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Your digital skills and capabilities

Supporting you to develop your digital skills and capabilities, through resources, tools and technologies at Bath.

What are digital skills?

Digital skills are the skills you need to study and work in our fast-evolving digital world. Current technologies are being replaced by more advanced ones increasingly rapidly, so having a strong digital skillset, and feeling confident in your own capabilities to navigate through a constantly changing digital environment, will be very important for your future employment.

The types of skills and capabilities you need include:

  • learning how to use and adapt the right digital devices, applications, software and systems
  • finding, reviewing, organising and sharing information effectively
  • handling data appropriately and establishing good data security practices
  • using different online resources and tools to help you study remotely and engage effectively with your learning
  • being able to communicate and collaborate in a digital setting
  • understanding how to protect yourself, other students and colleagues, to stay safe in the digital environment.
Read our blogs on digital skills

Developing your digital skills

We use the JISC digital capability framework to help you develop and evaluate your digital skills.

This framework categorises digital skills in six key areas:

  1. ICT Proficiency
  2. Information, data and media literacies
  3. Digital creation, problem solving and innovation
  4. Digital communication, collaboration and participation
  5. Digital learning and development
  6. Digital identity and wellbeing.

These are broken down into individual proficiencies and associated to roles such as Learner and Researcher.

We've also compiled University of Bath resources linked to the six areas of digital capabilities. You can use these, as well as the resources highlighted in your personalised report, to develop your skills.

Access digital skills resources on MySkills
Two students work together on a laptop. In the background a third student is looking at a smartphone.

Your digital campus

At Bath you'll use a range of tools for your learning, teaching and assessment:

  • Moodle is our online virtual learning platform used to support learning and teaching, host resources and online activities, and support student collaboration.
  • Inspera is the University’s online assessment platform. You may have to take some exams on Inspera, usually remotely.
  • Re:View (Panopto) is a video platform used to record and store video material.
  • Zoom is a collaborative webinar tool used for online teaching, tutorials and seminars.
  • Mahara is an e-portfolio system used to collect digital content to share learning, skills and development.
  • Office 365 gives you access to Office applications like Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook and Teams.

You can find links to these tools and further guidance on MySkills.

Access guidance on using Bath’s tools on MySkills
Aerial view of a student typing on a laptop.

Importance of digital skills in the workplace

Using these technologies will help you develop your digital capability and confidence to meet the needs of future employers.

    72% of UK businesses surveyed* have a vacancy for workers with digital skills, but only 11% of UK workers possess advanced digital skills.

      68% of businesses find it challenging to hire the digital workers they need. 45% say this is due to a shortage of qualified applicants.

        UK workers with advanced digital skills earn 30% more than those with no digital skills. This translates into individual gains in the region of £11,568 annually.

        *Gallup and Amazon Web Services (AWS) survey on digital skills in the UK economy, February 2023.

        License-free image in 'Your digital campus' section sourced from Unsplash.com.