A whole institution digital training initiative - Digital Practice Sessions
DPS Offered training on 20 software packages + digital pedagogy.
NTU lacked a coherent, scalable training offer for academic colleagues seeking to enhance their use of digital tools in teaching, Digital Practice Sessions sought to remedy this.
- Project Overview
Digital Practice Sessions (DPS) was launched as NTU’s first structured, whole-institution software training service for academic staff. Aligned with the university’s ambition to become the most digitally sophisticated in the UK, the initiative tackled a long-standing gap in digital skills development. In just over a year, DPS became one of NTU’s largest staff development programmes, engaging over 3000 academic colleagues and fundamentally reshaping digital upskilling across the university.
- About the Role
NTU Lacked a coherent scalable digital training offer for academic colleagues.
As the project lead and first-ever Digital Academic Practice Trainer at NTU, I developed and delivered the Digital Practice Sessions as an informal, discussion-based service focused on practical, contextualised use of digital tools in teaching.
- The Challenge and Response
Within twelve months over 2000 academic colleagues had engaged with DPS.
NTU lacked a coherent, scalable training offer for academic colleagues seeking to enhance their use of digital tools in teaching. Despite increasing reliance on technology, staff engagement with software training had historically been low.
The challenge was clear – meet staff where they are and ensure they get an ROI on the time they invest to engage with the service.
Sessions deliberately avoided jargon and were sensitive to subject-specific needs, offering examples and walkthroughs grounded in attendees’ academic disciplines. The ripple effect of DPS extended beyond attendance. Academic departments began requesting tailored follow-up sessions, many of which were eventually offered more widely. Session formats were flexible in length to accommodate academic schedules and DPS championed evidence-led advocacy, often feedback and ‘you said – we did’ formed a central part of the communication strategy.
To Scale Impact:
Secured senior stakeholder backing for promotion and visibility.
Built automated reporting dashboards in PowerBI to track KPIs and present strategic value.
Developed a complementary subscription newsletter to drive ongoing engagement.
Delivered the programme as a solo lead, managing design, delivery, marketing, and feedback collection, automating where possible using MS Powerautomate.
- The Impact
Traffic to the service grew 100% Month on Month for the first three months.
Feedback from Academics and Professional services staff was excellent, we received 800 feedback survey completions in 11 months – the annual KPI was 350. Colleagues praised the no-jargon informal delivery style as something that led them to book onto subsequent sessions. They also highlighted the immediate impact the training would have on their practice. Some notable highs included supporting an institution-wide role out of Team Based Learning (TBL) and Supporting every workplace tutor across nine schools with Pebblepad to support NTU’s ambitions for apprenticeships.
If you have any questions or want to chat you can use this link to contact me.
Some of the highlights*...
*real feedback and roles, anonymised names!
“The feedback today was overwhelmingly positive about how useful the videos and NOW learning room materials that Ally has created in support of delivering TBL using existing NTU software. This has meant a significant financial saving for the university, as well as increased staff confidence.”
Anne
Head of Academic Development
“You explained it clearly and very well – thanks for this!”
“Very informative and can immediately see how this fits in – Thanks”
“Thank you Alastair – just what we needed at the start of term”
“Easy to see how this connects with the rest of my role – thanks again!”
Various
Academic Colleagues
“Your sessions have been particularly engaging and exceptionally well delivered. Using MS Teams makes the live sessions easy to access… The presentation of the Sessions has been particularly easy to engage with and absorb. The logical structuring, thoughtfulness, and demonstrations make them refreshingly coherent and immediately applicable.”
Louise
Research Fellow