Beyond checkbox training: how to build university faculty’s digital fluency

Digital fluency has become a baseline expectation for teaching staff across higher education. Yet despite substantial investment in platforms, short courses and professional development programmes, many institutions report limited impact on teaching practice. The problem is not a lack of guidance on what to include but a persistent failure to align digital training with the realities of academic work, professional identity and institutional culture.

This topic is increasingly relevant as teaching staff mediate institutions’ digital expectations of students, including in relation to AI use, through classroom and assessment interactions.

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Drawing on conversations among participants at a workshop led by the authors at the Digital Universities UK conference earlier in the year, this article outlines five key barriers to developing digital fluency among higher education staff and proposes a set of design principles that can support more sustainable, equitable and meaningful change across diverse providers.

The barriers: why digital fluency initiatives struggle

1. Training that is disconnected from practice and motivation

The weak connection between digital training and day-to-day academic work was a recurring challenge that our workshop participants identified. Staff ask: “What’s in it for me?” when faced with initiatives that appear abstract, generic or politically driven. When staff cannot see how training will improve their practice, support their students or be recognised within appraisal and promotion, engagement declines rapidly.

Pitching training at an appropriate level also becomes difficult if staff with partial knowledge overestimate their digital competence while others underestimate theirs.

2. Cultural resistance and fear

Digital development initiatives often collide with deeply embedded professional norms. Many staff derive confidence and authority from established pedagogical approaches and feel a strong sense of safety in what already works. Barriers such as fear of not being the expert, anxiety about making mistakes, discomfort with uncertainty and concerns about job replacement, particularly in relation to AI, create a powerful emotional drag on change. These fears are amplified where institutions lack a transparent culture of ethical debate, experimentation and learning from failure.

3. Fragmented systems and excessive complexity

Higher education digital ecosystems are frequently characterised by convoluted systems, overlapping tools and unclear ownership. Too much choice, unclear guidance on priorities and poor explanations of how tools should be used can also lead to fatigue and disengagement.

4. Change fatigue and lack of continuity

Digital change is often positioned as a series of projects rather than a continuous process. Short‑term pilots, disconnected workshops or “popcorn” approaches to professional development generate enthusiasm but rarely lead to sustained change. When this is the case, staff experience initiative fatigue and revert to the status quo.

5. Limited recognition and inequity of expectation

Where digital innovation is treated as optional or invisible labour, motivation suffers. Inequity arises when expectations for digital engagement are unclear or unevenly applied, leading some to feel overburdened while others opt out entirely.

Design principles for building digitally fluent faculty

To move beyond these barriers, institutions need to design for practice, culture and systems, not just skills. The following principles offer a transferable framework for UK higher education contexts. Developing digitally fluent teaching staff is a technical challenge that is shaped by institutional culture. Digital training that is rooted in practice, culture and systems, and supported by recognition, can be developed as collective capability. Only then does digital fluency become something that staff own, rather than something that is done to them.

Digital fluency is no longer a “nice to have” feature of teaching staff competence. It is a necessary component of higher education providers that can respond to the technological developments, including AI, that are shaping society, professions and the needs of our students.

1. Treat digital fluency as continuous change

Digital fluency should be framed as an ongoing professional capability, not a destination. Institutions must acknowledge uncertainty and complexity, normalising learning over time rather than mastery. Clear communication that technology will keep evolving reduces fear and supports staff confidence. The importance of this is being played out now as teaching staff and others seek to keep pace with AI tools’ capabilities and uses.

2. Co‑create with staff and students

Effective digital development is democratically designed. Training should be co‑created with teaching staff and students from start to finish. Students as partners bring authentic insights into learning practices, while staff co‑design fosters ownership, relevance and trust. At the University of Chester, where one of the authors works, student-led input into digital developments through employed student learning consultants on key change projects has radically transformed the design and delivery of outputs and training.

3. Connect learning to real work and recognition

Digital capability frameworks should be embedded into appraisal, continuing professional development, fellowship programmes and promotion routes. Visible recognition – such as badging, case studies or public celebration of good practice – signals that digital innovation matters. Crucially, participation must connect directly to teaching, assessment, curriculum design and workload allocation.

4. Provide support at the point of need

Extensive training courses may have their place, but institutions do well when they offer layered support: short self‑serve resources, 10‑minute interventions, bookable expertise when required and strong peer networks. Staff champions and informal social spaces for sharing successes and failures can make development feel safe, practical and human. The Jisc digital capabilities building tool is a great starting point for institutions looking to establish a baseline understanding of their staff’s digital capabilities and to encourage personalised professional development.

5. Build visible leadership commitment

Last, but not least, like all organisational change, senior leadership buy‑in is a must and needs to go beyond endorsement. Leaders should actively communicate priorities, participate in learning, allocate time and resources, and model curiosity. A consistent public message about why digital fluency matters – and how staff will be supported – helps align top‑down strategy with bottom‑up practice. It ensures that there are clear roles, responsibilities and accountability for the change process and outcomes.

It reminds everyone that digital fluency is a never-ending journey for each individual and for the organisation as a whole.

Jackie Potter is dean of academic innovation in the Centre for Academic Innovation and Development at the University of Chester. Kate Lindsay is founder and director of Kate Lindsay Consulting Ltd. Christie Pritchard is associate dean of education and student experience in the Centre for Teaching Enhancement and Innovation at the University of Plymouth. Amy Sampson is associate director of Greenwich Online at the University of Greenwich. Puiyin Wong is senior academic lead for digital education at Buckinghamshire New University.

The authors wish to acknowledge the ideas generated by workshop participants at the Digital Universities UK event in April 2026. These were collated and themed using AI and then reviewed, edited and agreed to produce the final version of this post.

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