UCEM is a research-informed institution that builds scholarship into its teaching and learning.  The Research Strategy is driven to meet our institution vision and goals, building research capacity across the institution, particularly in its academic staff, and then to ensure that research and scholarship disseminate to inform our curriculum and practices.  With a breadth of industry contacts, in tutors, direct engagement and through accredited courses, UCEM seeks to bring into the learning, and hence expose students to, the latest developments in professional practice.

UCEM has set up two research centres to further this approach one pedagogic and the other subject-specific; The Online Learning Research Centre and the Property and Construction Research Centre.

The Online Learning Research Centre

The University College of Estate Management (UCEM)’s Online Learning Research Centre (OLRC) aims to research and implement the best innovations in online learning to enhance students’ experience of studying with UCEM.

The Centre is headed up by Dr Tharindu Liyanagunawardena who has a wealth of experience in the field of research into online learning and who is widely published in peer-reviewed journals and books. Tharindu works closely with subject experts both within UCEM and from other leading online learning research centres around the UK to explore students’ and tutors’ experiences of online learning. The OLRC will be researching ways of ensuring that we continue to make the best use of the latest relevant technologies and deliver the best possible content in our courses. The team will also continue to publish our findings in peer-reviewed journals and at conferences.

At the 28th EDEN Annual Conference held 16-19 June 2019 in Bruges, Dr Tharindu Liyanagunawardena won the EDEN Best Research Paper Award for her paper, Automatic Transcription Software: Good enough for accessibility? A case study from Built Environment Education. View the slide presentation, Full paper.

The OLRC’s current projects include:

Online assessment:  We are exploring the feasibility of introducing online examinations and assessments, and experimenting with open badging as a way of recognising students’ achievements.

Learning analytics: We are committed to a policy of ‘no student left behind’ and we are looking into using student information and learning performance analytics to help us develop our courses to ensure that our students get the most out of their learning journey with us.

Accessibility: We are working on improving the accessibility of our study materials to remove as many barriers to learning as possible