Member
Vaclav Bayer
Lead Software Engineer
+44 (0)1908 858666
I am a Data Engineer at the OUAnalyse team and currently also a technical lead of the project. As a part-time PhD student, I am investigating how Learning Analytics can be used to target awarding gaps, which is a severe problem occurring in Higher Education institutions across the whole UK. My main focus is currently the development of an Equity, Diversity and Inclusion dashboard to spotlight awarding gaps across diverse groups of students within their modules and help understand the driving factors of awarding gaps.
Keys: Learning Analytics; Predictive Learning Analytics; Recommender Systems; Equity, Diversity and Inclusion; Research software development
Team: Miriam Fernandez, Martin Hlosta, Alba Morales Tirado, Paul Mulholland, Zdenek Zdrahal
News
06 Oct 2025
22 Jul 2025
07 Mar 2025
12 Feb 2025
10 Oct 2024
Publications
Bayer, V. (2026). Leveraging Learning Analytics to Support Institutional Efforts in Addressing Awarding Gaps. [Thesis] https://oro.open.ac.uk/107979/.
Herodotou, C., Gaved, M., Shrestha, S., Comfort, C., Maguire, C., Sides, T., Kwarteng, J., Bayer, V., Lee, J., Mulholland, P. and Fernandez, M. (2025). Student-Facing Dashboard - Scale up. Insights from the second year of implementation. The Open University, Milton Keynes, UK. https://oro.open.ac.uk/106146/.
Herodotou, C., Shrestha, S., Comfort, C., Fernandez, M., Andrews, H., Mulholland, P., Bayer, V., Maguire, C. and Lee, J. (2025). A participatory approach to designing a student-facing dashboard for online and distance education. Journal of Learning Analytics, 12(2), pp. 158–174. https://oro.open.ac.uk/104055/.
Herodotou, C., Carr, J., Shrestha, S., Comfort, C., Bayer, V., Maguire, C., Lee, J., Mulholland, P. and Fernandez, M. (2025). Prescriptive analytics motivating distance learning student action: A case study of a student-facing dashboard. In: LAK25: The 15th International Learning Analytics and Knowledge Conference (LAK 2025), 03-07 Mar 2025, Dublin, Ireland. https://oro.open.ac.uk/102277/.
Bayer, V., Mulholland, P., Hlosta, M., Farrell, T., Herodotou, C. and Fernandez, M. (2024). Co‐creating an equality diversity and inclusion learning analytics dashboard for addressing awarding gaps in higher education. British Journal of Educational Technology, 55(5), pp. 2058–2074. https://oro.open.ac.uk/98718/.
Herodotou, C., Shrestha, S., Comfort, C., Fernandez, M., Andrews, H., Mulholland, P., Bayer, V., Maguire, C. and Lee, J. (2023). PVC-Challenges Response: A student facing dashboard for online undergraduate students. Quality Enhancement and Innovation, The Institute of Educational Technology, The Open University, Milton Keynes, UK.. https://oro.open.ac.uk/97188/.
Bonnin, G., Bayer, V., Fernandez, M., Herodotou, C., Hlosta, M. and Mulholland, P. (2023). CERSEI: Cognitive Effort Based Recommender System for Enhancing Inclusiveness. In: 18th European Conference on Technology Enhanced Learning, EC-TEL 2023, 4-8 Sep 2023, Aveiro, Portugal. https://oro.open.ac.uk/92414/.
Reyero Lobo, P., Mensio, M., Pavon Perez, A., Bayer, V., Kwarteng, J., Fernandez, M., Daga, E. and Alani, H. (2022). Estimating Ground Truth in a Low-labelled Data Regime: A Study of Racism Detection in Spanish. In: Workshop on Novel Evaluation Approaches for Text Classification Systems on Social Media (NEATCLasS), 6-9 Jun 2022, Atlanta, Georgia. https://oro.open.ac.uk/83210/.
Bayer, V. (2021). Targeting degree-awarding gap across ethnicities through means of OUAnalyse predictions. Postgraduate Research Poster Competition, The Open University. https://oro.open.ac.uk/77387/.
Rets, I., Herodotou, C., Bayer, V., Hlosta, M. and Rienties, B. (2021). Exploring critical factors of the perceived usefulness of a learning analytics dashboard for distance university students. International Journal of Educational Technology in Higher Education, 18(1), https://oro.open.ac.uk/77291/.
Hlosta, M., Herodotou, C., Fernandez, M. and Bayer, V. (2021). Impact of Predictive Learning Analytics on Course Awarding Gap of Disadvantaged students in STEM. In: Artificial Intelligence in Education, AIED 2021, 14-18 Jun 2021, Online / Utrecht, NL. https://oro.open.ac.uk/76042/.
Bayer, V., Hlosta, M. and Fernandez, M. (2021). Learning Analytics and Fairness: Do Existing Algorithms Serve Everyone Equally? In: AIED 2021; 22nd International Conference on Artificial Intelligence in Education, 14-18 Jun 2021, ONLINE from Utrecht. https://oro.open.ac.uk/76185/.
Hlosta, M., Bayer, V. and Zdrahal, Z. (2020). Mini Survival Kit: Prediction based recommender to help students escape their critical situation in online courses. In: Proceedings of the 10th International Conference on Learning Analytics and Knowledge (LAK20), 23-27 Mar 2020, Frankfurt am Main, Germany. https://oro.open.ac.uk/69302/.
Hlosta, M., Zdrahal, Z., Bayer, V. and Herodotou, C. (2020). Why Predictions of At-Risk Students Are Not 100% Accurate? Showing Patterns in False Positive and False Negative Predictions. In: Proceedings of the 10th International Conference on Learning Analytics and Knowledge (LAK20), 23-27 Mar 2020, Frankfurt am Main, Germany. https://oro.open.ac.uk/69150/.
Pontika, N., Knoth, P., Anastasiou, L., Charalampous, A., Cancellieri, M., Pearce, S. and Bayer, V. (2017). The uptake of the CORE recommender in repositories. OpenRepositories2017. https://oro.open.ac.uk/50182/.
Knoth, P., Anastasiou, L., Charalampous, A., Cancellieri, M., Pearce, S., Pontika, N. and Bayer, V. (2017). Towards effective research recommender systems for repositories. In: Open Repositories 2017, 26-30 Jun 2017, Brisbane, Australia. https://oro.open.ac.uk/49366/.
