Innovation and Digital Literacies Champions are part of the Student Champions Network at the University of Southampton.

There are 12 iChamps across a range of disciplines
Medicine
Health Sciences
Chemistry
Social Sciences (Politics)
Biological Sciences
Humanities (Modern Languages, History, Archaeology, Music)

This summer we have created iChamps for two projects at university level

- Reviewing the VLE
- Digital Skills framework and strategy with the library and the Institute for Learning Innovation and Development.

Their role is to develop digital literacies skills.

They work in partnership and are not doing work for but doing work with

Examples of work has been reviewing modules with education developers and showing academic staff tools that may be useful to achieve those benefits

Interactive video project in Medicine

All iChamps have access to ipads (or other tablets)

we show them cool tools like:
Thinglink
Photocomic
Trello
Infographics
Slack
plus:
support materials and sessions

The best way to explore and influence using technology is to use it.

All iChamps have a Pathbrite ePortfolio tool

This is useful as a tool to store evidence of their work and also to allow them to reflect on what they have been doing to aid learning

Why digital badges?

1. recognition for digital activities (its hard to print off a video)

2. Paper based certificates are one to one, these badges are one to many

3. Students can use as appropriate toa global audience

Not just academic staff but also staff across professional services. Concepts and ideas around using various tools have been applied by comms teams who now use a variety of the tools that we introduced (Eventbrite)

Student Union have also benefitted and have used some of the tools within their own training.

Staff and students benefit from this partnership. So often staff here about activities that they would like to do but just don't have the time or the confidence to do them. By engaging in this way both sides have said that they feel valued, engaged, and supported.

- organisationally digital skills are on the radar with interest in raising the bar to explore and engage with technology enhanced learning

The students are able to influence and direct aspects of the digital work that we are doing.

1.We use the University Careers and Employability service to employ interns.
2. Oversight with Student Champs network for guidance and rigour
3. Work with academic teams on deciding project outcomes
4. Flexible communication via social media or tools as specified by students
5. Space for studies and 'when things go wrong!
6. Plenty of online information