In my previous portfolio, I have written about Distance Learning/ blended learning, OERs, MOOCs, Supporting and tutoring learners, and Accessibility as my specialist areas. In this portfolio I am going to concentrate on the following topics as my specialist and advanced areas:

•  Advanced Area: Impact of research in Technology Enhanced Learning 

•  Advanced Area: Accessibility Awareness

• Specialist Area: Producing learning materials

• Specialist Area: Learning Analytics

Advanced  Area: Research in Technology Enhanced Learning 

I have been interested in Educational Technology research and my PhD project looked at ICTs for Distance Education. You can view my PhD thesis from the University of Reading online repository. Since then I have continued my work in educational technology and as the founding chair of the Online Learning Research Centre (OLRC) at UCEM, I give leadership to technology-enhanced learning research at UCEM. 

Major areas of research I have been involved in the past couple of years related to accessibility, online badges and online assessments. However, due to the pandemic lockdown, there was another opportunity to observe how school education was happening at a distance (remote learning). I have also taken this as an opportunity to explore this area.

You can find the full list of my publications in the Publications section. I will discuss areas of research to demonstrate my engagement.

Accessibility Research

Below I have listed some of my publications and conference presentations related to accessibility research. I also have published quite a few blog posts on the UCEM Online Education Blog. The importance of this work lies in the fact that all of this research is applied research; applied in the real world. In my split role as an instructional designer and later on as a learning technology researcher together with the role of chairing the Online Learning Research Centre, I was able to do the work, get data from what we have implemented, and then use that in my publications/presentations.

Recent Accessibility Related research:

• 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)

• Liyanagunawardena, T.R., Adams, A.A. and Williams, S.A. (2020). Open to Inclusion: Exploring openness for people with disabilities. In D. Conrad and P. Prinsloo (Eds.). Open(ing) Education: Theory and Practice (pp.144–168). Leiden: Brill. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1163/9789004422988_008

• Liyanagunawardena, T.R (2020). Transcripts and Accessibility: Student views from using webinars in Built Environment Education, European Journal of Open, Distance and e-Learning, 23(2): 37-50. DOI: 10.2478/eurodl-2020-0009

• 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).

• Liyanagunawardena, T.R. (2019). Automatic Transcription Software: Good Enough for Accessibility? A Case Study from Built Environment Education, 28th EDEN Annual Conference, Bruges, Belgium, 16-19 June 2019. (Slides).

• Liyanagunawardena, T.R. (2018). An analysis of automatic transcription software – Work in Progress, ALT Online Winter Conference 11-12 December 2018. (Slides).

• Nadan, T. and Liyanagunawardena, T.R. (2017). Captioning video for accessibility: A case study of University College of Estate Management, Association for Learning Technology 24th Annual Conference, 5-7 September 2017, Liverpool. (Slides).

When my work is presented at conferences, I share my slides on Slideshare and Tweet about them. 

As you can see from my work above I have collaborated with different people with different backgrounds and specialist areas. For example, Prof. Adams is a Law expert with a special interest in privacy and ethics from Meiji University Japan. Prof. Williams is Professor Emerita (Learning Technology) at the University of Reading. By working with them on the book chapter Open to Inclusion: Exploring openness for people with disabilities I was able to bring in my passion for Accessibility and create a piece of work that combined our passions for learning technology, accessibility, and law and ethics. I believe this shows my empathy and willingness to learn from colleagues from different backgrounds and specialist areas.

Open Badges Research

Following are two of my work on open badges. I have also published blogs on UCEM Online Education.  

• Liyanagunawardena, T. R., Scalzavara, S., & Williams, S. A. (2017). Open Badges: A systematic Review of Peer-Reviewed Published Literature (2011-2015). European Journal of Open, Distance and E-learning, 20(2).

• Scalzavara, S., Nadan, T. and Liyanagunawardena, T.R. (2017). Open Badges at University College of Estate Management. University of Chichester Learning & Teaching Conference 2017: Celebrating Excellence in Learning and Teaching, 6 June 2017, Chichester, UK.

