University of Wales Trinity Saint David

Accessibility and Equality through digital learning

Mobility, Flexibility and Digital Inclusion at Wales Oldest Royal Chartered University.

Hybrid/Hyflex teaching rooms are designed to allow teaching staff to simultaneously deliver sessions, and give equality of experience, to in person and online learners. Room upgrades support the University’s digitisation agenda where there is a requirement for both face-to-face teaching and online teaching concurrently.

Access to teaching and other digital services has been widened by the Universities Digital Connectivity Bursary. It was identified at the start of the COVID-19 Pandemic that not all students had access to or could not afford IT devices and Wi-Fi. The Digital Connectivity Bursary was set up to support underrepresented groups as identified in the Universities Fee Plan to increase progression, retention, and completion of students in these groups.

Both initiatives aim to provide our learners with high quality, supportive and inclusive learning experience to enable them to achieve their full potential in a digital, at home or face to face, environment.

Top 3 Learnings

1. Increased digital access highlighted we needed to increase our mental health awareness and well-being activities.
2. Previously we had wrongly assumed all students had access to IT hardware and Wi-Fi off-site.
3. We learnt to consider users categories as well as locations for upgrading teaching spaces.