The CMALT Guidelines state that:

"The portfolio should commence with a contextual statement – the kind of thing you might write in a cover letter for a job application. It should provide a concise biography, outlining your career history and current role(s), highlighting briefly the operational context in which you work or have worked, and reflecting on why you are submitting your portfolio for CMALT and how this relates to your future career aspirations. This section is not assessed, but can be very helpful for the assessors as they approach the rest of your portfolio."

Career history

I began my career in education in 2006 as an English as a Foreign Language teacher in language schools in Taiwan, Hungary, China and the UK. In 2010, I completed the Cambridge Diploma in English Language Teaching to Adults and started a role teaching English for Academic Purposes courses at RMIT International University in Vietnam. The facilities let me use learning technologies much more than in my previous roles - having access to a computer, projector and the internet in the classroom was revolutionary for my teaching! I was also introduced to VLEs, online assessment and Turnitin. I then moved on to teach language and academic skills courses at Aichi University in Japan and Cardiff University.

I’ve also completed further studies related to language learning and processing. In 2011-12 I took the MSc Language Sciences at UCL, and in 2013-14, I completed an MPhil Speech, Hearing & Phonetic Sciences, also at UCL. This introduced me to programming - I used Praat to prepare stimuli and run experiments, MATLAB to process data and R to analyse it, and also studied basic Python. I found this to be really interesting, and have continued to use R to analyse assessment data in my teaching roles.

In September 2016 I joined the University of York (UoY) as an Associate Lecturer in Language and Study Skills. I was based in the International Pathway College (IPC), which prepares international students for degree programmes at the UoY. Both teaching and administration processes are heavily dependent on LT, primarily Google apps and the Yorkshare VLE. Setting up a lot of these processes really helped me enhance my LT skills.

Key responsibilities included:

• developing language and academic skills modules for foundation students
• designing digital and blended learning materials
• maintaining module VLE sites
• coordinating online examinations and assignment marking
• supporting tutors and students in the use of Google apps and some VLE functionality

Current role

In February 2019 I moved to role in the UoY’s Learning Enhancement team. I was initially based in the Writing and Language Skills Centre (WLSC), which provides academic and language skills support to students throughout the university through workshops, departmental courses and 1:1 tutorials. In September 2019 I moved slightly sideways to the role of Academic Skills Adviser (Online Support).

The main aspect of this role is to develop new online academic skills self-study resources, as at there is little currently available at the UoY. This will be a long-term project, and at the moment I'm planning the approach to take based on experiences developing online self-study resources for two mini-projects (see Specialist Option for details of this).

My role also involves representing the Learning Enhancement team at termly Online and Distance Learning SIG meetings, managing the Learning Enhancement student-facing website, running the WLSC twitter account and other communication, and teaching face-to-face academic skills workshops.

The content of this portfolio relates to my current role in Learning Enhancement, and also some of my experiences at the IPC.