What skills do lecturers require to be considered digitally competent?

Where attempts have been made to measure digital competence, the focus has been on students and based on small, unrepresentative samples. There is a large gap in the literature on the digital competencies of lecturers. With an increasing focus on digital pedagogies and a digitally-enabled education environment, how competent (and confident) are lecturers to design and deliver digital curricula?

This presentation will discuss the initial findings of a research study, undertaken across two universities, that took a multi-profession approach to defining the competencies that university lecturers need to become digitally competent. The presentation will detail the research journey that explored this gap in the literature and its effect on teaching today. A key question the research attempts to answer is what do lecturers, librarians and academic learning developers believe are the skills required by lecturers to deliver digital education now and in the future. Information on the next phase of the research process will be shared, which aims to develop a benchmark of digital competence among lecturers, and how this will influence the training and development offered by universities in future.