Welcome to the Connected Intelligence Centre (CIC) newsletter.  

CIC ('kick') works with UTS faculties and business units to break new ground in the use of data and analytics to improve the student experience. 

We work as a transdisciplinary centre, bringing our collective intelligence together to catalyse thinking about the use of data and analytics among students, educators, researchers and leaders, with a creative, human-centred approach. We design and evaluate innovative learning analytic tools, and host events to spark ideas and reflective dialogue on data science and human sensemaking.

The highlights below demonstrate how we’re innovating in the teaching and application of analytics across UTS, work which is recognised as leading within Australia, and internationally.

Don’t hesitate to get in touch if you want to talk.

Regards,
Simon Buckingham Shum
Director & Professor of Learning Informatics

MDSI – Master of Data Science & Innovation

The Master of Data Science and Innovation (MDSI) is now in its 2nd year and is proving to be a flagship program of study in UTS’ strategy to be a leading University of Technology. 

Read what some of our students have to say about the course.

Read more.

Analytics for Collaboration and Creative Intelligence

CIC has been working on a R&D strand which focuses on making visible how people work in teams, both face-to-face and digitally mediated.  Part of this strand includes exploring the potential of using learning analytics in health simulation classrooms. We are currently developing the means to capture audio and mobility data of students working around manikins that simulate diverse scenarios with patients. 

Read more.

Algorithmic Accountability for Learning Analytics

Over recent months, CIC’s Director, Simon Buckingham Shum has been exploring ethical issues surrounding the application of data science in education — learning analytics. 

Read more.

Academic Writing Analytics (AWA)

Ongoing work on the Academic Writing Analytics (AWA) tool is being conducted. AWA is a formative feedback app for student writing. CIC have been working in close partnership with academics from diverse faculties and this semester the tool will be used in Management, Data Science, