Students and staff worked together in a Student-Staff Partnership project during Semester 1, 2023 with the aim of improving the Digital Essentials modules.
In this post, our student partners Charlotte, Nathan and Ulban discuss the project and what they achieved.
About Student-Staff Partnerships
Student-Staff Partnerships enable students to develop industry-relevant skills, and to contribute to the UQ student experience. They allow staff members who wish to make their initiatives accessible to students to directly benefit from student feedback and their experiences as students.
Our student partners
“I’m a firm believer that digital technologies can make an improvement in all our lives. This is why I originally joined to help improve the digital essentials modules. Not having the ability to navigate our digital ecosystems can be a huge barrier to one’s learning and I love having the opportunity to help others gain the same access.” - Ulban (Science)
“The UQ Library’s resources have greatly helped me in my studies. The Digital Essentials modules contain a dense amount of relevant and practical information, but were difficult for students to navigate in their previous state. This project gave me the opportunity to reformulate the module content to better serve students, providing me with invaluable skills along the way.” - Nathan (Arts)
“This student staff project aimed to improve the accessibility of the digital world to UQ students through equipping them with the skills to access technology and digital tools. I am passionate about the value of digital literacy to educate students and believe that providing these skills and educational resources is extremely valuable.” - Charlotte, Arts/ Laws
About the project
We had a number of concurrent goals when starting this project to improve the Digital Essentials modules.
The first part was modifying and in some cases, merging the Digital Essentials modules during weekly meetings and discussions. This culminated in multiple draft versions of the Digital Essentials landing page, which we put through a number of rounds of student feedback and surveys to settle on a final design.
We then worked to communicate how to use the modules by producing videos for students and staff.
Lastly, we finalised tasks by running working bees in which we completed many aspects of the project.
What’s new in Digital Essentials?
Throughout the project, our team has developed the Digital Essentials modules with the aim of making them more accessible and ensuring that they are comprehensive and helpful for students. We have:
- restructured the way that staff and students see the modules by forming our landing page around six main themes that relate to core skills and content areas that are useful for students to understand
- chosen a landing page design that allows students to see individual modules as well as themes to cater to students who are looking for specific information and for students who wish to deepen their understanding across a broad range of skills.
We have also redeveloped individual modules to target areas of growth in the digital field, particularly through recent developments in digital resources such as artificial intelligence. Other changes to the modules aim to make them more concise and efficient when communicating information as well as adapting them to target specific interests for students, such as the application of digital skills for university assessments.
Watch Using Digital Essentials (YouTube, 1m47s)
Teaching staff, embed modules in your courses
The Digital Essentials modules are designed to be used in courses at the point of need. You can direct students to a module that will help them build the digital skills they need for success in your course.
You can embed or link a complete module or select only the sections you want to include. There are interactive elements throughout each module and a short quiz at the end.
Use modules in your courses has more details on how to embed the modules.
Watch Embed Digital Essentials in Learn.UQ course (YouTube, 1m55s)
If you have any questions, please email the Library’s Digital Learning team - dxdc@library.uq.edu.au.