International Day of Forests 🌲

Today – 21st March 2025 – is International Day of Forests and to celebrate we’re revisiting all our blogposts and DigiTips related to nature! 

  1. Plant your Productivity with the Flora app! 🌼: Available on iOS and Android, Flora is an interactive productivity app where you can store to-do lists and build positive habits.
  2. DigiTip 40: Get More Connected to Nature with Seek by iNaturalist 🔎🌼: You may come across birds, plants, fungi, and amphibians that you can’t identify. Using image recognition technology, the Seek by iNaturalist app will help you take your knowledge of nature to the next level! 
  3. Nature at your fingertips: My favourite apps for exploring the outdoors 🍃🌻: To enhance your outdoor adventures, I’ve compiled a list of my favourite free apps that will hopefully spark your curiosity and deepen your appreciation for nature.
  4. DigiTip 4 – Increase your productivity whilst helping the planet with the Forest App 🌱: Do you want to increase your productivity whilst helping the planet? The Forest App will help reduce your procrastination and distractions whilst giving you the extra incentive to stay productive, by growing trees and earning virtual coins to unlock new plants depending on how long you have stayed productive for.

International Women’s Day 2025 #AccelerateAction

Today we celebrate International Women’s Day! The 2025 theme is #AccelerateAction and is an important message that focuses on speeding up the achievement of gender equality. At its current rate it is predicted that we won’t achieve gender equality until 2158 and so this International Women’s Day calls for us to work together to create a more inclusive world. You can view the resources below inspired by International Women’s Day. These include a selection of LinkedIn Learning videos and courses, please note that the University’s subscription to LinkedIn Learning finishes on 28th March 2025. If you have completed any training courses on LinkedIn Learning and wish to retain your certificate(s) of completion, please view our previous blogpost to learn more about this.  

  1. Code First Girls: Code First Girls is a free online service that is partnered with Aberystwyth University and is dedicated to providing coding courses to help women and non-binary people develop their coding skills. 
  1. What is equality? (3m 43s) 
  1. What is equity? (2m 19s) 
  1. Inclusive Tech: Closing the Pay Gap (53m) 
  1. Inclusive Female Leadership (40m) 
  1. Does inclusion really change the game in tech? (2m 22s) 
  1. The link between inclusion, equity, and allyship (2m 20s) 
  1. Unconscious bias (28m) 

If you have any issues accessing the LinkedIn Learning videos or courses, please contact the Digital Skills Team at digi@aber.ac.uk.  

Remember to download your LinkedIn Learning Certificates 📥

The University’s subscription to LinkedIn Learning will end in March 2025. If you have completed any training courses on LinkedIn Learning and wish to retain your certificate(s) of completion, you have just over a month to download them. You can view this short video for guidance of how to do this. 

If you haven’t used LinkedIn Learning before, there’s still time for you to log in and make use of this resource to develop your digital skills! Please visit our webpage for further guidance. 

Our Graduates Top Skills 🎓

In 2024, our Student Digital Champions conducted interviews with eight Aberystwyth University graduates to understand what skills they now use after graduating and skills that they wished they had learnt and developed while at university. Below are the top five skills across all the profiles that the graduates now use and how you can develop these skills: 

  1. Microsoft Excel 
  1. Microsoft Teams/Online Meeting Platforms 
  1. Photoshop and Editing Software 
  1. Outlook 
  1. Microsoft PowerPoint 

If you would like to read the Graduate Digital Skills Profiles, you can view them here or you can download them here.  

International Day of Education 🏫

24th January 2025 marks International Day of Education and we’re celebrating by recapping resources available to develop your digital skills.  

LinkedIn Learning [available until March 2025] 

Free to all AU staff and students until March 2025, an online platform offering thousands of expert-led courses suitable for all levels, from beginner to advanced. With LinkedIn Learning, you can develop a wide range of skills, from utilising AI tools and presenting with confidence to mastering new software, including various programming languages and Microsoft applications. You can view our webpages for more information including getting started with LinkedIn Learning

Digital Skills Festival  

In 2023, we arranged the Digital Skills Festival and had a variety of internal and external speakers present on a variety of topics such as AI, Excel, Digital Wellbeing and Cyber security. You can view all the resources and recordings from every session here.  

Jisc: Everyday AI Tools 

As part of Aber Skills Week 2024, we invited Jisc’s Senior AI specialist Paddy Shepperd to talk about ‘Everyday AI Tools’, what tools can be used, how they’re advancing and the dangers. You can view the recording of the entire session here

AberSkills 

AberSkills is the central hub for all skills development on is available on the university webpages. AberSkills includes access to skills workshops, alongside help with library and information skills, wellbeing, and maths, stats and numerical skills.  

DigiTips 

Every Tuesday since September 2023, the Digital Skills Team have posted a small tip or trick to help develop your digital skills. You can view all DigiTips here.  

Study Buddy! A collection of resources to help you prepare for exams 📚

As we approach exam season, please see below a collection of resources to help you prepare for exams. The resources include organisational tips, study skills as well as suggestions to support your digital wellbeing during stressful times.

Effective exam prep and revision

Please login with your AU email and password

Tackling exam stress

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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).  

Resources Wrap up: Merry Christmas from the Digital Skills Team! 🎅🏻🎄

2024 has been a productive year for the Digital Skills team! Below is a list of the favourite things we’ve created in the last year including new formats, events, and resources:  

We hope that you’ve enjoyed using these resources as much as we’ve enjoyed making them. We’d like to wish you all a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year and we look forward to supporting your skills in 2025!  

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.