Remember to download your Digital Discovery Tool reports 📲

There is still just over a month until our subscription to the Jisc Digital Discovery Tool ends on 31 July 2024.

If you would like to keep any copies of your individual reports, please ensure you download them before this date, as you won’t be able to access your reports after 31 July 2024. This FAQ provides step-by-step guidance on how to do this.

If you haven’t used the Digital Discovery Tool before, there’s still time for you to log in and make use of this resource to self-assess and develop your confidence with technology! Please visit our webpage for further guidance.

Master your tech skills with LinkedIn Learning’s new Complete Guide Courses 👨‍💻

Blogpost by Sioned Llywelyn (Digital Skills Lead)

Complete Guide Courses are now available in LinkedIn Learning to all at Aberystwyth University. These courses are fantastic for those that want to delve into developing specific tech skills with expert instructors. Whether you’re a beginner aiming to learn a new programme from scratch, or someone with more experience looking to progress further, these courses could be for you.

Here’s an example of some of the available Complete Guide courses with new ones being released each month:

Screenshot from the Complete Guide to Power BI course

What are the advantages of Complete Guide Courses?

  1. They are 5 or more hours in length, ensuring that you’ll gain a depth of knowledge in that chosen topic
  2. They are organised into manageable short videos and chapters meaning that you can look at only a specific piece of the course if needed
  3. Many of these courses include hands-on practice features, providing you with the opportunity to practice what you’ve learnt

If you have any questions about LinkedIn Learning, please contact the Digital Skills Team (digi@aber.ac.uk).

Thank you to our ’23-24 Student Digital Champions

Banner with Student Digital Champion

As we bid farewell to our ’23-24 Student Digital Champions, Laurie, Joel, and Noel, we want to thank them for their wonderful contributions over the past year. They have worked tirelessly to encourage students across the university to develop their digital skills and have provided us with valuable insights into what support students need.

Laurie Stevenson
Noel Czempik
Joel Williams

If you haven’t taken a look at their work yet, we’ve a listed a few key highlights below:

  • Digital Skills Profile Series
    • Graduate Digital Skills Profile Series – 8 profiles of recent AU graduates about their use of digital skills in their lives since graduating, and the skills they wish they had developed further before they left Aberystwyth.
    • Employer Digital Skills Profile Series – The champions have also been working on a series of profiles with 8 employers. Keep your eyes peeled on the blog as these will be released next academic year!

DigiTip 33: Enable live captions in your MS Teams meetings 💬

Here is your final DigiTip for this academic year but you can catch up on all of our previous DigiTIps from this page. We hope that you’ve found our tips useful, and we’ll be back in September ’24 where we’ll continue support your confidence with technology, one DigiTip at a time!

Do you sometimes struggle in larger meetings to know who is currently speaking? …..“was that Ffion or Bethan?!” Maybe you’re working in a loud environment and are struggling to hear others in the meeting speak? Perhaps you’ve joined a meeting where the language spoken isn’t your first language? Or perhaps you appreciate the accessibility of having subtitles?

If any of the above are true for you, then you will likely find the functionality to enable live captions in MS Teams useful. Watch the video below to learn how to enable live captions:

It’s worth noting a couple of things if you’re using this feature:

  • Live captions are only visible to those that have enabled the feature within the meeting, meaning that if you switch them on, they won’t automatically appear for everyone!
  • Live caption data is permanently deleted after a meeting, so no one will have access to this information.

Visit this webpage for further support and guidance in using MS Teams.

Stand out from the crowd with LinkedIn Learning Certificates 🏆

In today’s competitive job market, it’s important for university students to stand out. One way to do this is by earning certificates for completed courses on your Aberystwyth University LinkedIn Learning account and adding them to your personal LinkedIn profile.

But why does this matter? Adding certificates increases your chances of being found by recruiters looking for specific skills, showing them your commitment to ongoing learning and career development, making you a more appealing candidate.

Watch the video below to learn how to add LinkedIn Learning certificates to your personal LinkedIn profile

Learn more about LinkedIn Learning from this session at the Digital Skills Festival ’23 (Welsh session; English session)

If you have any questions about adding LinkedIn Learning certificates to your personal LinkedIn profile, please contact the Digital Skills Team (digi@aber.ac.uk) or view the official LinkedIn Learning Certificate FAQ page.

DigiTip 31: Quickly minimise all your open windows 💥

This is a very quick tip, but hopefully a useful one! There may be occasions where you need to minimise all the open windows and apps on your laptop or desktop screen. Perhaps you are just about to start presenting and want to remove all open windows? Or you may just want to remove all clutter and get back to your desktop?

