Communication and working with others

In my previous portfolio, I discussed how I communicate and disseminate information in different situations with different groups using most appropriate modes of communication. In this section, I am going to share some of the ways I have improved my skills since the previous portfolio submission and some examples of my current practice.

Improving Communication Skills

There are so many opportunities out there to improve yourself for free if you look around and are willing to invest time. I am scanning MOOC sites to see whether there are interesting courses and these were some courses I have taken part that relate to the topic of communication.  

• Communicating with Diverse Audiences

This course is offered by the University of Surrey on the FutureLearn platform. I took this course in February 2022.

• How to Read Your Boss 

This was two weeks 3 hours per week course offered by the University of Nottingham on the FutureLearn platform. I completed it in 2018.

• Improve Your Intercultural Competence

This course was offered by Purdue University on the FutureLearn platform and I completed it in 2018.

Accessibility Awareness Project

I use a variety of ways of communicating depending on the audience, message, and context. I will provide some examples here. At UCEM, I raise accessibility awareness and I have used various communication methods for this. I created the Good Practice for Accessibility Poster with my colleague Asma and we also ran an accessibility awareness screensaver campaign. I also organised workshops which had to be converted to online workshops and webinars during Covid times. 

When I organise accessibility events I use several methods to communicate this information to get more people to engage with the event.

Below example shows how I have used the institutional Yammar to engage others in an accessibility discussion.

eLearning in Challenging Times Project

In March 2020 when schools were shut to stem the spread of Covid-19, I had to work full-time from home while also supporting the remote education of my primary school twin children. Facing what seemed like an impossible task I proposed to do research looking at remote schooling experiences. I have collaborated with Prof. Shirley Williams from the University of Reading and Dr. Karsten Lundqvist from the Victoria University of Wellington. 

Collaborating with people from different time zones is difficult and I selected this example because this is an extreme case where the collaborators are either 11 or 12 hours apart. So when we arrange virtual meetings via Zoom we schedule them alternatively at 08:00 UK time or 19:30 UK time. This way, our collaborator in New Zealand too can participate in one meeting early in the morning and one late evening alternatively to be fair to all parties. When the clocks change in Spring and Autumn if there is a scheduled meeting just after the change we message each other on Messenger or by email to check what time it is in their part of the world and whether it is still a convenient time to join the call.

Working as a collaborative team we use Zoom for synchronous communications, GoogleDrive to share files, emails for communications, and Messenger for short messages and reminders. 

For this project, we needed to attract responses from parents in the UK. As you can see above I have Tweeted the link to the survey. I also created LinkedIn posts and Facebook posts. Using Twitter is always a great way to communicate to the world in short sharp messages. Also if you want your message to be widely circulated, for example, you are looking for survey participants, Twitter is a good medium. To attract participants I also posted on MumsNet and other parenting forums and also used WhatsApp messages that could be shared by parents with their friends and or other parents. I also emailed local schools requesting that they share the survey link with the school community.

The project is still ongoing but the first phase of the project which I collaborated with Prof. Williams resulted in a presentation, "Emergency Remote Education in the UK: Parents’ perspective", at the ALT Annual Conference 2021 and a publication in the Asian Journal of Distance Education. 

• Liyanagunawardena, T., & Williams, S. A. (2021). Emergency Remote Education: Experience from Sri Lanka during Covid-19. Asian Journal of Distance Education, 207-229. Retrieved from http://www.asianjde.com/ojs/index.php/AsianJDE/article/view/554

We also shared our findings in an internal presentation for the UCEM staff. The findings were also shared in Blog posts:

• Liyanagunawardena T R & Williams S A (2021b, July 15) Emergency remote learning in the UK: A comparison of March 2020 and January 2021. Guest blog for British Educational Research Association (BERA Blog). 

• Liyanagunawardena, T.R. (April 14, 2020). Online learning in challenging times: Guest blog by our Learning Technology Researcher, Dr Tharindu Liyanagunawardena, UCEM Blog.

• Liyanagunawardena, T. (May 22, 2020). Don’t exclude disadvantaged users in rush to online learning, Construction Manager.

Here I have provided a list of events where I have presented my work during the last two years.  

2021

• Liyanagunawardena, T.R. & Williams, S.A. (2021). Emergency Remote Education in the UK: Parents’ perspective, ALT Annual Conference 2021, 6-9 September 2021.

• Guy, M. & Liyanagunawardena, T.R. (2021). Making your mind up: Formalising the evaluation of learning technologies, 6-9 September 2021.

• Liyanagunawardena, T.R. (2021). Improving Accessibility Awareness at University College of Estate Management with a CPD Course, ALT Winter Conference, 15-16 December 2021. (Slides, Video)

2020

• Liyanagunawardena, T.R. (2020). Widening Opportunities through Accessible Learning, Built environment event for careers advisors, 27 January 2020, Reading.

• Liyanagunawardena, T.R. (2020). Automatic Transcripts: Student and Tutor Views from Built Environment Education, Research Into Distance Education (RIDE) Conference, 13 March 2020. (Slides).

• Liyanagunawardena, T.R., Adams, A.A. and Williams, S.A. (2020). Open to inclusion: Accessibility, OER20 Conference, London, 1-2 April 2020. (Slides, Video).

Please see the full list of External Presentations and Workshops 

I am a regular blogger on the UCEM Online Education Blog. I have written 57 blogs for the UCEM Online Education Blog site from June 2018 to February 2022. View Tharindu's blogs on the UCEM Online Education Blog 

Working with others

I am a team player and have always helped team members in times of high workload. For example, I have volunteered as the first line support for VLE when the department was undergoing a restructuring and had quite a few vacancies to be filled. More recently, when the Transform project was ongoing I helped the learning design team with resource conversions (learning design and instructional design work). 

