The meeting formerly known as ‘DAB’
- The Digital Advisory Board (DAB) has been replaced with the Digital Forum.
- The Digital Forum will take place on the last Wednesday afternoon of each month.
- All staff are welcome to attend.
- The format of the Digital Forum will be presentations, discussions and workshops.
- The Digital Forum will continue to provide updates on digital services and changes at the University.
- The first Digital Forum of 2019 will be taking place in February, and will be the University’s first ever ‘digital retrospective’.
2018 saw the conclusion of the External Website Programme. Over a period of around five years, the digital communications team redesigned key aspects of the prospective student web experience. As these changes took place, the team met monthly with staff from around the University to provide updates on progress. This meeting was known as the Digital Advisory Board (DAB).
And with the conclusion of the External Website Programme, so sees the conclusion of the DAB, as the remit of the meeting no longer aligns with the action plan for digital communications going forward.
With this in mind, the team agreed that 2019 would be the perfect opportunity to introduce a ‘new DAB’, with more of a focus on discussion between attendees and hosts, as apposed to us just giving various updates on things we’re working on.
This new meeting is now going to be called the Digital Forum.
Purpose of the Digital Forum
The objectives of the Digital Forum are to:
- empower staff to complete a variety of web tasks themselves
- gain an understanding of the state of digital across the University in Schools, Departments and service units
- engage with staff on digital best practice and create discussions, workshops and presentations surrounding this.
The new format
The previous DAB format typically relied on the digital communications team spending the entire hour presenting to attendees. It is our hope that the new Digital Forum will be more discussion-led, and will feature more practical workshops throughout the year so that attendees will be more involved in topics on digital best practice.
The team are also keen to involve staff from other teams and departments to present on topics that could benefit multiple groups across the University.
After gathering feedback from DAB attendees at the end of 2018, it was apparent that regular updates from the team were important. These updates will now be featured in the monthly newsletter instead. Coincidentally, the newsletter will now go out at the start of the month, to summarise the most recent Digital Forum, and provide updates.
Furthermore, the Digital Forum will not be minuted. Members of staff who wish to stay up-to-date with project updates should sign up to the digital newsletter. We will also be posting summaries of meetings on this blog.
Sign up to the digital newsletter
When is the Digital Forum?
As well as the change in purpose and format, we’re also changing the day the meeting takes place. Instead of the last Tuesday of the month, the Digital Forum will take place on the last Wednesday of each month. We’re hoping this change could encourage more academic staff to attend as most students aren’t taught on Wednesday afternoons.
The first official Digital Forum will take place on Wednesday 27 February 2019.
Who can attend?
Any member of staff at the University who is interested in learning more about digital best practice and digital trends is welcome to attend.
February 2019: A digital retrospective
We are excited to announce that the first Digital Forum meeting will be a hands-on workshop that will ask attendees to evaluate their own experience with digital at the University of St Andrews. This could include the good, bad and ugly about hardware, software, content, design, training. Basically anything that you consider falling into the realm of ‘digital’.
The best question to ask yourself is this: what does your digital landscape at the University look like, and how does it function?
The format of this session will mirror that of a traditional Agile retrospective. For those who haven’t encountered a retrospective before, we’ve covered the basic organisation of one, and the benefits of them previously. In a nutshell, colleagues come together and analyse what is working well, and what could be improved going forwards. As Gareth once put it:
“It’s about slowly but surely getting better at what we do. It’s about recognising that our processes are not perfect, that we are not perfect, but that together we will slowly work to improve things.”
The aim of this session is for all those attending to gain a sense of how people experience digital services and technology on a daily basis throughout the University.
Due to this setup, it is likely that the inaugural Digital Forum will last 1.5 hours, whereas other Digital Forum meetings are likely to take 1 hour.
Additional details about the meeting can be found in the event listing.
February onwards
We hope that the digital retrospective will highlight areas that would benefit from additional discussion and debate in future Digital Forums throughout the year.
However, if you have an idea, topic, workshop or discussion point which could work at the Digital Forum, please let the digital communications team know. In addition, if you are interested in running a workshop or leading a discussion on a digital subject please also let us know! Contact [email protected].