You can press the Windows key + D to minimise all open apps and windows and will take you back to the desktop. If you want to reopen all windows and apps, just press the same keystrokes again!

To follow our DigiTips, subscribe to our Digital Skills Blog. Or alternatively, you can bookmark this webpage, where a new DigiTip will be added each week!  

Make the most of technology as you prepare for your exams 💻📚

As we near towards the start of the Semester 2 examinations, we’ve put together a range of resources to help you make the most of technology as you prepare and revise for your exams.

(Please login with your AU email and password)

(Please login with your AU email and password)

Please also take a look at the general FAQ’s for exams, and if you have any questions about any of the resources listed above, please contact the Digital Skills Team (digi@aber.ac.uk).  

Develop your AI Skills with hands-on practice in LinkedIn Learning 👩‍💻

Back in October 2023, we wrote about an exciting new partnership between LinkedIn Learning and CoderPad, which brought forth the addition of Code Challenges to LinkedIn Learning. These challenges are tailored to assist learners, from beginners to advanced, in developing their coding skills through interactive exercises and real-time feedback. You can revisit our previous blogpost on this collaboration here.

AI and Generative AI are swiftly becoming the cornerstones of innovation. To support your development in these skills, LinkedIn Learning has expanded its collection to include 73 courses with hands-on practice for AI and Generative AI skills. You can find all of these courses on this webpage or explore a selection of them below.

Beginner

Intermediate

Advanced

All students and staff have access to all courses on LinkedIn Learning, including those with hands-on practice, through your free Aberystwyth University LinkedIn Learning account. If you have any queries about LinkedIn Learning or accessing any of the content mentioned in this blogpost, please contact the Digital Skills Team (digi@aber.ac.uk), or come along with your questions to one of our weekly drop-in sessions!

Boost your productivity in MS Teams 💡 

Blogpost by Sioned Llywelyn (Digital Skills Lead) 

As someone who uses Microsoft Teams every day for work, I’ve discovered a collection of useful keyboard shortcuts and tips that have helped me in navigating the platform more efficiently. Whether you’re a staff member jumping from one meeting to the next, or a student using MS Teams to collaborate on projects or attend virtual lectures, these tips should help you to make the most of MS Teams. 

Keyboard ShortcutDescription
Ctrl+Shift+O Turn off your camera 
Ctrl+Shift+M Mute your microphone 
Ctrl+K Create shorter hyperlinks 
Shift+Enter Start a new line in the chatbox without sending the message 
Summary of the key keyboard shortcuts mentioned in this blogpost

Turn off your camera quickly

There are times when you need to quickly turn off your video during a call, it may be that your bandwidth is limited or there are distractions behind you. Quickly toggle your camera on and off by using the Ctrl+Shift+O shortcut. 

Customise your hyperlinks

Instead of cluttering your messages with lengthy URLs, make use of the Ctrl+K shortcut. This shortcut allows you to customise the displayed text for your hyperlink, making your messages more concise!

Mute your microphone

Background noise can also disrupt meetings (I have two dogs that bark whenever someone rings the doorbell, so this is my most-used shortcut!) Use Ctrl+Shift+M to mute and unmute your microphone swiftly. 

Refine your search results

Teams has an useful search functionality, but sometimes it can yield too many results! Make the most of the available filters to refine your search and to save you time.

Start a new line in the chatbox without sending your message

Typing messages in Teams can be tricky, especially when you want to add line breaks without sending the incomplete message. Use Shift+Enter to start a new line in the chatbox without sending the message prematurely.

Make quick decisions with the polling feature

Do you need to gather opinions or make decisions quickly? If you’re looking to create a poll once you’ve started your meeting, Teams offers a built-in polling feature.

Please note: We suggest that you use Vevox, AU’s polling tool, if you’re looking to set up a poll in advance of your online meeting or session.

Mark messages as urgent or important

Do you want to send an important message on Teams and are worried that it will get lost within a stream of messages? To solve this issue, you can mark any messages as urgent or important in MS Teams.

Do you have any other shortcuts or other general tips when you’re using MS Teams? If so, we’d love to hear from you! Share your tips and shortcuts in the box below

Develop your Digital Communication Skills 📱

Want to learn how to improve your digital communication skills and especially how to use Instagram to promote your Business or Social Enterprise?

AberPreneurs, part of the University’s Careers Service, are running an exciting online event, Instagram for your Business/Social Enterprise – with Kacie Morgan, on Wednesday 24 April (14:10-15:00). This session will be delivered online on MS Teams, and you can join here.

For any queries, please contact aberpreneurs@aber.ac.uk.