Authentic assessment activities are those that afford learners opportunities to practice finding solutions to real world issues and challenges, so that upon graduation they are able to apply skills developed from these learning... more
Authentic assessment activities are those that afford learners opportunities to practice finding solutions to real world issues and challenges, so that upon graduation they are able to apply skills developed from these learning experiences to issues and challenges they are likely to face in their workplace. When learners are able to do this successfully, they are judged as "job-ready". However, ascertaining the impacts of authentic assessment activities upon the achievement of learning outcomes and the development of desirable graduate attributes is challenging. How can we know with any certainty that our assessment activities have had the desired impact? A possible pathway is to examine the impacts of authentic assessment activities on the development of generic graduate attributes. Our study offers insights on how and in which ways the design of authentic assessment influences the development of generic graduate attributes in an online professional development programme for practitioners around Open Educational Resources and Open Educational Practices.
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Karunanayaka, S. & Naidu, S. (2009). Developing Professional Competencies of Teacher Educators in the use of Educational Technology, with Scenario-based Learning In Kinuthia & S. Marshall (Eds.) Cases ‘n’ Places: Global... more
Karunanayaka, S. & Naidu, S. (2009). Developing Professional Competencies of Teacher Educators in the use of Educational Technology, with Scenario-based Learning In Kinuthia & S. Marshall (Eds.) Cases ‘n’ Places: Global Cases in Educational Technology, Information Age Publishing, USA. pp. 123-132
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Technology-enhanced teaching and learning is an outcome of the integration of technology and pedagogy. While technology integration can augment the teaching-learning process, teachers’ willingness and their capacity to use technology and... more
Technology-enhanced teaching and learning is an outcome of the integration of technology and pedagogy. While technology integration can augment the teaching-learning process, teachers’ willingness and their capacity to use technology and pedagogy creatively and meaningfully is crucial to student learning. For effective technology integration, teachers require specific knowledge on three broad knowledge bases - technology, pedagogy, and content, and their complex inter-relationships, as described in the Technological, Pedagogical and Content Knowledge (TPACK) framework (Mishra & Koehler, 2006). Teachers also require competencies in putting into practice this synthesized knowledge, when designing learning experiences for their students. While TPACK offers a good conceptual framework about the interplay of content, technological and pedagogical knowledge, the synergy of technology and pedagogy in the teaching-learning process calls for serious attention to the design of learning experi...
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Abstract: Quality is the most important cotrTonent of any comprehensive continuing professional development programme. This was addressed in a teacher education programme to further address the growing need for quality teacher education... more
Abstract: Quality is the most important cotrTonent of any comprehensive continuing professional development programme. This was addressed in a teacher education programme to further address the growing need for quality teacher education in the South Asian Region. Keeping this in view, the Department of Education at the Open University of Sri Lanka (OUSL) with the assistance of the Commonwealth of Learning (COL) launched a Master of Arts in Teacher Education (MATE) - International Programme in February 2005. This paper describes the development of this programme and how it supports collaboration and networking among institutional partners, individuals, as well as countries, at various levels including programme design, pedagogical design and programme implementation. A unique feature of the programme is its pedagogical design, which uses authentic learning scenarios to situate learners in various key roles with challenging tasks to perform. This story-centered approach enhances devel...
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It is arguable whether the huge investment made on ICT in the school sector of Sri Lanka has been fruitful in terms of the use of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) in the instructional process. Numerous reasons may account... more
It is arguable whether the huge investment made on ICT in the school sector of Sri Lanka has been fruitful in terms of the use of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) in the instructional process. Numerous reasons may account for poor teacher involvement while the review of literature has indicated that perspectives of teachers in this context could be one of them. The purpose of this study was to model the perspectives of secondary school teachers regarding the integration of ICT in their instructional process. The research methodology adopted is Interactive Qualitative Analysis, which is an analytical framework for qualitative research and is formulated to make a systems approach to the problem under study, to model the perspectives of teachers about the integration of ICT in the classroom. Through focus groups and individual interviews, ten affinities: Principal, ICT Laboratory, Teacher-in-charge of ICT Laboratory, Student, Curriculum (Non-ICT), ICT Knowledge, Pedagogical ICT knowledge, Time, Non-ICT Teacher and Professional Development Program emerged to describe the teacher perspectives. Study of pair-wise influential relationships of the affinities identified the Principal as a primary driver and the Non-ICT Teacher and the Student as primary outcomes. The ICT Laboratory, the Teacher-in-charge of ICT Lab and the ICT Knowledge were the secondary drivers whereas the Professional Development Program, the Curriculum (Non-ICT), and the Pedagogical ICT knowledge were the secondary outcomes revealed.
