A collaborative research paper produced by academics from the UTS Connected Intelligence Centre (CIC) and UTS Pharmacy has been awarded Best Full Paper at the 7th International Learning Analytics and Knowledge Conference in Canada.
Dr Andrew Gibson, Dr Simon Knight. Dr Adam Aitken and Professor Simon Buckingham Shum from the UTS CIC along with Dr Agnes Sandor from the Xerox Research Centre in France and UTS Pharmacy academic Dr Cherie Lucas were recognised in Vancouver, BC, at the conference run by the Society for Learning Analytics Research.
The paper reports progress on the design, implementation, and validation of a Reflective Writing Analytics platform to provide actionable feedback within a tertiary authentic assessment context.
Congratulations to our academic team on this fantastic recognition. Full citation for the award-winning paper below.
Here’s the team’s Powerpoint presentation along with a video of Dr Gibson presenting the team’s work at LAK17:
Gibson, A., Aitken, A., Sándor, Á., Buckingham Shum, S., Tsingos-Lucas, C. and Knight, S. (2017). Reflective Writing Analytics for Actionable Feedback. Proceedings of LAK17: 7th International Conference on Learning Analytics & Knowledge, March 13-17, 2017, Vancouver, BC, Canada. (ACM Press). DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1145/3027385.3027436. [Self archived ePrint]
Abstract: Reflective writing can provide a powerful way for students to integrate professional experience and academic learning. However, writing reflectively requires high quality action- able feedback, which is time-consuming to provide at scale. This paper reports progress on the design, implementation, and validation of a Reflective Writing Analytics platform to provide actionable feedback within a tertiary authentic assessment context. The contributions are: (1) a new conceptual framework for reflective writing; (2) a computational approach to modelling reflective writing, deriving analytics, and providing feedback; (3) the pedagogical and user experience rationale for platform design decisions; and (4) a pilot in a student learning context, with preliminary data on educator and student acceptance, and the extent to which we can evidence that the software provided actionable feedback for reflective writing.
We were also delighted to see CIC team members Roberto Martinez-Moldonado and Simon Knight present two additional research projects at LAK17.
Roberto presented on behalf of his trans-disciplinary Health and Data Analytics research team from UTS, describing work being done to improve feedback for students working with patient manikins:
Simon Knight shared findings from his ongoing work on student writing practices, delivering his presentation entitled ‘Mining Sequences and Dispersion of Rhetorical Moves in Student Written Texts’: