We are delighted to announce that Dr Ming Liu has joined CIC as a Research Fellow in Text Analytics. His research interests include human language technologies in writing and reading and learning analytics especially using technology and data to enhance learning, engagement and collaboration. His research findings have appeared in IEEE Transactions on Learning Technologies, Journal of Internet and Higher Education, Educational Technology & Society, Intelligent Tutoring System and other respected educational technology journals and conferences. We’ll let Ming introduce himself in his own words…Welcome!
I completed my PhD in Artificial Intelligence in Education in 2012 with a thesis titled: Automatic Question Generation for Academic Writing Support. Since then I have worked as a Postdoctoral Fellow and an Associate Lecturer at The University of Sydney (Model-based Software Engineering), and as an Associate Professor of Educational Technology on a number of research projects at Southwest University in China. My research at USYD commenced over 9 years ago with an ARC funded Discovery Project (Comprehensive support for collaborative writing: Visualizing argument, text and process structures). This project made use of machine learning (e.g. Learning to Rank and Probabilistic Graphic Models) and natural language processing (e.g. Latent Semantic Analysis and Tregex rules) to analyse different aspects of academic writing (e.g. coherence, topics and structure) and generated textual (e.g. Automatic Trigger Question Generation) and visual formative feedback (e.g. Automatic Writing Content Tagging) to scaffold reflection during the revision stage, and finally evaluated the impact of such intervention on the writing process. However, the student engagement in collaborative writing is still an issue.
Since 2014, I had worked as Lecturer and then Associate Professor of Educational Technology at SWU in China and served as a chief investigator of numerous research projects funded by China National Nature Science Foundation (Automatic Chinese Question Generation), Chongqing Municipal Social Science Foundation (Automatic Formative Feedback Generation In Chinese College Student Essay Writing), Chongqing Postgraduate Teaching and Learning Grants (Group Awareness in Online Collaborative Writing and Peer Review) and Grants in industry (Learning Analytics in Online Early Warning System). My work during this period has involved Automatic Chinese Question Generation, Collaborative Learning With Group Awareness Support and Conversational Agent with Motivational Interviewing Strategy.
Finally, as a researcher of educational technology, I have spent my academic career on the research and development of innovative educational technologies to support student learning, engagement and collaboration.
I am delighted to join CIC, which provides a fantastic environment that brings academics and researchers together enabling better support for teaching and learning. I’m looking forward to collaborating with you soon!
Selected Publications
Liu, M., Liu, L., & Liu, L. (2018). Group awareness increases student engagement in online collaborative writing. Internet & Higher Education,38,1-8.
Liu, M., Rus, V., & Liu, L. (2018). Automatic Chinese Multiple Choice Question Generation Using Mixed Similarity Strategy. IEEE Transactions on Learning Technologies, 11(2), 193-202.
Liu, M., Li, Y., Xu, W. & Liu. L (2017). Automated Essay Feedback Generation and Its Impact in the Revision. IEEE Transactions on Learning Technologies, 10(4), 502-513
Liu, M., Rus, V., & Liu, L. (2017). Automatic Chinese Factual Question Generation. IEEE Transactions on Learning Technologies, 10(2), 194-204.
Liu, M., Calvo, R., Pardo, A., & Martin, A. (2015). Measuring and visualizing students’ behavioral engagement in writing activities. IEEE Transactions on Learning Technologies, 8(2), 215-224.
Liu, M., Calvo, R. A., & Rus, V. (2014). Automatic generation and ranking of questions for critical review. Journal of Educational Technology & Society, 17(2), 333-346.