At the time I joined UCEM (2015), Open Badges were quite new. I first introduced open badges for a UCEM conference where it was a safe environment to trial. Then we have used open badges for students in various programmes. The latest use is in the Accessibility Awareness Course where a badge suite is used to recognise milestones and final awards.

I was honoured to be invited as an external examiner for the Open University to examine the EdD thesis "The role, Implementation and Impact of Digital Open Badges on a Civil Engineering Degree". 

Covid-19 Remote Learning Research

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

• 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

• 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. (2020). Online Learning in Challenging Times. Construction Manager, May 2020.  

Above are some of the publications from my work on eLearning in Challenging Times research project. I have collaborated with Prof. Shirley Williams (University of Reading) and Dr. Karsten Lundqvist (Victoria University, Wellington) in this research project. A paper is under review while we are working on another publication together.

The idea for research emerged when I was struggling to home school my primary-aged twin children and continue working in my day job. After ethics clearance, we asked parents to give their feedback on how they thought their children were doing - learning from home. The data from Sri Lanka was corroborated with interviews from a purposive sample of school teachers representing a range of school types from different parts of the country. The findings were a reminder of my PhD research where I found a huge gulf between regions. Despite a decade from my PhD work, still the digital inequality is rife in Sri Lanka. 

The findings suggest, despite all the hurdles faced, the teachers have offered some form of ERE (Emergency Remote Education) to their pupils. However, the uptake of ERE has not been satisfactory in many instances. In resource rich settings, ERE has been more successful. Parents in the Western province, where computer penetration is highest in the country, were more satisfied with the ERE provision than parents in other parts of the country. While online offering of ERE may seem viable or desirable in certain areas or circumstances, large parts of Sri Lanka are not prepared for online educational delivery due to the multifaceted digital divide, which should be considered in any future implementations of ERE. 

(Liyanagunawardena, & Williams, 2021). 

MOOC Research

• Liyanagunawardena, T.R., Lundqvist, K., Mitchel, R., Warburton, S. and Williams, S.A. (2019).  A MOOC Taxonomy Based on Classification Schemes of MOOCs, European Journal of Open, Distance and E-Learning.

• Liyanagunawardena, T. R., Parslow, P. and Williams, S. (2017). Exploring ‘success’ in MOOCs: Participants’ perspective. In R. Bennett and M. Kent (eds) Massive Open Online Courses and Higher Education: Where to Next?, Routledge, Abingdon: 92-108.

• Liyanagunawardena, T.R & Aboshady, O. (2017). Massive Open Online Courses: A Resource for Health Education in Developing Countries. Global Health Promotion. DOI: 10.1177/1757975916680970.

• Liyanagunawardena, T. R. and Williams, S. A. (2016). Elderly learners and Massive Open Online Courses: a review. Interactive Journal of Medical Research, 5 (1). e1. ISSN 1929-073X doi: 10.2196/ijmr.4937

• Liyanagunawardena, T.R. and Williams, S.A. (2015). Massive Open Online Courses and Perspectives from Learners in Developing Countries. VISTAS - Journal of Humanities & Social Sciences, 9, 19-37.

• Liyanagunawardena, T.R., Lundqvist, K.O. and Williams, S.A. (2015). Massive Open Online Courses and Economic Sustainability. European Journal of Open, Distance and e-Learning, 18(2): 95-112.

• Liyanagunawardena, T.R., Lundqvist, K.O. and Williams, S.A. (2015). Massive Open Online Courses and Sustainability. OER15, 14-15 April 2015, Cardiff. 

