Dr Hanya Pielichaty – Senior Lecturer/ Programme Leader/ Digital Lead – Lincoln International Business School – Staff Profile
DSAG is the first student-led group of its kind across the university. Previously there had not been an organised group for students to join to assist them with the transition from studying to ‘digital’ industry. Furthermore, there was not an established means for engaging the College with digital technologies in a front-facing capacity previously.
The development of DSAG has taken two streams, firstly student skills development and secondly outward-facing engagement. In terms of skills development, DSAG members attended the Digital Transformations conference in London and also received internal workshops on digital photography and digital marketing to assist their progress and development.
Secondly, Hanya coordinated the Digital Talk Series 2017/18 for its second year which combined guest speakers with DSAG-led workshops. The series involved three guest speaker events and three workshops.
Speakers
- The Digital Generation – Where do we belong? Panel Discussion – a joint venture with Frequency Festival. The panel involved:
- YouTuber – Alice Thorpe
- LOV Young People’s Programme Member – Benjamin Reynolds – LOVFilm Project Coordinator
- Digital Student Ambassador from Business School x 2
- CHAIR: Journalist – Matthew Whitehouse – Arts and Culture Editor at i-D magazine
- Professional Caster Ceirnan “Excoundrel” Lowe, Advisory Board Member of British eSports Association ‘Esports: The Billion Dollar Year’
- Mark Walker, (Marketing Director at Attest) ‘Succeeding in a Fragmented Digital World’
Workshops
- Your digital narrative – Vlogging and blogging
- Global Identities in a Digital World
- Digital ‘Circuits’: How to…
- Social media for business: sustainability and marketing
- How to Instagram
- Making the most of LinkedIn
- Blogging for beginners
Event attendance has been positive at the Digital Talk Series Sessions. In total an estimated 97 students, 13 staff members and 27 members of the public/business members have taken part so far.
We have also made impact via our online presence, 201 followers on Twitter and interactions with the blog.This case study demonstrates the effectiveness of encouraging student agency to create, provide and present key information to staff, peers and external partners. It is important to allow students to take control of their own ideas and provide a safe and supportive environment to excel.
The DSAG talks approached and tackled some very current issues that young people specifically may be facing in this new digital era, as well as bringing clarification to newly emerging digital platforms, an example being the E-Sports talk. Each was fascinating in its own right, with use of interaction and audience engagement balanced correctly. I thoroughly enjoy the use of guest speakers and panels, the I-D hosted talk was especially interesting, due to the foregrounded effect that image and representation has on us; it really generated some good arguments and points that many people wouldn’t even of considered before’ (Member of the Public, attendee, 2018).
‘I would perhaps like to highlight the usefulness of vlogging, as it was presented by your students, due to the dynamic and visual nature of a video that will normally help students remember better than written materials via blogs or otherwise. For example, in the foreign languages teaching and learning process, we can explain phonetically how to pronounce certain words depending on the region or country where the native speaker comes from, but by creating a vlog of different speakers with different regional accents, would help the students understand very quickly what we have been explaining phonetically and would also have a more lasting effect. Additionally, students could create their own vlogs speaking in the foreign language with another student in the same seminar, for example, and tutors could advise about the best way to improve their pronunciation and intonation further’
(LIBS staff member, 2018).