January 2024

The Heart of the South West Local Skills Improvement Plan identifies the need for us all to champion digital technology and transform our regions digital culture, as the vision of the future increasingly becomes the reality.

As basic digital skills become essential for everyone at work, BTC have set out to ensure that our young people entering employment are more than equipped to meet this demand.

Our pilot cohort of Student Digital Ambassadors will help to understand the essential skills demands from employers and stakeholders, develop curriculum that ensures these skills are embedded into all levels of provision and champion digital literacy within their peer groups, transforming opportunities and destinations for our young people and those to come.

We are excited to see what our pilot Ambassadors discover and the legacy they create.

February 2024

Following the successful launch of BTC’s Student Digital Ambassador pilot, our ambassadors have undertaken their first few weeks of training preparing them to support their peers in the classroom.

As they progress with skills training and their confidence is building the SDA’s are learning to question the capability of the technology and identify ways to use their new everyday digital skills, capturing these learning opportunities for future cohorts of ambassadors

Today the ambassadors were presented with their very own Apple Pencil to utilise in their development as well as input on our future curriculum and supporting their peers.

Digital inking is an ever-growing skill as we find ourselves in a more connected environment, the Apple Pencil has been identified as the perfect tool to capture, refine and share knowledge on the go.

Over the next phase of the pilot programme our ambassadors will be seeking local employer feedback to inform future delivery and assess the every-day digital abilities of our young people in the region.

March 2024

This week our pilot cohort of Student Digital Ambassadors delved into the world of social media content guided by the expertise of BTC’s very own professional marketing team, demonstrating the importance of digital communication and content creation from the experts themselves.

The marketing team shared their experience in understanding the different platforms and how best to position content for the different audiences of the community.

The Student Digital Ambassadors will now be shaping their new skills into curriculum content and support for employers through work experience and industry placements in a range of sectors.

June 2024

The Student Digital Ambassador programme has had a transformational impact on our learners lives, Students previously struggled to articulate their digital competencies and were not familiar with Microsoft and Apple software products that employers typically use. The SDA programme has transformed this and learners are now able to demonstrate these skills to future employers and HE institutions. Not only this, but learners have gained valuable skills in areas such as capturing different audiences when marketing products and skills on how to coach others.

The SDA pilot group had a strong focus on understanding the importance of digital skills, working digitally, supporting others and how these can be applied in the classroom, workplace, university or at home; Topics included: Communication and Collaboration (cloud working awareness); Coaching Skills; Organisation and Task management; Working with data (collection & analysis); Problem Solving; UK GDPR Awareness; and Introduction to Gen AI among others.

We asked our ambassadors to complete a programme evaluation of year 1, which has an ‘overall programme satisfaction rating’ as the final question, of 4.7/5.0. We were delighted by the additional comments from our pilot cohort;

• “SDA has helped boost my skills and confidence throughout all topics which is why I rate it 5/5”
• “I do believe that the programme has increased my chances of standing out to employers or universities.”
• “I am glad that I will have the SDA programme on my university application.”
• “I’ve found the programme really useful so far and it has been really interesting to find out more about all the topics we’ve covered! Now I feel so much more confident in my abilities!”

We are incredibly proud of our SDA pilot cohort and look forward to year 2 of the programme, where they will be supporting the new SDA cohort, and wider College Community via online and in-person Support Desks, as well as learning additional skills.

Each SDA worked extremely hard and the celebration event was a great way to recognise their outstanding achievement!