• Liyanagunawardena, T. R., Kennedy, E. and Cuffe, P. (2015). Design patterns for promoting peer interaction in discussion forums in MOOCs. eLearning Papers, 42. 7. ISSN 1887-1542

• Liyanagunawardena, T. R., Lundqvist, K. O. and Williams, S. A. (2015). Who are with us: MOOC learners on a FutureLearn course. British Journal of Educational Technology, 46 (3): 557-569. ISSN 1467-8535 doi: 10.1111/bjet.12261 (Special issue on MOOCs)

• Liyanagunawardena, T. R. (2015). Massive Open Online Courses. Humanities, 4:35-41. ISSN 2076-0787 doi: 10.3390/h4010035

• Liyanagunawardena, T. R. and Williams, S. (2014). A review of Massive Open Online Courses on health and medicine. Journal of Medical Internet Research. 16 (8). e191. ISSN 1438-8871 doi: 10.2196/jmir.3439 

• Liyanagunawardena, T. R. (2014). MOOC experience: a participant's reflection. ACM SIGCAS Computers and Society, 44 (1). pp. 9-14. ISSN 0095-2737 doi: 10.1145/2602147.2602149

• Liyanagunawardena, T.R., Parslow, P., and Williams, S.A (2014). Dropout: MOOC Participants' Perspective. Proceedings of EMOOCs 2014 - the Second MOOC European Stakeholders Summit, Lausanne Switzerland, 10-12 February, 95-100.

• Keynote Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) at the Innovation in Open and Distance Learning Research, Teaching & Learning Symposium, 6 March 2014, Pretoria, South Africa.

• Liyanagunawardena, T.R, Lundqvist, K.O, Micallef, L. and Williams, S.A. (2014). Teaching Programming to Beginners in a Massive Open Online Course. OER: building communities of open practice, 28-29 April , 2014, Newcastle.

• Invited talk Are MOOCs providing the European workforce with necessary web skills at the EU MOOCs for Web Talent Network workshop – 17 November 2014, Helsinki, Finland.

• Liyanagunawardena, T. R., Adams, A. A. and Williams, S. A. (2014). MOOCs: A Systematic Study of the Published Literature 2008-2012. Distance Education in China, 3. pp. 5-16. (Chinese)

• Liyanagunawardena, T. R., Adams, A. A. and Williams, S. A. (2013). MOOCs: a systematic study of the published literature 2008-2012. International Review of Research in Open and Distance Learning, 14 (3). pp. 202-227. ISSN 1492-3831 

• Liyanagunawardena, T., Williams, S. and Adams, A. (2013). The impact and reach of MOOCs: a developing countries’ perspective. eLearning Papers (33). ISSN 1887-1542 

Above are some of my publications on MOOC-related research. I finished my PhD at the University of Reading in 2012 and I was very lucky to be offered the position of Research Assistant to work with my supervisor Prof. Shirley Williams. At the time, FutureLearn was launching and the University of Reading was one of the pioneering partners of FutureLearn. As we offered a very successful "Begin Programming: Build your first mobile game" MOOC, it paved the way to work in the area of MOOCs.

I am using Grammarly to improve my writing. I use Teams, WeTransfer, Dropbox, and GoogleDrive to effectively collaborate with my research colleagues and co-authors. I use Twitter, Discord, LinkedIn, Blogs (Blogger, WordPress), Slideshare, BigBlueButton, Zoom, Teams, Blackboard Collaborate, and StreamYard to disseminate my work and engage with others in discussions. I have used Wooclap and Slido to create and engage participants during my research presentations. By taking part in various events and discussions I learn about new technologies. For example, I learned about Wooclap and StreamYard because I presented at the ALT Winter Conference last year. I believe this shows my commitment to keep up to date with new technologies.

As a researcher, I have been happy at UCEM because I was able to do applied research in my role. I have also seen a remarkable change in UCEM's accessibility awareness and support showing my research actually does make a difference. At the moment, UCEM Research department is in a reorganisation under new leadership. Exciting times are ahead :)

In my previous CMALT portfolio, I wrote about MOOCs as one of my specialist areas. There are many MOOC-related publications that I have published. My most cited article (over 1500 citations) is "MOOCs: A systematic study of the published literature 2008-2012". I was working in MOOCs at the height of interest in MOOCs. I then moved on to Accessibility and now it is in the spotlight. I am not sure how but I have always been interested in the areas that were getting noticed. In fact, meeting a learner with accessibility issues on a MOOC led me to my journey in accessibility.

In the beginning, MOOCs were very much a "western" and "developed world" phenomena. I wanted to explore and understand how MOOCs will affect the developing world. I co-authored one of the first research articles to look at how MOOCs will impact the developing world.

