The digital inclusion debate: The Digital Champions data speaks for itself

25th March 2015

After 18 years at the helm of the good ship Digital Unite, founder Emma Weston took a year off to sail the high seas with her family. It was a long held ambition, and the time away provided ample room for reflection. Here in a series of blog posts, is Emma’s take on where the digital inclusion challenge in the UK is, has been and should be going. In my last post, I explained what our Digital Champions Network looks like, how and why it works. Now I’d like to crunch some numbers for you.Here are some stats from January on the Digital Champions Network for Housing:

DCN4H membership grew 20% in January to 704 Digital Champions (DCs). We now have around 750.
169 DC courses were completed in January (overall total 1317)
A total of 1317 Open Badges were awarded against achievement
Our DCs recorded over 525 sessions with learners (overall total 1900).
Just under 400 tracked learners acquired four or more digital skills thanks to our DCs
Our supporting digitalunite.com website where there are over 400 free end learner resources received 357k visits, which was a 12% increase on the preceding month.
That's eight people per minute or one person every 7.5 seconds supporting someone, or teaching themselves, digital skills.

A new way of valuing and celebrating learning embedded in the Network The stats are just part of the picture of rude health. Another very important facet of the Digital Champions Network for Housing is that it has embraced a whole new way of developing and measuring and evidencing – and celebrating – learning. The courses define a skills set for a Digital Champion and as well as supporting the development of digital skills, support the development of those critical people skills, as well as the often overlooked practical skills, which, pulled together make up the profile of a successful Digital Champion. And there are a range of flavours to savour too: courses for Digital Champions to support learners looking for work, using government services, using digital to manage money better. Each successful course completion leads to a Mozilla Open Badge. Open Badges are, I think, probably one of the most exciting things to happen to learning in the last ten years or so. Actually I did tell someone the other day it was the most exciting thing that had happened in the skills arena in the last 19 years, which is how long Digital Unite has been delivering digital skills. And it is true. The thinking behind the courses is simple. They are agile and flexible and make use of the new forms of learning made possible with digital technology. We should no longer think of valued learning being ‘just’ accredited learning, or Apprenticeships or Degrees. Not that those things aren’t important – but what about expanding it all? Learning is valuable, whatever format that takes. What about thinking of learning as an ecology, made up of different things that fit together as a whole – but small things as well as big things - which is bound by principles, foundations, rules that establish order and methodology. But on which you can build whatever you want, according to need and desire. Perhaps even just for fun or because you are totally passionate about something and want to share that passion. Badges for growing garlic, Badges for mending punctures. Badges for listening to someone with a problem. Badges for knowing how to use the web safely. Badges for pivot tables. Badges for Mail Merging. Badges for helping someone use a smart phone. If it’s a skill, and you can set standards for how you gain that skill, prove you have it, perform the skill yourself, then help someone else acquire it – then you can Badge it. Mozilla Badge Alliance itself refers to the idea of Scouting and Scouts' Badges to describe its vision. You get something to sew on to your sleeve for achievement (showing my age, I expect you now iron on or even scan and super impose, may be you manufacture through 3D printing). Open Badging allows us, working within certain parameters of course, to decide what constitutes reward and how to recognise it. We have decided that our seven Digital Champions courses deliver certain skills and aptitudes, and we can evidence that in the way the learners learn and in how they prove they have assimilate knowledge and skill. And we give them a Badge when they satisfy us that they can do this. Open Badges are also designed to be shareable and transferable; you can put them in a digital backpack and you can put them on online CVs and share them across any digital platform. They move with the individual as that individual moves through the world learning, volunteering, working – being a person - changing. Our network of over 700 Champions have earned just under 1,400 Badges between them, which is truly amazing. Stay tuned for Emma’s final post, which explains how badges can help engage and persuade learners, and how those of us working to spread digiskills far and wide can move forward together.