Blog for Online Identity Badge Evidence

I am working towards Digital Professional in Higher Education badge and at the moment I am finishing my work on the Online Identity badge. The last activity for the Online Identity badge is to:

Create a blog post (200-300 words) on the experience of developing your online presence and comment on two other colleagues blog posts.

To fully participate in the contemporary society, one needs to be digitally literate as many civic activities are now taking place in the online space. According to JISC (2014), there are seven elements of digital literacies: media literacy, information literacy, digital scholarship, learning skills, ICT literacy, communication and collaboration, and career and identity management. Beetham and Sharpe’s (2010) framework show digital literacy as a development process where it is developed from access and functional skills to higher level capabilities and identity. So, as a Digital Professionals in Higher Education, we should be able to demonstrate that we have moved from “I have .., to I can … to I do … to I am ..” – that is we have developed a digital identity.

The question asks to write about my experience of developing my online presence. However, my online presence was created over a long period of time. For example, even my personal blog dates to April 2013. I had finished my PhD where I looked at the use of ICTs for distance education and was then a Postdoctoral Research Assistant working with my supervisor Prof. Shirley Williams. In my thesis I had a chapter on “digital inequality” where I discussed why the then buzz word “digital divide” was deceptive and in this I used van Dijk’s (2005) work on a model of successive kinds of access, which is similar to the developmental process of digital literacy but looking at levels of access. Being aware of these works, I suppose, have helped me in shaping my digital identity online.

However, I did not have a personal website until I started working towards this badge. So, I am going to reflect on my experience of developing my online presence through my personal website https://sites.google.com/view/tharindu

I wanted my personal website to bring together my scattered presence on the web to one place where it would be easier to find my work and contact information. I initially designed the website to have publications, blog and contact details only. But my colleague, Sandra, was working on CMALT and she had created her portfolio in a Google Site, which looked good. With this inspiration I decided to not only put my CMALT portfolio but also FHEA portfolio online. I had to remove some of the evidence in the portfolio due to data protection/privacy issues but the section Portfolio in my website now provides a selection of my instructional design work, CMALT portfolio and its feedback and my FHEA portfolio. To my surprise, using Google Sites was very easy. It did not take much time at all. I used images from the stock of CC0 images in Pixabay to add some colour and visual appeal. I must say I was pleasantly surprised by the quality of the automatic contrast checking and adjusting tool provided by Google Sites to make the site more accessible. After creating my website, I thought to myself why did I not do this earlier?

However, my new website was not getting picked up by search engines. So I searched on the internet and created Google Crawler request and also registered with Google Analytics so that I could see the usage of my site. So this exercise have not only resulted in me creating my website but also getting to know how new sites are listed in search engines as well as getting my toes dipped in Google Analytics!

I think making a portfolio available online not only help to build your personal profile but also helps others working towards qualifications like CMALT or FHEA to see sample portfolios they can take inspiration from. For example, I found four part series of blog posts from Matt Jenner about his submission for SFHEA when I was thinking of working towards SFHEA and it inspired me to start writing up my portfolio for the same.

While working towards the Online Identity badge I kept on thinking about projecting a persona via our digital presence. Many people who are digitally literate consciously manage their digital identity. So, effectively we see what they want us to see. On the flipside we also project what we want others to see. I think it is really important that when we look at someone’s online identity to be aware of the filters that are already there.

References

JISC (6 March 2014). Developing digital literacies. https://www.jisc.ac.uk/guides/developing-digital-literacies [accessed 22 August 2018].

Sharpe, R., & Beetham, H. (2010). Understanding students’ uses of technology for learning: towards creative appropriation, Rethinking learning for the digital age: how learners shape their experiences Routledge. 85-99.

van Dijk, J. (2005). The Deepening Divide: Inequalities in the Information Society. Thousand Oaks: Sage

Creating a chatbot with IBM Watson

I am taking a MOOC with edX offered by IBM, How to Build Chatbots and Make Money. This two week course suggests investing 2-4 hours a week commitment for the course.

As we have been looking at ideas of AI for assessment when I got to know about this course I was interested in giving it a go. I must say I am impressed how "intelligent" my chatbot "Nikki" is in teasing out natural language and how easy for me to create it with IBM Watson without having to do any coding at all. I am still in third module but really pleased with where I got with the course.

The course asks you to implement a chatbot that can help with delivery questions and suggestions about flowers to buy. But as we all know, educators can be the worst students - I didn't do what they asked me to do. Instead, I created my own chatbot, "Nikki", to be able to answer questions that are listed in University College of Estate Management's FAQ page about Studying with UCEM.

Nikki was able to answer almost all questions relating to the details I have provided her correctly. In fact, colleagues at work have been impressed with how good Nikki was in answering the questions they put to Nikki in tricky language. 

The good thing with IBM Watson chatbot is while doing these chats, if Nikki doesn't get something correct, we can train her in the conversation by selecting the correct response she should have given and then IBM Watson trains itself to get it right the next time.

However, there were instances where Nikki gave hilarious responses. For example, in one instance the dialogue went like this...

         User: I am ill

         Nikki: If your personal circumstances change for any reason, either at home or work in a way that might affect your studies, assignment or exam performance, you should notify us immediately.

[Full marks Nikki!]

         User: death

         Nikki: Great talking to you. Have a good day.

A conversation with Nikki the chatbot

If someone is dead they can't communicate with you anymore so she ended the conversation. However, I have now taught her to be more empathetic and suggest the same response as for change of personal circumstances as it is more likely to be a death in the family that they are talking about.

I would highly recommend this course if you are looking to get yourself familiar with AI chatbots. However, be warned that the Cloud service they are showing in the screen casts, IBM Watson Conversation, has been updated to IBM Watson Assistant and there are few differences as to what you see in the instructional video and what you see in your actual screen but nothing major to stop you from continuing. It also allows one year of free access to IBM Watson services (Ts and Cs apply) but allows you to learn something new. 

Open resources and accessibility - Published in BERA Blog

The original post was published in the British Educational Research Association Blog on 7th August 2018.

Open educational resources (OERs) are:
 
‘[A]ny type of educational materials that are in the public domain or introduced with an open license. The nature of these open materials means that anyone can legally and freely copy, use, adapt and re-share them.’ (UNESCO 2017).

This open movement was pioneered by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT’s) Open CourseWare (OCW) initiative in 2001 (Brown and Adler 2008), and it has thrived worldwide. However, despite this increase in ‘openness’, people with disabilities still face significant barriers in accessing ‘open’ content.

Take me to the full article at BERA Blog