Essential Digital Skills impact | Centre for Technology Enhanced Learning

Preparing students for success with the Essential Digital Skills Programme

The King’s Essential Digital Skills Programme was launched in time for the 2020-2021 academic year and over 4000 King’s students joined the programme and had close to 1 million interactions with the programme content. The programme proved to be successful in increasing students’ digital competence and confidence, and access to digital skills training, as well as raising awareness about King's services, systems, and processes and the importance of having digital skills for employability.

The programme had a positive impact on users. The below stats are based on the 355 students that completed the programme evaluation.

Impact Stats

67% reported that the programme helped in achieving their study goals so far
78% use learnt skills daily for studies
74% use learnt skills when applying for jobs or further study
84% feel motivated to keep using learnt skills
69% wasted less time dealing with technical or digital problems
80% increased confidence in the digital world
67% strengthened sense of belonging towards King's.

Programme Reaction Stats  

91% satisfied with overall programme
83% effective use of my time
89% programme covered enough material
78% material covered was the correct level for me
85% the material covered met my needs as a student at King's
90% the style (self-paced and online) of programme worked
83% the Essential Digital Skills training motivated me to continue developing my digital skills
84% would recommend the programme to a friend

Although the programme provided effective training in digital skills for all students, individual differences did exist in training experience, notably around ethnicity and student status, with BAME students and international students feeling that the training made a greater contribution to their skill levels and resulting in greater behaviour change and impact as well as intention to undertake further training. The Essential Digital Skills Programme can therefore be used to mitigate biases and serve to support BAME and/or disadvantaged students.

A comprehensive evaluation was carried out to measure the impact and benefits of the programme with the findings outlined in the benefits realisation report and summarised in the executive summary.