• Liyanagunawardena, T., Williams, S. and Adams, A. (2013). The impact and reach of MOOCs: a developing countries’ perspective. eLearning Papers (33). ISSN 1887-1542 

It was very important to me, as someone coming from a developing country, that the viewpoint of people in the developing world with a lack of resources was represented in the scholarly discourse of MOOCs. According to Google Scholar, the article has over 200 citations. While MOOCs were hailed as opening opportunities for the world, I wanted to explore the restrictions based on language, digital technology, and digital skills that could hinder people from the developing world from accessing the same opportunities thus possibly widening the divide between developed and developing countries. The Commonwealth of Learning published a report Introducing MOOCs to Africa: New Economy Skills for Africa Program - ICT in 2014 and this report refers to our paper seven times. 

On Academia.edu website people who download your work can leave comments. Some of the comments I have received for this paper include:

"What sparked my interest in downloading this article was its analysis of MOOCs in developing countries. I thought MOOCs were a good solution but based on the abstract, there seems to be more to it than just thought and I found it fascinating."

"I am reading about online learning as its relevant to my Ph.D. topic."

thus showing my work has inspired other research in this area of MOOCs (and other online learning) in the context of the developing world. I believe this shows my commitment to exploring and understanding new phenomena as well as inspiring others to do the same.

I can see that my practice of sharing research has changed over time. Initially, I was only targeting academic journals. However, there is a niche readership to academic journals. Now I like to share my research outputs both in academic literature as research papers as well as in blog posts. I think because blogs are written in a more conversational language and much shorter than an actual research paper, they allow research to be widely read. Also, the fact that the blogs are not behind pay-walls as some articles are,  helps to increase the readership. By Tweeting and sharing on LinkedIn the links to research and or blogs, they get disseminated to a much wider audience. It also allows engaging with EdTech community to share and learn from others and discuss them.

Advanced Area: Accessibility Awareness

I have been championing accessibility at UCEM. With accessibility awareness, we can promote learning technology access to students with disabilities. Not only that, we can actually improve the experience for all our students. Because accessibility aids, in general, improve the experience for everyone. The best example is closed captions, which is an accessibility aid. Captions help people in quiet or noisy environments to view a video, say you are in a quiet train carriage and forgot your headphones.  You can then mute the sound but view the video with captions. Captions can also help people if the speaker has a difficult accent to understand or is speaking too fast. For people viewing a video in a second or subsequent language, captions are such a useful tool. Therefore, captions improve the experience not only for people with disabilities but for everyone. 

Throughout my portfolio, I have used examples of my work relating to accessibility. Below I have embedded my accessibility portfolio on PathBrite, which I hope will show the range of work I have done in promoting equality in learning technology. Some of the work I have done on accessibility are:

• Accessibility poster campaign

• Accessibility awareness screensaver campaign

• Accessibility awareness face-to-face workshops

• Accessibility awareness webinars

• Accessibility awareness online workshops

• UCEM Accessibility awareness course (I was awarded UCEM Passion award for 2021 for my work on Accessibility)

• Accessibility auditing/testing of UCEM systems

• Writing accessibility statements for UCEM systems

• Advising colleagues on accessibility-related issues

• Researching how learning technologies support accessibility

I believe the above efforts show my commitment to communicate and disseminate effective practice.

If the embeded Pathbrite portfolio is not working, please access using the link https://pathbrite.com/tharinduliya/pNht

Reflection

I remember the first time I encountered a learner who wasn't able to engage with our course due to the colour combinations we had used in a billiard-like game - green background and a red ball in the Begin Programming: Build your first mobile game MOOC we offered in 2013. I was the lead facilitator of the course and I was able to help her change the image file used on her phone to make it a colour combination accessible to her. But this incident sparked curiosity in me about accessibility. Since then, wherever I looked, I saw inaccessible content. I tried to educate myself about accessibility as much as I could using freely available resources, especially MOOCs. Below are some of the courses I have completed. However, many courses I took freely as MOOCs are now only available as paid-for courses.

