Core Area 4: Communication

Communication and working with others

Collaboration and Communication

I am involved in various projects communicating with people within the organization and with people from other organizations. I mainly use email for communication but in collaborative reports I find it is easiest to use Google documents and chat. I use Twitter to communicate with external colleagues as it is less time consuming and more responsive mode to communicate. In communicating with FutureLearn Academic Network (FLAN) members we use a special Facebook Group along with emails. Quarterly meetings with FLAN members are another way that I communicate with colleges. I have also used Webinars, Skype calls and chats, Facebook Messages, Whats App and text messages to communicate with others depending on circumstances. In a recent project to identify MOOC design patterns (facilitated by Dr. Yishay Mor and Prof. Steve Warburton) I worked with Dr. Eileen Kennedy (University College London) and Ms. Paige Cuffe (the Open University). In this project I mainly used Google chat, Skype and emails to communicate as we were working on a collaborative document (Google Docs) as the final output. However, we had feedback meetings and three workshops which were face-to-face.

As evidence I am using the email communications I have had with colleagues when I was working in the Big Flip Project for the School of Systems Engineering, University of Reading. In this project my main role was to be the Technology Enhanced Learning advisor for the staff who wanted to introduce Flipped classroom teaching. In the given email communications I explore various technologies that can be used to support class room teaching (Appendix 14 - Supporting Developing Educational Technology Material).

Dissemination

I have presented papers in various conferences ( Unisa Cambridge International Conference, EMOOCS2014, OER14 and OER15 to name a few). I delivered the keynote address at the University of South Africa’s “Research and Innovation Week 2014” event and have been an invited speaker at the “MOOCs for Web Talent” networks’ event on “Can MOOCs save the Europe’s unemployed youth?” in Helsinki, Finland. I am an active blogger and a Twitter user and I use these tools to disseminate my ideas and findings. I also have a rich set of educational technology related publications, which I have listed as evidence (see the list of publications - Appendix 22 - Publication List).

Feedback and Improvement

I am happy to receive feedback and use this to enhance and inform my practice. I take time to read through the student feedback forms that are collected by the Student Services after each module is delivered. It gives me an understanding of how my teaching is received by students. Together with peer evaluations (where another academic sits in a lecture to evaluate a peer) the student feedback gives me a more complete set of feedback to improve my practice.

I have successfully completed the “Blended Learning Essentials: Getting started” course offered by University of Leeds in association with University College London and the Association for Learning Technology on the FutureLearn platform and I am currently completing the second part of this course (“Blended Learning Essentials: Embedding practice”). In these courses I share my lesson plans so that my peers are able to comment on my lesson plans allowing me to get fresh views from educators with various levels of experience coming from a variety of countries.