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Digital Capability, Skills and Support aims to provide you with a range of guidance, information and resources relating to teaching, learning and assessment. In the first instance, please use our dedicated search list ‘looking for something in particular’. This provides you with links to the source of content. Wherever there are multiple sources, these will appear on this page. As part of the development of Academic Essentials, we are working with our stakeholders to bring together all multiple sources of content into one place. The content here has been curated by a range of stakeholders from across both academic and professional services teams and is managed by the Academic Development & Diversity (AD&D) Team.

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Tools and Resources

An A-Z library of tools and resources that support digital capability, skills and development.  Select one of the following titles:

Digital Accessibility | Twitter | Video Conferencing | Viv Engage | Webinars

 

Digital Accessibility

Digital Skills Hub: digital accessibility  A range of SCULPT resources and training guides		Digital Learning Team: A range of resources and training guides to support your teaching & learning
Academic Development & Diversity: A range of resources that focus on inclusive pedagogy & practice		Mandatory staff module: digital accessibility Log into Blackboard using your SHU credentials
In Conversation: digital accessibility  A short podcast in which colleagues discuss how digital accessibility techniques can be adopted to produce more inclusive teaching materials		Social Media for Learning: blog on digital accessibility Health checks and points to consider

 

Sector Resources

• Are your websites accessible?
  • Web Accessibility Initiative: an alt decision tree – this decision tree describes how to use the alt text facility on images. 
  • Web Accessibility in Mind Conference:
    • a selection of webinars (YouTube) from WebAIM.
    • a selection of training documents to create accessible documents, such as word, PowerPoint and Acrobat.
    • courses: free enrolment to their training cohorts, open from November 2023 – February 2023.
  • PopeTech: bring to you their November Accessibility Focus: colour contrast – articles and videos.
  • Designing for web accessibility website – introduces some basic considerations to help you get started making your user interface design and visual design more accessible to people with disabilities. 
  • Read more on the Global Accessibility Awareness’ Day website.
  • Accessibility Insights – The “Headings” and “Tab stop” checkers are really handy to make sure your sight has correct headers and it can be navigated via keyboard.
  • Wave –  checks lots of issues and gives you a little report. 

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Twitter

Visit the Social Media for Learning blog site brought to you by Sue Beckingham, which features:

• Twitter feed getting a little congested? Muting tweets may be the solution to resolve this!
• Twitter – how to make images accessible on Twitter and why it’s important

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Video Conferencing

• December 2020: Digital Learning Team: running a virtual conference and the mechanisms they put in place to make it a success – Deanna Taylor.
• Videoconferencing Alternatives: How Low-Bandwidth Teaching Will Save Us All – Daniel Stanford: “When we try to replicate classroom experiences in an online environment, it’s easy to think of video conferencing as our go-to tool for all sorts of learning objectives—and for good reason. Most of us have participated in a video conference at work or had a video chat with friends or family at some point. We like the idea of being able to see and hear our students while interacting with them in real time just like we do when teaching face to face. But there are two key factors that make this approach problematic………..”
• When the VLE becomes your campus -Some thoughts on engaging learners online, edited by Annehole: Association for learning technology (ALT). This blog post offers some suggestions on ‘temporarily’ switching from campus-based teaching to online delivery and how you can help students to engage online. The blog is based on a review of the scholarly literature on online engagement by Redmond, Heffernan, Abawi, Brown and Henderson (2018). 

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Viva Engage

Viva Engage is a workplace social app for Hallam staff. Previously known as Yammer, it’s now part of our Office 365 licence and available within Teams, Outlook and SharePoint. We’re tidying it up to make it more secure and clear out some old inactive groups – so it won’t be available for a few weeks. Soon, we’ll be relaunching it as a place to connect socially with your colleagues across the University and create workplace communities that aren’t bound by organisational structures or project teams. If you have a suggestion for a community you’d like to run or if you would like to be part of the Viva Engage pilot we’ll be running over summer, please let us know.

Webinars

• Webinars – best practice
• Webinars – ensuring your practices are inclusive and accessible 
• Webinars: Webcams ofWf or on? – Centre for Innovation in Education explores the question.
• Webinars and Meetings – Inclusive and Engaging Practice – Presented by Neil Mayne in the Academic Development and Diversity Team, the session focused on practical Zoom and Collaborate essentials by managing group activities, using protocols and modelling online interaction. If you have any queries about this session, contact the Academic Development & Diversity Team. 

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Last updated: 18th September 2023 NB