•  Professional Web Accessibility Auditing Made Easy - Ryerson University 

• Accessibility: Designing and Teaching Courses for All Learners - Buffalo State University

• Digital Accessibility: Enabling Participation in the Information Society - University of Southampton

• Teaching Online: Reflections on Practice - Kirkwood Community College Iowa

• Web Accessibility MOOC for Educators -Colorado Community College

• Web Design for Everybody Specialization - University of Michigan

• Accessibility of eLearning - OpenLearn (the Open University)

• Digital Accessibility for Educators by AHEAD (completed April 2022)

I believe the engagement with these courses shows my willingness to learn and keep up to date.

I wanted to create a course from what I have learned (for free) and offer it freely to anyone, who like myself, is interested in learning about accessibility. At the time of writing (as of February 2022), I have submitted a proposal to UCEM to offer the accessibility awareness course I have created for UCEM staff more widely as an open-access course.

The latest course I have completed on accessibility is Digital Accessibility for Educators offered by AHEAD which I completed on 5th April 2022.

In Core Area One I showed some of the tools and technologies I use for accessibility testing such as Accessibility Insights for Windows, Axe Developer Tools, WAVE, Headings Map. WebAIM colour contrast checker, Microsoft Accessibility Checker, NVDA Screen Reader, and Adobe Acrobat Pro DC. I believe this together with the various accessibility-related courses I have followed shows my commitment to keep up to date with new technologies as well as a willingness to learn from others.

However, it is not all plain sailing. Despite my best efforts, some of the brand colours that were recently selected in a rebrand do not work for normal text. The brand guidelines have footnotes to say the said colours can only be used with large text. But unfortunately, not everyone reads footnotes. Despite having these conversations on a repeating loop, some colleagues design and create inaccessible content and send them to be 'okayed' by the accessibility 'experts'. It is frustrating when this happens because even after one points out accessibility issues sometimes it is too late to change. At the same time, I understand that the designers want their designs to look great and in some instances incorporating accessibility limits what they can and can't do. In Core Area Four, I talked about working with designers to make an inaccessible flipsnack brochure accessible. I believe this shows empathy with and willingness to learn from colleagues from different backgrounds and specialist areas.

It is so important to raise accessibility awareness so that, as the above email illustrated, colleagues will start thinking about accessibility before creating the resources, so that at the last minute we will not try to "plug accessibility". I have worked closely with the learning content design team in the rebrand to identify colours that are accessible for normal text because when there are footnotes, they are likely to be ignored by users. The new learning content brand colours proposal is awaiting approval.

I also want to recall one incident where the UCEM marketing team had paid an outside company recommended by the website provider to conduct an accessibility audit. The report they provided had 100% accessibility compliance. I referred to this incident in Core Area three.

• Conversation disputing external accessibility report with 100% compliance (Password Protected password provided to ALT Assessors)

When I was shown this report, I was very skeptical and we did an in-house test which identified quite a few issues. We then presented our findings and asked the website provider to correct the issues. This showed that even when organisations want to do the right thing and pay to get an accessibility audit done, there can be situations where they may not provide a good service.

My work looking at Transcripts and Accessibility: Student views from using webinars in Built Environment Education I think is a good example to show my commitment to exploring and understanding the interplay between technology and learning.

I have done a lot of work in raising accessibility awareness at UCEM. However, I think there should have been more effort to get the senior managers' buy-in. What I have tried is a bottom-up approach which is working at UCEM. However, had we tried the other way around perhaps we would have seen results more quickly. I keep telling myself slow and steady wins the race!

At the time of writing, as of 16th May 2022, the accessibility awareness course has awarded are:

• Assistive Technology – 58 badges

• Web Accessibility and Standards – 43 badges

• Accessible Colour – 46 badges

• Headings and Document Structure – 36 badges

• Accessible Video and Audio – 34 badges

• Accessible Images – 34 badges

• Accessible Tables – 34 badges

• Accessibility Awareness – 24 badges

Given that the UCEM had 296 staff members on 31st March 2022, this means almost one in five staff members have earned an accessibility badge. It is also worth noting that the badges are ONLY offered to participants who earn 100% in the associated quiz which means there may be many more who have engaged with the course who may not have earned the badges. As this is a non-compulsory course I think the uptake is remarkable. Our accessibility in-person workshops catered for about 15 participants at a time. But over 80 staff members participated in the "Accessibility Awareness: Basics" session that I offered online via Zoom on 26th November 2020, which was the first virtual accessibility workshop I ran at UCEM. I believe I have shown enough evidence to show that I have done much more than expected of a typical learning technology professional in raising accessibility awareness.

