April 2017

Dear colleagues,

Welcome to the first CIC Newsletter for 2017. As you'll see, it's been a vibrant quarter: welcoming new members to the team and working with different groups in UTS to build their analytics capabilities, which are now being recognised as exemplary at an international level.

As always, do not hesitate to get in touch if you want to talk/visit.

Regards,
Simon Buckingham Shum
Director & Professor of Learning Informatics

RECENT NEWS

HealthSimLAK: Multimodal Learning Analytics meet Patient Manikins

We are collaborating with the UTS Clinical Simulation team at the Faculty of Health to explore the potential that multimodal learning analytics can bring to generate reflection in Healthcare simulations using patient manikins. Healthcare simulations are hands-on learning experiences aimed at allowing students to practice essential skills that they may need when working with real patients in clinical workplaces.

CIC partners with UTS faculties for analytics innovation projects

The UTS Connected Intelligence Centre continues to play a key role in catalysing and validating the use of analytics by faculties across the university in their learning and teaching programs. We are delighted to announce that in the most recent round of 2017 Vice-Chancellor’s Learning and Teaching Grants, CIC secured three small grants for collaborative projects with UTS teams from …

CIC work included in European Commission report on the use of Learning Analytics: Implications for Education Policy

We are very honoured to announce that our work at the Connected Intelligence Centre has been included in the Joint Research Centre's (JRC) European Commission report on the use of Learning Analytics: Implications for Education Policy. The Joint Research Centre (JRC) is the European Commission's science and knowledge service which employs scientists to carry out research in order to provide independent …

CIC Connecting Nodes for a Human Data Ethics network

One of CIC’s key roles at UTS is to connect people, ideas and data as we wrestle with the opportunities and challenges posed by Big Data. So, on March 6, we were delighted to host colleagues from the faculties, student support units and administration, to discuss their diverse interests in Data Ethics. Associate Professor Theresa Anderson hosted the networking event …

UTS wins award at International Learning Analytics Conference

CIC awarded Best Paper at International Learning Analytics Conference

A collaborative research paper produced by the CIC team and UTS:Pharmacy has been awarded Best Full Paper at the 7th International Learning Analytics and Knowledge Conference in Canada.

CIC welcomes directors of the first Learning Analytics Centres in both China and Japan

CIC hosted a remarkable convergence today, as the Directors of the first Learning Analytics Centres in both China and Japan visited to see how we operate as an innovation centre for applied, human-centred data science in UTS learning and teaching. Jingjing Zhang is Director of the Big Data Centre for Technology-mediated Education in Beijing Normal University, and Hiroaki Ogata is …

EVENTS

LAK17

CIC recently shared its work in diverse forms and topics at the 7th International Conference on Learning Analytics & Knowledge (LAK17). LAK17 was held in Vancouver, Canada from March 13-17, 2017 and was organised by the Society for Learning Analytics Research (SOLAR).

Ishan Shapiro: You're not just data scientists, you're data sense-makers!

On Friday 20 January, we welcomed guest speaker Ishan Shapiro, creative entrepreneur, technologist and storyteller. He shared some from-the-trenches stories about the oft-overlooked and invisible aspects of the human-level sense-making around and within the data science and data analysis workflow.

Mykola Pechenizkiy: Predictive Analytics for Responsible Data Science

On Monday 6 February from 3.30 - 5pm, we welcomed guest speaker Mykola Pechenizkiy who talked about Predictive Analytics for Responsible Data Science. This talk showcased current state-of-the-art tools for predictive analytics and emphasised that further research is needed to gain a deeper understanding of what it means for predictive analytics to be ethics-aware.

Hiroaki Ogata: Educational big data and learning analytics in higher education

On Friday 17 February, we welcomed guest speaker Hiroaki Ogata who talked about the Educational Big Data research project taking place at Kyushu University, Japan. This project uses Moodle, Mahara and an e-book system that allows students to browse e-books on any computing devices. In his talk, Hiroaki demonstrated the learning analytics tools used for the project and shared initial findings from his University.

TEAM NEWS

Kirsty Kitto joins CIC

We are delighted to announce that Kirsty Kitto has joined CIC as a Senior Lecturer in Data Science. Kirsty brings a transdisciplinary approach to the challenge of modelling, and deploying data science applications in complex social systems (such as learning), and is respected internationally within the Complex Systems, Learning Analytics, and ExperienceAPI (xAPI) communities.

Radhika Vijay Mogarkar joins CIC as Web Applications Developer

CIC is delighted to welcome web developer Radhika Vijay Mogarkar to our growing team. Radhika brings with her a wealth of experience in the field, working most recently as an applications developer for a financial research institute, where she helped to design and develop analysis tools for fund, equities and property research.

CIC welcomes Endeavour Research Fellow Bikalpa Neupane

Last week, UTS: CIC welcomed new Endeavour Research Fellow Bikalpa Neupane to its Blackfriars research hub in Chippendale, Sydney. Bikalpa will be working with colleagues on a peer assessment of Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) for the next five months at UTS. We sat down with Bikalpa to learn about his story and his current research work.