Jisc Change Agents' Network Conference 2024
Jisc Change Agents' Network Conference 2024
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The future of student engagement and student-staff partnerships to enhance higher education
The future of student engagement and student-staff partnerships to enhance higher education
Day 3 Conference Day 2: Thursday 23rd May 2024
Day 3 Conference Day 2: Thursday 23rd May 2024
Keynote 4: The power of students as partners in digital transformation
Keynote 4: The power of students as partners in digital transformation
Sarah Knight (Head of Learning and Teaching Transformation (Jisc))
Sarah Knight (Head of Learning and Teaching Transformation (Jisc))
UK universities are facing significant disruption due to the economic crisis and limited resources, along with the lasting impact of the pandemic on staff and student wellbeing. One of the ways the sector is responding to challenges and disruption is by developing or revisiting their digital strategies. The benefits of digital transformation are manifold: a university that uses technology to its maximum potential stands to not only enable a healthy research culture and high-quality teaching and learning experiences, but will also leverage the use of data, improve accessibility, optimise efficiency, bolster cyber-security, protect itself financially, and even reduce its environmental impact.
The path to successful digital transformation is not without challenges. It demands targeted investments, digitally aware leadership, robust and secure infrastructure, engaged stakeholders, uniform data practices, digitally proficient staff and students, and, perhaps most crucially, a cultural shift towards digital adoption.
Students are central to driving forward digital transformation. Their expectations and experiences of technology are an essential consideration in how a university takes forward its digital vision. Active involvement of students as partners in the co-creation of digital strategies, co-designing the curriculum, informing the reimagining of assessment in the context of AI, supporting the development of digital capabilities, and ensuring the equity of experiences for all students, including international students will drive successful digital transformation.
Sarah’s keynote will introduce the Jisc framework and the accompanying maturity model for digital transformation for higher education and highlight the role of students as partners. After a discussion of how universities are using these resources to support their digital developments, participants will be asked to consider what challenges they see in their own organisations to involving students in digital transformation and how these can be overcome.
About Sarah:
Sarah Knight is head of learning and teaching transformation within the higher education and research directorate at Jisc and is supporting universities with their digital transformation of learning, teaching and assessment. Sarah established the Jisc student experience experts group, an active community which provides valuable consultation and dissemination opportunities for Jisc. Sarah continues to champion Jisc’s change agents’ network: to support staff-student partnership working on technology enhanced curriculum projects. During her 20 years at Jisc, Sarah has led large transformation projects on curriculum design, digital capabilities and learners’ experiences of technology.
Keynote 4 Sarah Knight.pdf
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