Specialist Area: Producing Learning Materials

I joined UCEM in 2016 as an instructional designer. Despite not holding a job with this title, in my previous job at the University of Reading (UoR), I was involved in the creation and delivery of UoR's first MOOC on the FutureLearn platform. 

During my first three years at UCEM, I was heavily involved in the designing and creation of learning content for our online courses. These included identifying where students struggle and planning content to help these struggling students. I had discussions with tutors, subject matter experts, and used learning analytics to identify content that needed enhancements. For example, the tutor on the course may have ideas about what students find hard to understand. You may also see patterns with learning content access statistics - for example, students may revisit content that they are struggling to understand. Once these are identified, it is required to break them down into meaningful chunks so that content is not too long and able to be digested in one sitting. For example, a longer video lecture will be viewed by students but not many will be able to concentrate the whole time. There are many research studies that show shorter videos are more useful as instructional videos. Once the content is identified, you need to find the best medium to present the content. This could be audio, video, interactive content, text. It is important to select a medium that will allow the learners to explore the content. Now that interactions can be supported in many medium, for example in videos via H5P or in-video questions, these could be used to enhance the learner experience.

It is also important to consider the accessibility of the content. For example, if you are aware that the interactive content is not accessible you must provide an alternative that will be accessible. For example, a drag and drop may not be accessible to all but you could provide the same content as two columns where numbers can be matched. 

I have authored and created an Accessibility Awareness course for UCEM and the details of the same can be found in my accessibility portfolio which also evidences my speciality of producing learning materials.

At UCEM, I have used various content creation software including Articulate Storyline, Camtasia, iSpring to create engaging learning materials. I have also used HTML5 and H5P with our Moodle learning platform. I have created the UCEM accessibility awareness course and its content and I am really proud of this work. As I said previously, I am in conversation with UCEM to investigate whether this could be offered as a free course.

I have also created content for staff training on Zoom video conferencing and now I am creating content to train staff on Inspera. 

When I was at the University of Reading, I have created learning materials to be hosted on BlackBoard and FutureLearn platform. We also considered a trial with Canvas to offer a Small Private Online Course (SPOC).

At UCEM, we follow ABC learning Design method (Young and Perović, 2015) therefore giving all learning designers a framework. We also have templates for content within which we can be creative. By having templates the content looks familiar to students as they have the same colour schemes, buttons, heading styles, general structure etc. As we have tested the templates for accessibility, by following them it is easier to create accessible content too.

Reflection

When I first joined UCEM, I was working with a tutor who others found difficult to work with due to them not being digitally competent. What I found working with them is that they were very knowledgeable of the subject matter and cared deeply about the students and wanted to make their teaching the best experience for the students. However, they lacked digital competency and were not always keen to learn new things. With this subject matter expert, I created many learning resources that are now used in all levels of UCEM courses. When the resource first came out, many commented what a great outcome it was to pair me up with that tutor. But I think it was not so much that 'drove' that change. I think it was more that I provided the tools and facilitated the creation of good content, which the subject matter expert wanted to create but lacked the capacity. I did have to do extra work because all content came in pieces of paper rather than typed documents. But I really enjoyed creating these resources that are still in use across a range of courses and levels of study at UCEM. What I learned from this subject matter expert is the real passion they had for their subject and teaching the subject to their students. Despite not being digitally competent, they tried to source family to help them with creating slides with animations etc. They authored many new questions with answers for students because the subject was valuation and it is useful to solve a variety of sums to improve the understanding.