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Research Interests: Psychology and Pedagogy
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Research Interests: Sociology and Multimedia
Students’ learning patterns vary from person to person. Some students prefer to learn by seeing, hearing, reflecting, acting or reasoning logically while others prefer to learn by visualizing, drawing analogies and building mathematical... more
Students’ learning patterns vary from person to person. Some students prefer to learn by seeing, hearing, reflecting, acting or reasoning logically while others prefer to learn by visualizing, drawing analogies and building mathematical models. Traditionally, Engineering education has focused on content-based or design-based approaches that allowed students to develop problem solving skills. Use of technology for instructional purposes or communication has not been very effective in Sri Lankan universities in the past. This research is to find out how we can improve Sri Lankan Engineering students’ engagement in studies via collaborative learning by using mobile technology. In addition, research will compare the effectiveness of different online collaborative learning methodologies that use mobile based and web-based learning and teaching platforms in Sri Lanka.
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Research Interests: Sociology, Education, Higher Education, Narrative, Praxis, and 10 moreOpen Education, Open Educational Resources (Education), Open Educational Resources (OER), Openness, Open Educational Practices, Technology Enhanced Education, Open and Distance Learning, Open educational resources (OERs), Open Praxis, and Bildungsinformatik
Open Educational Resources (OER) integrated online courses provide a rich and a flexible learning environment to acquire knowledge and skills among undergraduates. A significant issue with OER-integrated online courses is the poorly... more
Open Educational Resources (OER) integrated online courses provide a rich and a flexible learning environment to acquire knowledge and skills among undergraduates. A significant issue with OER-integrated online courses is the poorly addressed instructional design features. Instructionally rich online courses will have a greater impact on both teaching and learning. This study is aimed at exploring different support systems in relation to the undergraduate learning process through the design of OER-integrated online courses. It explored design features under four main Instructional Design (ID) aspects, being: Information Design, Instruction Design, Interface Design and Interaction Design. The study adopted a Design-Based Research approach through analysis, design, development, implementation and evaluation of an intervention in multiple phases, using mixed methodologies. This resulted in a design framework with reusable design principles for OER-integrated online learning. The outcomes of this study will contribute to enhance OER-integrated course design and to develop undergraduate education.
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Research Interests: Computer Science and DDC
Online course delivery is rapidly growing among educational institutions all over the world, especially in Open and Distance Learning institutions. The frequent criticisms on distance education for having only limited interactions between... more
Online course delivery is rapidly growing among educational institutions all over the world, especially in Open and Distance Learning institutions. The frequent criticisms on distance education for having only limited interactions between teachers and students as opposed to traditional face to face teaching can be significantly minimized with the increased use of online methods, due to its unique instructional capabilities. Online learning provides ample opportunities for students learning at a distance to constantly interact with their teachers as well as peers, sharing experiences and working collaboratively. The creation of a sense of social presence is essential to establish a collaborative online learning environment, as it is a most important factor that helps people actively collaborate, thus increasing a sense of belonging to the learning community. The Faculty of Education of the Open University of Sri Lanka offered the online course, "Teacher Educator as an Educationa...
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The concept of Open Educational Resources (OER) is a major breakthrough in education, which promotes sharing, adaptation and contextualisation of course content. Promotion of using OER can be very cost effective, since development of new... more
The concept of Open Educational Resources (OER) is a major breakthrough in education, which promotes sharing, adaptation and contextualisation of course content. Promotion of using OER can be very cost effective, since development of new course content would be both expensive and time consuming. However, awareness raising and capacity building of teachers and learners is crucial, in order to exploit the full potential of OER.The Faculty of Education at the Open University of Sri Lanka, initiated a research project to create an Online Learning Environment (OLE) on OER for science education, witha view to raise awareness, develop competencies and enhance adapting, adoption and creation of OER by teachers. This is developed in Moodle Learning Management System, as a supplementary material for science teachers enrolled in a distance mode professional development programme. The research team, together with a group of science teachers and teacher educators, who are their students, is enga...
