Your favourite blogposts in the last year! 🥇

In the last year, the Digital Skills Team including the Student Digital Champions have published many blogposts covering a lot of digital topics and issues. Here are the top 5 blogposts from 2023/24! 

  1. My experience with Code First Girls: Read about one of our experiences in taking a course with Code First Girls and why you should consider joining a course too! 
  2. Begin a new chapter- Apps to help your reading habits: Learn more about the types of apps available to help encourage your reading habits as well as maintain your reading goals.  
  3. Take control of your phone with ScreenZen: Discover ScreenZen and how it can benefit you with a post by our Student Digital Champion after their digital detox.  
  4. Introducing the new AI coaching chatbot in LinkedIn Learning: In case you missed it – a new feature introduced on LinkedIn Learning where an AI coaching chatbot can now provide recommendations and help improve your LinkedIn Learning experience.  
  5. Digital Decluttering: A Student Guide To Organising your Digital Spaces: Clean up your digital spaces with some tips and tricks from our Student Digital Champion. 

To keep up to date with the Digital Skills Blog make sure to subscribe so you don’t miss any posts!  

AberSkills Week 2024 🎉

As part of Aberystwyth University’s extended induction, next week is AberSkills week! There are several events running, you can view all events being held on the AberSkills site but the Digital Skills team are a part of three sessions! These are: 

  • Everyday AI Tools: Presented by Jisc’s Senior AI Specialist Paddy Shepperd, this session will consider the practical use of AI in daily tasks, focusing on productivity-enhancing tools like Microsoft Copilot, Google Docs, and ChatGPT. We will look at AI’s role in education through applications such as Bodyswaps and Anywize and discuss how these can be integrated into learning strategies to enhance efficiency, accuracy, and overall productivity. 
  • Getting Started with LinkedIn Learning: During this session, we will demonstrate how to: 
    • Navigate the platform and search for relevant content 
    • Display certificates for completed courses and your personal LinkedIn profile 
    • Group content based on a particular topic, or content you want to watch at another time, as personal collections 
    • New features recently added to LinkedIn Learning 
  • Digital Skills Workshop: Hands-on experience for new international students here in Aber on the systems that you will use (e.g. Blackboard, Panopto, Turnitin, Student Record, Primo, etc) and some external systems also (e.g. Office 365 software like Word, PowerPoint, LinkedIn Learning etc). 

You can book all sessions through the AberSkills site, you can also view all recordings and resources from the 2023 Digital Skills Festival.  

Delve into Development: Learn more about AI through LinkedIn Learning 🧠

Blogpost by Shân Saunders (Digital Capabilities and Skills Development Coordinator)

AI and generative AI have become increasingly more ingrained into our lives whether through personal or professional use. LinkedIn Learning has a variety of information to help you learn more about AI including how to use AI responsibly. See below for the top 10 courses available on AI and generative AI on LinkedIn Learning. Please note that currently LinkedIn Learning does not support courses in Welsh.  

  1. Understanding the Impact of Deepfake videos (48m) 
  2. What is Generative AI? (1h 3m) 
  3. Introduction to Prompt Engineering for Generative AI (44m) 
  4. Introduction to Artificial Intelligence (1h 34m) 
  5. Get Ready for Generative AI (5m 26s) 
  6. Digital Marketing Trends (2h 30m) 
  7. Ethics in the Age of Generative AI (39m) 
  8. Generative AI: The Evolution of Thoughtful Online Search (26m) 
  9. Artificial Intelligence Foundations: Thinking Machines (1h 36m) 
  10. Generative AI for Business Leaders (57m) 

LinkedIn Learning is a free resource available to all Aberystwyth University students and staff. If you need help accessing your LinkedIn Learning account, please view our FAQ’s or you can email us at 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!

                    Test your understanding of AI with the Jisc Digital Discovery Tool!

                    A new ‘Digital Skills in AI and Generative AI’ questionnaire for students and staff is now available in the Jisc Digital Discovery Tool. This new questionnaire will help you to self-assess and develop your knowledge of AI in the following seven areas:

                    1. AI and digital proficiency
                    2. Responsible AI
                    3. AI and digital productivity
                    4. AI and information and data literacy
                    5. AI and digital communication
                    6. AI and collaboration and participation
                    7. AI and digital creativity

                    After answering a series of questions, which takes around 10-15 minutes, you will receive a personal report which will include:

                    • An overview of your confidence with AI
                    • Suggested actions to take
                    • Links to useful resources, curated by Jisc’s National Centre for AI, to help you develop your knowledge of AI

                    Click here to access the Digital Discovery Tool platform, and watch the short video below to learn how to access this new questionnaire ⬇

                    If you have any queries about this new questionnaire, please contact the Digital Skills Team (digi@aber.ac.uk), or come along with your questions to one of our weekly drop-in sessions!