I think as a second language user, I find it easier to write content in simple English, which native speakers may find difficult. On the other hand, I miss the articles 'a' and 'the' and sometimes mix prepositions 'in' and 'on'. I use Grammarly to help me and I think I am generally managing well. It is all about understanding your strengths and weaknesses and try to address the weaknesses as best as possible while capitalising on the strengths.

There is a strong interplay between technology and learning. First and foremost the learners should have "Access" to the technology. This is discussed in Tony Bate's ACTIONS model (Bates, 1995) where ACTIONS stands for Access, costs, Teaching and learning functions, Interactivity and user-friendliness, Organisational issues, Novelty, and Speed. So by introducing instructions to a world audience in HD video when many did not have sufficient bandwidth to consume it, we would not be providing sufficient "Access" to the material. On the other hand, by providing alternative instructional documents we are catering to support the learners in their own contexts.

As a learning designer or instructional designer, it is very useful to know a lot of software and technologies that help present content. Knowing their strengths and weaknesses helps you identify a good solution to a problem. However, being knowledgeable on technology alone is not helpful. You also have to have an understanding of how people learn and how content should be structured for easy understanding. There is a lot of research about cognitive load, accessibility, learning preferences etc which are also useful in this pursuit.

I read blogs and take part in various events organised by Jisc, ALT and EDEN (European Distance Education and eLearning Network) where I get to learn about the new technologies and how they are used in Learning and Teaching. This way I can keep up to date with technologies and good practices. I also engage in Twitter discussions and present my work at conferences and on blogs to share good practices. For example, please view my blog posts on Learning Technology on the UCEM Online Education blog. I have shown provided links to four of the recent posts I have created to share my practice.

• How to accept and share an open badge

• Improving productivity: Automating repetitive data presentations

• Engaging the audience

• Interpreting Moodle Statistics

I believe our experiences of learning help us create content that we think will engage the learners. We can also take inspiration from others in the industry and research studies. We can ask our learners what they think and how they would like the content presented. We can also learn to understand others' points of view by expanding our understanding and learning and gaining new perspectives (for example learning about accessibility). The flexibility of being ready to learn and adapt is very important as a creator of instructional content because you need to understand others' points of view.

Reference:

Bates, A. (1995). Teaching, Open Learning and Distance Education, London/New York: Routledge

Young, C and Perović, N. (2015). ABC Learning Design method available from https://abc-ld.org/ 

Specialist Area: Learning Analytics

Learning Analytics is defined by JISC as the measurement, collection, analysis and reporting of data about student progress and how the curriculum is delivered (Jisc, 2018). While in some institutions there are different teams of people to report on learning analytics other small institutions like UCEM depend on existing teams to handle learning analytics. 

I have completed five courses in the Data Science specialization offered by Johns Hopkins University years ago when they were free to take on the Coursera platform as MOOCs. The courses I have completed are: 

• R Programming (Grade Achieved: 88.5%)

• Data Scientists Toolbox - Distinction (Grade Achieved: 99%)

• Getting and Cleaning Data - Distinction (Grade Achieved: 98%)

• Exploratory Data Analysis (Grade Achieved: 89.16%)

• Reproducible Research - Distinction (Grade Achieved: 94.66%)

I recently (February 2022) completed (audited) two courses offered by Davidson College on edX. These courses were: 

• Essentials of Data Literacy 

• Analyzing and Visualizing Data with Power BI

I also completed 

• Excel Fundamentals for Data Analysis by Macquarie University on Coursera.

Unfortunately, now MOOCs do not allow non-paying students to submit assignments to 'complete' the courses. I believe learning using all opportunities, including online courses and trying new technologies shows my commitment to keep up to date with new technologies.

At UCEM, because we are an online university, we can track a student's engagement with the course materials via VLE logs. We use learning analytics during the running of our modules to understand and support our students and at the end of the programme to analyse how it went overall and to learn lessons that will be incorporated into the next running of the modules. There are certain learner analytics reports that are routinely produced at UCEM.