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ABSTRACT E-Learning aims to improve the quality of learning through the use of modern information and communication technologies. Designing E-Learning course materials is the most critical task because its entire educational system... more
ABSTRACT E-Learning aims to improve the quality of learning through the use of modern information and communication technologies. Designing E-Learning course materials is the most critical task because its entire educational system depends on the way content is presented. For that reason the necessity of evaluating the web based E-Learning content is arising. The evaluation of E-Learning content is beneficial for learner as well as instructional designer because it facilitates learner to choose the best learning material, and helps designers to improve the quality of their learning materials. This paper describes the importance of automating the pedagogical evaluating process of web based E-Learning contents and the theoretical framework used in the evaluation process. The aim of this research is to improve the quality of the content in e-Learning websites using the feedback given by the automated pedagogical evaluation process.
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ABSTRACT E-Learning becomes widely spread in the past few years because it enables learner to participate in anytime, anyplace personalized training. Designing rich E-Learning environment is an important factor to enhancing the... more
ABSTRACT E-Learning becomes widely spread in the past few years because it enables learner to participate in anytime, anyplace personalized training. Designing rich E-Learning environment is an important factor to enhancing the effectiveness of web based education. Therefore the necessity of evaluating the web based E-Learning content is arising. The evaluation of E-Learning content is beneficial for learner to choose the best learning material, as well as instructional designer to improve the quality of their learning materials. Inconsistency is the biggest challenge faced by pedagogical reviewers in manual pedagogical evaluation process of web based E-Learning since different institutes used different set of checklists in order to pedagogically evaluate their web based E-Learning content. This paper puts forth web based E-Learning pedagogy evaluation formulae formation technique derived through a standardized checklist, which generally used in pedagogical evaluation process of web based E-Learning content. This would help to develop a theoretical framework to automate the pedagogical evaluation process of web based E-Learning content and subsequently design and develop a supporting tool for assisting pedagogical reviewers in the evaluating process. Also this paper discusses the challenges and design rational of the tool designed to setup the framework for pedagogy review of web-based E-Learning.
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Growing interest in promoting Education for All (Dakar, 2000), open access to educational resources, and the economic imperatives for adopting greater use of open educational resources (OER) (UNESCO 2012 declaration) is necessitating the... more
Growing interest in promoting Education for All (Dakar, 2000), open access to educational resources, and the economic imperatives for adopting greater use of open educational resources (OER) (UNESCO 2012 declaration) is necessitating the need for educators to refocus their attention on the integration of OER and ICTs in learning and teaching. ICTs enable educators gain access to a wide variety of teachinglearning materials available as OER that can be freely accessed, reused, revised, re-mixed and redistributed (UNESCO, 2012). While ICT can be used to harness the benefits of OER more efficiently, effective use of OER can be best realized through systematic course design and integrating appropriate OER in the learning and teaching transactions. A comprehensive program of work is being undertaken in the Faculty of Education at the Open University of Sri Lanka, in partnership with the Commonwealth of Learning to build the capacity of its teaching staff. During a period of six months in...
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The Open Educational Resources (OER) movement has empowered teachers to become more innovative in their pedagogical practices, through the openness and flexibility in educational resource use permitted by open licensing of materials. The... more
The Open Educational Resources (OER) movement has empowered teachers to become more innovative in their pedagogical practices, through the openness and flexibility in educational resource use permitted by open licensing of materials. The 5Rs of openness in OER Retain, Reuse, Revise, Remix and Redistribute (Wiley, 2014), enable user engagement in innovative use of resources moving beyond mere „access‟ to them, resulting in „Open Educational Practices‟ (OEP) (Ehlers, 2011). Nevertheless, teachers‟ adoption of OER in such a manner will necessitate a „change‟ in their pedagogical thinking and actions.
