to use Zotero and its tools to capture data to create a library of references, and how to integrate citations within Word and create a bibliography using their preferred style of referencing.
Participants will use their own laptop, to have the opportunity to install the Zotero software and tools and start creating their own library within the session.
Time: 15.00 - 16.00
Location: on campus
How to maximise each social platform for your studies and beyond
Chantelle Keane, Digital and Social Media Manager will provide a brief overview of Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram and TikTok with a focus on how students can use these platforms to build their portfolios and position themselves as 'career ready'.
Time: 16.00 - 17.00
Location: online
Thursday 23 March
Tips and Tricks for Outlook
This session, led by Lucy Bamwo, Digital Capabilities Manager and Priya Mahey, Digital Skills Developer, will cover tips and tricks that we have learnt over the years in using Outlook. We will demonstrate simple tips such as use of Scheduler for meetings, flagging, delay sending and much more, that can make our working practice more efficient.
Time: 10.00 - 10.45
Location: online
Microsoft 365 Q&A
Participants will be invited to submit questions ahead of the event. The Library and Computing Services panel will explain some of the key principles of Microsoft 365 (previously Office 365) and answer questions demonstrating useful sources of self-help.
Time: 11.00 – 12.00
Location: online
AI tools - New beginnings with Artificial Intelligence
A discussion with Lucy Bamwo, Digital Capabilities Manager and Kara Webb, Senior Educational Technologist on using AI tools outside of Chat GPT, such as co-pilot and Azure and how we can leverage AI and automation to support low impact work to allow focus on high impact.
Time: 12.00 - 13.00
Location: online
Productivity, efficiency and creativity with digital collaboration
In this presentation, Ayodeji and Adam, MSc Software Engineering students, will share their professional experience of using these popular digital collaboration tools. They will explore how Trello, Figma and Figjam can be used for communication, workflow/UX design and to support project delivery.
Time: 14.00 – 14.45
Location: online
Introduction to Teams webinars
This session, led by Nadine Goldthorpe, Business Analyst, will prepare you to set up and confidently run your own webinars, using new functionality within MS Teams. General guidance regarding planning and set up will be offered and the new functionality will be demonstrated.
Time: 15.00 - 15.45
Location: online
Friday 24 March
Lions, Tigers and Bears Oh My!: Introduction to experiencing Augmented Reality and Virtual Reality
Derek Ong, Senior Lecturer in Marketing will facilitate this basic introduction to Augmented Reality (AR) and Virtual Reality (VR) with practical applications that anyone can experience without sophisticated tools. We will create content with Google AR animals using our smart phones and consider how these images and videos can be used in digital posters. There will also be an introduction to Virtual Reality without the use of a headset, to explain and experience the metaverse and learning the concepts of online interactions.
Time: 11.00 - 12.00
Location: on campus
Using social media to engage your audience in academic skills and support
The Life and Medical Sciences (LMS) social media account is unique as it managed centrally by an academic skills team within the school. This short presentation will outline the benefits and challenges we have found in creating, managing and reflecting on this engagement strategy. We will also consider the role this plays as an example of expressing digital creativity and in communicating and collaborating with our student and staff community.
Time: 13.00 - 13.45
Location: online
Teams meetings - beyond the basics
In this session, led by Samantha Clarkson, Digital Capabilities Manager, we will take a look at using Meeting Options, breakout rooms, polls and accessibility features in MS Teams to consider how these can be used to create and run an effective online meeting.
Prepare for Digital Skills Week by completing the Jisc Digital Discovery Tool to generate a personalised report to understand more about your capabilities in each of the six areas, and be guided to plan and undertake relevant development activity.
Digital Skills Week is beneficial for the organisation, investing in staff and students. It provides a great opportunity for the personal development, learning digital skills that might be a great advantage in the job market and day-to-day life.
Joanna, undergraduate student.
We enjoyed presenting and participating in the sessions. Predominantly, we gained confidence in sharing our knowledge and experience of digital problem solving. Additionally, we learnt a lot of new skills such as video editing and using Adobe software.
Michael, undergraduate student.
As Researchers we are encouraged to be reflective, so using the Jisc Digital Discovery Tool is a good way to start, because it helps you to understand how you can develop your digital skills. I’d strongly encourage you to attend the sessions in Digital Skills Week.
Nadine, postgraduate research student.
I enjoyed meeting staff and students at the University of Hertfordshire during Digital Skills Week. In the sessions we looked at building effective LinkedIn Learning profiles, and use LinkedIn Learning and tools within the LinkedIn Economic Graph to identify and pursue skills development for their chosen career path
The range of topics that they cover is incredible, there is something that will suit everyone. The sessions were really welcoming and informal, so it allowed me to ask questions about things I perhaps did not understand. It has been beneficial for me overall and I have put various things into practice
Nina Walker, Learning and Teaching Specialist and Senior Lecturer Pharmacy programme.