There are many studies and articles about student’s digital skills and how important they are in the workplace with more employers expecting students to be confident using different technologies in a digital environment. The best method to teach digital skills is to embed them in the curriculum, so it is part of their course - like diversifying the assessment or making them collaborate using digital technologies.

However, there is not many articles or discussion about the digital skills of academics and the level of confidence that they have got using technology. If an academic is confident using technology it will be easier for them to transfer this confidence to students and also transfer those digital skills.

To have a better picture of the technologies and digital skills that academics are using in our department we decided to run a survey at faculty level. This session will cover the findings from the initial Faculty of Social Sciences survey, investigating academic digital capabilities and motivations in learning & teaching. This pilot survey focussed on 5 departments (of 13) in the Faculty and saw responses from Sociology (29), Politics (23), Law (23), East Asian Studies (20), Urban Studies (10).

The survey comprises five sections covering capabilities in digital security, digital proficiency, digital communications, digital creation and digital learning environment (specific to the University of Sheffield) aligned with the JISC Staff Digital Capabilities questionnaire, and an additional section around developing practice with digital tools which seeks to identify: needs, interests, motivation and challenging factors related to the implementation of digital tools in learning & teaching.