The increased use of digital learning environments augments the adoption of open practices in education which contributes to SDG4. The COVID-19 pandemic has compelled an accelerated move towards technology-enhanced learning prompting... more
The increased use of digital learning environments augments the adoption of open practices in education which contributes to SDG4. The COVID-19 pandemic has compelled an accelerated move towards technology-enhanced learning prompting educators to re-think and re-design learning environments grounded in innovative pedagogy and technology. In the current scenario it is imperative that educators are offered capacity development opportunities to meaningfully engage in digital and open practices. This paper presents a case study of an online capacity development intervention on OER-integrated technology-enhanced learning (TEL) material creation implemented with a group of educators studying for their master’s degree in teacher education. It focused on the design, development, implementation, and evaluation of OER-integrated TEL materials by the educators. The intervention comprised a carefully designed learning experience with intensive hands-on activities in the Moodle online learning e...
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Research Interests: Engineering and Sri Lanka
The Commonwealth Digital Education Leadership Training in Action (C-DELTA) programme provides a framework for fostering digital learning for lifelong learning by developing leaders who can influence others to use digital technology... more
The Commonwealth Digital Education Leadership Training in Action (C-DELTA) programme provides a framework for fostering digital learning for lifelong learning by developing leaders who can influence others to use digital technology appropriately and effectively for learning. The Faculty of Education at the Open University of Sri Lanka (OUSL) implemented an action research project, with the aim of promoting the adoption of C-DELTA among the teachers and students of secondary schools in Sri Lanka. It comprised an intervention designed to facilitate the adoption of C-DELTA in secondary schools, and evaluation of its impact on the teaching- learning process. A group of 41 participant teachers representing schools from the nine Provinces of Sri Lanka coordinated the implementation of C-DELTA in their schools. A variety of data collected using concept maps, questionnaires, focus group interviews, implementation reports, and logs recorded in the C-DELTA platform were analysed using both quantitative and qualitative methods. Findings revealed that while adoption of C-DELTA was a novel experience highly embraced by the participant teachers who were very motivated to implement it in their schools, various constraints have hindered its successful implementation. Despite facing challenges including inadequate ICT facilities, time constraints and limitation in English language competencies, 21 teachers who completed the project reflected that adoption of C-DELTA in the teaching-learning process has supported improving digital literacy among students and teachers. For instance, concepts such as ‘digital foot print’ and ‘digital identity’ were found to be most effective in enacting changes in thinking and digital behaviour among both students and teachers. Overall, the implementation of C-DELTA has enhanced participant teachers’ digital education leadership skills, and provided them with an innovative avenue to promote digital education in their schools.
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This paper presents a case study of the adoption and use of Open Educational Resources (OER) in the redesign of five teacher education courses in the Faculty of Education at the Open University of Sri Lanka (OUSL). It describes the steps... more
This paper presents a case study of the adoption and use of Open Educational Resources (OER) in the redesign of five teacher education courses in the Faculty of Education at the Open University of Sri Lanka (OUSL). It describes the steps in the process of a project that is currently being implemented at OUSL in partnership with the Commonwealth of Learning (COL), in the orientation of a faculty group of thirty staff members to the concept of Open Educational Practices (OEP) and the adoption of OER in their teaching and learning. Qualitative data gathered through a series of concept mapping exercises by participants, followed up with individual commentaries on the concept maps will show the astounding developments in the breadth and depth of understanding of the various concepts related to OER as well as their adoption and use in the redesign of the five courses. The paper will also describe how concept mapping is being used to capture this incremental development of understanding an...
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This paper presents a case study of the adoption and use of Open Educational Resources (OER) in the redesign of five teacher education courses in the Faculty of Education at the Open University of Sri Lanka (OUSL). It describes the steps... more
This paper presents a case study of the adoption and use of Open Educational Resources (OER) in the redesign of five teacher education courses in the Faculty of Education at the Open University of Sri Lanka (OUSL). It describes the steps in the process of a project that is currently being implemented at OUSL in partnership with the Commonwealth of Learning (COL), in the orientation of a faculty group of thirty staff members to the concept of Open Educational Practices (OEP) and the adoption of OER in their teaching and learning. Qualitative data gathered through a series of concept mapping exercises by participants, followed up with individual commentaries on the concept maps will show the astounding developments in the breadth and depth of understanding of the various concepts related to OER as well as their adoption and use in the redesign of the five courses. The paper will also describe how concept mapping is being used to capture this incremental development of understanding an...
