Guest post: DigiLearn – A ‘Teams’ approach to digital development

Author: Leah Kirk – Lecturer (School of Community Health and Midwifery)

My name is Leah Kirk and I am a Lecturer in Midwifery. I wanted to write about the use of Microsoft Teams within the midwifery team. As a group of lecturers, we have worked really hard to ensure all academics have become a DigiLearn Practitioners, where we are actively using Microsoft Teams with our students on a daily basis.

We used a ‘DigiBuddy’ system to ensure that all lecturers felt supported and moved together on this journey to become Practitioners. Members of the team buddied up with other’s who felt less confident about this process, empowering and supporting them to develop their skills and knowledge. This has enabled the team to achieve as a collective group, at the same pace, ensuring consistent learning and engagement.

Alongside this, a learning community has been developed within an easy-to-use, accessible and inclusive programme. This has been particularly useful to ensure clear communication, between the entire team, including students and lecturers. It has enabled the team to ensure consistent information is provided to students, in an area where all students are able to post, answer and access a wide range of information. Assignment guidance, article sharing and general conversations are able to be had, in an open and safe environment. Responses can be provided from fellow peers and the academic team in a responsive manner, whilst preventing the same questions from been emailed numerous times.

Additionally, we have ensured that Microsoft Teams also includes our links from within clinical practice, enabling the Practice Development Teams to be able to communicate easily with the academic team and students, allowing excellent collaboration. Overall, we are delighted with the implementation of Microsoft Teams within midwifery and look forward to its continued use within the programme.