Digital visa launch
The digital communications team has officially launched a programme of training sessions known as the digital visa. The digital visa will provide essential training in digital communications topics to anyone who works on the University’s website or with the digital communications team.
The visa enables staff to feel competent and confident working on digital communications projects, and provides new skills in a range of digital areas.
Participants who sign up and complete the five compulsory training sessions from the digital visa will become trusted digital advocates, and will be one of the first points of contact between their department and the digital communications team.
We’ve been working on building the digital visa for a while (see our original plan for the visa). Now, we have finalised the following five compulsory sessions:
- Digital communications at St Andrews
Introduces you to the digital communications team at St Andrews and the support we provide for staff at the University. - Digital pattern library
Allows you to correctly use patterns from the digital pattern library (DPL) in a content management system. - Social media: the basics
Allows you to confidently develop a basic social media strategy. - Google Analytics
Trains each participant to measure the performance of their website and understand their users’ behaviour by creating a dashboard in Google Analytics. - Writing for the web
Allows you to identify and implement user needs in web writing and design.
These sessions can be taken in any order, and they will run regularly throughout the year. To sign up for the digital visa programme, please email Jennifer Hamrick (me), digital trainer, at [email protected]. Those signed up will receive emails alerting them to when the next training session will run.
You can also sign up for any of these courses individually via PDMS. If you later decide to enroll on the digital visa programme, the courses you’ve already taken will be counted towards your visa.
We are currently working on developing optional courses that participants can take as part of the programme. These may include:
- Advanced writing for the web
- WordPress for content contributors
- WordPress for administrators
- Social media for research dissemination
- Build your own website
- User personas and journeys
- Screen casting
- Usability testing
- CSS and code languages
- Digital rights and legalities.
If you would like to training provided within your department, please contact Jennifer Hamrick about setting up specialised courses for your group.
We are also opening some of the courses to PhD students, where relevant.
If you have any questions, please email Jennifer Hamrick, digital trainer, at [email protected]