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Engineering is a field or discipline, practice, profession and art to cater to social needs. Always it works in the real world. Therefore, having hands-on experience and working with a group of people will contribute better solutions to... more
Engineering is a field or discipline, practice, profession and art to cater to social needs. Always it works in the real world. Therefore, having hands-on experience and working with a group of people will contribute better solutions to society need. Higher education is the place where students get an opportunity to work with peers with similar interests. Collaborative learning is active learning which contributes many outcomes that are beneficial to learners and all other group members in participating and getting responsibility for their own learning. This research is to find out how we can improve Sri Lankan engineering students’ interaction via collaborative learning by using mobile technology. Furthermore, we try to answer the question how Moodle mobile APP based instructional activities can be designed and developed as tools to enhance student interactions among engineering students to achieve outcome based education? Design-Based Research (DBR) approach was taken to develop t...
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The Commonwealth Digital Education Leadership Training in Action (C-DELTA) programme provides a framework for fostering digital education for lifelong learning by developing digital education leaders. The Faculty of Education at the Open... more
The Commonwealth Digital Education Leadership Training in Action (C-DELTA) programme provides a framework for fostering digital education for lifelong learning by developing digital education leaders. The Faculty of Education at the Open University of Sri Lanka implemented an action research project to promote the adoption of C-DELTA among teachers and students of secondary schools in Sri Lanka, and evaluate its impact on the teaching-learning process. A group of 41 teachers participated in the intervention and implemented C-DELTA in their schools. A variety of data were collected throughout the process via questionnaires, concept maps, focus group interviews, implementation reports, and log records in the C-DELTA platform. Findings revealed that despite challenges, such as inadequate ICT facilities, time constraints and limitation in English language competencies, the adoption of C-DELTA has supported improving digital literacy, enacting changes in thinking and digital behaviour am...
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Learning portfolio is relatively a new approach in Sri Lanka used by educational institutions to develop higher order cognitive skills among the learners. The Faculty of Education of Open University of Sri Lanka introduced compiling of a... more
Learning portfolio is relatively a new approach in Sri Lanka used by educational institutions to develop higher order cognitive skills among the learners. The Faculty of Education of Open University of Sri Lanka introduced compiling of a learning portfolio in its Master of Arts in Teacher Education programme with the intention of enhancing reflective practices and developing higher order cognitive skills among teacher educators. The key aim of compiling a learning portfolio is that students are expected to develop higher order cognitive skills such as critical thinking, reflective thinking, self-evaluation, and decision making and transferring the present knowledge and skills for future development of them and their students. This study examined to what extent higher order cognitive skill development could be enhanced among teacher educators through compiling learning portfolios. A qualitative research approach was used in this study within a framework of an evaluation research desi...
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Technical Vocational Education and Training (TVET) is increasingly given recognition as a very important aspect in the current times of rapid economic, social and technological change. TVET skills fill the gap of lifelong learning needs... more
Technical Vocational Education and Training (TVET) is increasingly given recognition as a very important aspect in the current times of rapid economic, social and technological change. TVET skills fill the gap of lifelong learning needs of the TVET workers to actively participate and contribute to the knowledge economy (UNESCO and ILO, 2002). The challenge is to develop innovative and affordable TVET solutions to achieve the desired outcomes (UNESCO, 2008). // Addressing the professional development requirements of the teachers in technical and vocational education institutions in Sri Lanka, the University of Vocational Technology (UNIVOTEC) offers a National Diploma in Technical Teacher Education (NDTTE) course. The goal of this TVET diploma is to enhance the knowledge, attitudes and skills of the technical lecturers and instructors in relation to the teaching-learning process and improve their life-long learning skills (UNIVOTEC, 2016). // This paper reports a case study on the capacity building process of UNIVOTEC faculty in online course design, development and delivery, focusing on its impact on quality enhancement in technical teacher education.
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The work involved preparing a draft OER policy framework catering to Provincial requirements; build awareness among key stakeholders on the concept and impact of OER; advocate the necessity and benefits of a provincial OER policy for... more
The work involved preparing a draft OER policy framework catering to Provincial requirements; build awareness among key stakeholders on the concept and impact of OER; advocate the necessity and benefits of a provincial OER policy for Education; initiate the process of drafting OER policies for each province up and working with champions towards a final draft policy.