I have used examples of how I have helped the institution to improve its efficiency by automating the routine reporting and creating better reports using PowerBI, R, and VBA in my Core Area 1b) Technical knowledge and ability in the use of the Learning Technology section. In this, I discussed how I automated routinely used learning analytics graphs to increase operational efficiencies using R and VBA macros. I then discussed how I re-created the same report using PowerBI. Even though cannot be presented with accessible colours, PowerBI report is more visually attractive. It also allows interactivity.

Here I am sharing a PowerBI report, Dashboard (web), and Dashboard (mobile) I have created to present learning analytics as evidence. However, please note that it is not possible to share other reports that I have created as evidence due to data protection concerns. The report I have shared is created using anonymous feedback and therefore I am able to share the output.

UCEM uses Zoom to provide webinars to students. Each module contains about 10 (or more) webinars and these are recorded for later access. The number of live participants in webinars and the number of students accessing webinar recordings are useful indicators of student engagement. However, currently, there is no easy way of extracting this information from either the VLE or the Zoom system. For each module, downloading each webinar log has to be manually done in Zoom systems administration. As the Zoom log contains each connection, the number can include multiple entries for the same participant if they had to rejoin the webinar due to some reason. Therefore, another manual step is required to be performed to clean the data. This being a manual process, takes a considerable amount of time to be performed for modules in a semester.

In Core Area One, I discussed how I learned about Excel swapping X and Y axes depending on the number of data points from a colleague. I also showed here how I went through user community forums looking for answers to PowerBI date issue I faced. I believe these are examples to show that I am willing to learn from others.

Reflection

Learning Analytics is not a panacea for all problems in online learning. One thing that is very important to understand in working with learning analytics is how good your analysis is going to depend on how good the source data is. Also, learning analytics can only give you what has happened in one dimension. To understand and interpret the learning analytics one would need contextual knowledge. For example, analysing anonymous weekly student feedback on a module will show whether the students felt happy, sad, or indifferent during each week of the course. There could be a situation where a module has many students not being content. However, this could have been caused by a staff member being unwell and the course having to be transferred to a different member of staff during delivery. With contextual knowledge, learning analytics provides insights.

On the other hand, there can always be exceptions. For example, some students download content and access these offline while others access content online. Trying to correlate time spent in a course and student grades may not offer expected results if the cohort consists of many students who download and use study materials. Therefore it is really important to understand the advantages and limits of learning analytics. I believe this shows my commitment to exploring and understanding the interplay between technology and learning

Ethics is another important consideration. Do our students know how we are using their learning footprints? Do they consent? Rubel and Jones (2016) discuss this in their work.

New tools such as PowerBI give so much ease in providing visual representations of data that is easy for the audiences to understand. However, this also carries great risks. Whatever data you include in PowerBI and ask to create a visual with, it will create a stunning visual. However, how accurate these visuals are is an issue if the audience does not scrutinise the reports. I have seen PowerBI reports created where the authors have selected inappropriate visuals to present data. For example, a pie chart is expected to show percentages of options that add up to 100%. However, if the question allowed multiple responses for presented options, representing this question's answers in a pie chart could be deceiving the audience as they expect pie chart's content to add up to 100%.

In one of the examples I have used above, in getting details of live attendance numbers in a webinar, it was a matter of getting the precise number vs getting a close enough meaningful number. This shows the need to identify the cost-benefit of the effort required in getting the precise number and the acceptable estimate. If this was a Data Return for HESA it has to be a precise number but when it is good enough to have a close enough estimate on a case-by-case basis this will have to be decided. It comes down to the purpose and the problem you are trying to solve with learning analytics. 

As an ex-software engineer, I immensely enjoy any opportunity to solve problems by writing programs as I don't often get the chance. I also have a strong research background and I believe both of these (programming background and research background) give me the skills to go beyond what would generally be expected of a typical learning technology professional. 

References

Jisc (2018). Learning analytics. Available at: https://www.jisc.ac.uk/guides/designing-learning-and-assessment-in-a-digital-age/learning-analytics [accessed April 28, 2022]

Rubel, A. and Jones, K M. (2016). Student privacy in learning analytics: An information ethics perspective. The Information Society, 32(2), 143-159. doi: https://doi.org/10.1080/01972243.2016.1130502