At work, I use Microsoft Teams to communicate with my team members. We use Teams channels to share and organise work/discussions and this way it is possible for multiple users to edit an item without losing changes.

I use the UCEM Yammer to communicate with colleagues in a more relaxed way about recent events that are relevant to work or life.

Being part of professional organisations like ALT allows you to work with like-minded people with similar interests. I have been a reviewer and part of the ALT conference organising committee for years now and I enjoy working with these professionals and also being able to give back to the learning technology community in some small way.

Building mutual trust and understanding is very important in teamwork. If you are unable to trust your team members you cannot delegate work and are therefore not able to work effectively in the team. If a team member is going through a difficult time, could be due to illness, family difficulties, bereavement or other, one may have to step up and do more work to keep the work on track as well as to give breathing space to the colleague affected. 

Analysis and Reflection

I arrived in England as a PhD student and initially, there was such a huge cultural shock. I dreaded train travel because I could not make out what was said over the tannoy not because I did not understand English but because I wasn't used to hearing the British pronunciation. I was very fearful that I would miss something important said in a supervisory meeting and I asked permission from my supervisors to audio record supervisory meetings. This recording and listening to it again helped me understand the three accents my three supervisors had, especially the thick Yorkshire accent of one supervisor. Listening to various English accents every day around me at the university helped me to understand various British accents much better. Although after many years in the UK, at a conference in New Castle, I did find myself back in square one when I could not understand the local accent but luckily, they seemed to comprehend what I was saying. Sometimes it is literally not understanding what is communicated either because of the language, accent, speed, etc. But there are other instances where there can be miscommunications simply due to cultural context.

I used interviews in my data gathering in my PhD research and I read a lot about interviewing techniques and the cultural barriers that could exist when the interviewer and interviewee are from two different cultures. One quote that I remember very well is from Fontana and Fery's work:

... respondents may be fluent in the language of the interviewer,  there are different ways of saying things  –  or indeed things that should not be said at all  –  linking language and cultural manifestations  (Fontana and Fery  2005, p707). 

In any conversation I have, this applies to me as a person from a different culture and I am very aware of it. I have been working with some wonderful colleagues with great humour and it has helped me immensely to understand British humour and work in the cultural context I am in now. Looking back at my 2016 portfolio, I have not reflected on this aspect, the elephant in the room, and I think I may not have been as self-aware then as I am now. 

There is always power distance at play whichever communication method we use. I read Walford (1994)'s work in preparation to interview educational leaders for my PhD work, which details the things one should be aware of. 

I have always been a team player and have enjoyed working in a team. I am really grateful to my team who allowed me to have the space I needed to get myself together after my father passed away suddenly during the second lockdown thousands of miles away. However, working in a team can be a stressful experience if there are team members who are either constantly not performing or do not respect others (bullying, abusive) and or non-responsive. I am really lucky in this respect because I have always had great teammates to work with. I believe being able to adapt is also a characteristic of how successful you can be in a team. I have worked with some colleagues who others have considered "difficult to work with". But trying to understand their point of view helps in ironing out miscommunications. On the other hand, it is sometimes the frustration of others that comes out as "they are difficult to work with". When you are confident and competent in what you do and are flexible and adaptable I believe working in teams is easier. 

I have worked with much more experienced colleagues and learned a lot from them. If you are working in a team and if you need help with a task or understanding something, I do reach out and ask for help. However, if one is new or not confident they may not be able to do this effectively. In my experience, if you need help and you ask for help, it is easier to get the project moving and reach the outcome required rather than spending an unnecessarily long time until it is too late.

Working with others helps you to get a more rounded view of the problem you are trying to solve. Everyone brings a different perspective to the table. I remember when we were designing the "Begin Programming: Build your first mobile game" MOOC for the FutureLearn platform, I was the only one who have experienced the difficulties of using online videos. While FutureLearn at the time insisted on HD videos, I told my team that if we were to offer this course to "the world" we needed to look at this segment of learners too. We introduced downloadable PDF guides that can be followed with or without the instructional videos in our course which were a great success. In this same discussion, my professor, who was about to retire, suggested that we could get a high proportion of elderly learners as they have more free time and it was something that she would do if she were retired. So we also considered elderly learners as another segment in designing the course. This segment was not considered a significant group in any of the research studies published at the time. FutureLearn capped the registrations at 10,000 participants in the initial courses and our course reached the limit within a few days of opening for registration. We had many elderly learners in our first cohort. Our course went on to be one of the most successful courses on FutureLearn and while I was at the University of Reading (until late 2015) we offered the course twice a year. 

Generally, I try to keep my personal contacts and professional contacts separate. I use Facebook for my personal friends and I keep it apart from other networks such as Twitter and LinkedIn, which I use for professional work. However, in the above example, as we were looking for participants I shared a post using my Facebook account. We always have to make adjustments and or changes to the ways of working depending on the context and needs. 

Reference

Fontana, A. and J. H. Fery (2005). The Interview: From Neutral Stance to Political Involvement. In: The Sage Handbook of Qualitative Research. (N. K. Denzin and Y. S. Lincoln, eds.). Thousand Oaks: Sage: 695-727. 

Walford, G. (1994). A New Focus on the Powerful. In: Researching the Powerful in Education. (G. Walford, ed.). London: UCL Press: 2-13.