Bringing together universities and colleges involved in the apprenticeship journey, and how digital and technology can enhance and support that journey, is one of the core aims of the Digital Apprenticeship Community Events.

Following our successful community event in London, In July we were headed North to Sheffield for the second of our events. It took place at the incredible Factory 2050, part of the University of Sheffield’s Advanced Manufacturing Research Centre (AMRC).

The event was taking place in the Concorde Boardroom and the route there took us through the factory floor where delegates could see VR simulators, lots of robots, jet engines and other future manufacturing possibilities.

Sarah Dunne welcomed delegates to the event and then the team at Sheffield gave an overview of the AMRC and what it is and does.

Then Ian Loansby from Sheffield gave a presentation using Sutori about the Learning Analytics Journey Sheffield were undertaking.

Rob Bristow from Jisc, then provided delegates with an overview of the project so far and how it connects to the new Learning Analytics service recently launched by Jisc.

Following Rob, Dr Alison Felce from the QAA gave a presentation and ran an activity.

Following coffee, we then ran a data points activity, asking delegates to work together, looking at the different kinds of data that can and could be collected along the apprenticeship journey.

After Lunch we had Richard de Blacquiere-Clarkson from the University of Leeds talk about how they have adapted the Jisc Digital Capability framework for the apprentices at their university.

Richard talked about the importance of digital literacy with apprenticeships and how the framework gives them a scaffolding to build upon.

We ran a dashboard activity with the delegates giving them a chance to draft wireframe of dashboard and what content they could contain. We asked them to look at dashboards for apprentices, providers and employers. What do they need to see? What do they need to do?

It was interesting and informative to see how data one was just one aspect of their dashboards, and they expected these dashboards to be their hub or portal with not just visualisations, but also links and updates.

Osman Javid from MMU gave the final presentation of the day about how they are using digital to deliver apprenticeships.

I have an overview of the Apprenticeships Toolkit that Jisc has published, as well as an insight into the forthcoming Degree Apprenticeship Toolkit,

Towards the end I gave an overview of the Intelligent Campus project.

It was a great event and virtually all delegates stayed to the end, even chatting about apprentieceships whilst waiting for their taxis back to the station.

We anticipate the next community event will be in Birmingham in November, but also in Leeds in January 2019.