Yuemiao Ma

This article was originally posted on my WordPress site, now replaced by this Github Page

The journey of Digital Skills Specialist Edinburgh Award has been fleeting. Four months ago I wasn’t quite clear about what digital skills mean, but now I am more confident in this topic and sharing my experience with others.

Among the six categories of digital skills according to Digital Discovery Tool, I chose three of them to develop during the programme, which are:

Even though the Edinburgh Award programme outlined major steps we can take to improve these skills, such as self-directed learning on LinkedIn Learning and training sessions from the university, my steps went beyond and I applied some skills to my daily research and work, plus finishing a personal project, and I think this is the most meaningful part of the Edinburgh Award.

To build on my information, data and media literacies, I first took online courses like ‘Information Literacy’ on LinkedIn, and some training sessions like ‘Data literacy for beginners’, ‘Basic Excel Visualisations’. I joined the Developing your data skills programme to get some basic knowledge about data science and programming. Even though my PhD research works more from a qualitative perspective, I believe every one of us cannot be exempt from quantitative data which can provide perspectives of generalisations that help us get quicker ideas about one situation. Also, these trainings improved my awareness of the potential biases of data.

The development of digital communication, collaboration and participation comes more from practical steps, such as building professional profiles on Twitter and LinkedIn, and starting leading a project team and chairing online meetings. I have been using Zoom or Teams as a learner, but rarely as an organiser, and it is indeed something different. As a chair/moderator, I need to not only keep an eye on the chatbox but also respond to any queries and discussions within the team promptly. It is something difficult, especially when sometimes the technology fails and you cannot see/hear others properly, but this triggers me to think of better ways and make better preparation next time. As I think working and collaborating online can be normal in the near future, I will continue working on this, both by taking trainings and reflecting on real scenarios, to become more skilful in being an online team leader.

The third skillset I developed is digital creation, problem solving and innovation, and this is directly linked to my personal project. I have thought about building a personal blog site for a long time – though I now have a blog in Chinese, I would like to transform it into an English, WordPress-based blog site as a platform to showcase my research to a wider audience, especially because my research area is International Education. I took the opportunity of Edinburgh Award to learn how to build a WordPress site, and how to blog. I do not want my blog to be a solely personal site for reflection, but serves more functions like knowledge sharing, and resources gathering that might benefit more audience.

One problem I identified and tried to solve with a blog post (which is part of the Edinburgh Award project) is that I noticed a lot of educational events happening around the campus may not be well advertised to attract the most suitable audience. So I listed some principles when considering promoting an event, such as who the target audience is (specialised or general), what the format is (online, in-person or hybrid), and it is better to state these clearly in the advertisements. Then I introduced some tools to help to advertise, ranging from email newsletter tools to poster and video making tools. This is the section where I utilised some other digital skills, like information literacy, to evaluate and select what tools to put in my blog. Nevertheless, some of the tools are not free, so I did not try them myself but referred to some secondary resources on the Internet.

But this is still quite an early stage of my blog site. When being asked what I will do with this blog in the future, I will first use it as a place to showcase some of my research ideas, or some thoughts from readings or fieldwork, which I may not have opportunities to publish as academic papers. Secondly, to reflect on my PhD experience, both academic and non-academic, including this Edinburgh Award experience, and some voluntary work or internship that I am taking up. Thirdly, if it is possible in the future, I might invite some of my PhD classmates to write posts, as I think there should be more opportunities for PhD students to present their work, especially those in their 1st and 2nd years. Apart from effort in organising socialising activities, I do believe PhD students care more about their research and their academic identity, and practising presenting their work in different forms (slides, blogs, posters) to different audience can really help them get a clearer idea of what they are doing (at least this is the case for me!)

Now linking back to my Edinburgh Award experience, I think what’s most helpful and I will definitely take to the future is the development of reflexivity. We choose three skills at the beginning, reflect on the progress at the end of every stage, and keep a record of what we do well or what needs improving. When finally looking back, it is astonishing that I can achieve so much more than I had expected, and I know where I am heading in the next stage. This is not only a development of digital skills, but it links to every aspect of my academic life, career development, and personal management, and will no doubt have an all-round impact. I would like to take this opportunity to thank every staff who is involved in organising the Digital Skills Specialist Edinburgh Award programme.

Hope that more students will join the Digital Skills Specialist Edinburgh Award and find it useful for their future study and life!

This blog is part of the completion of the Digital Skills Specialist Edinburgh Award.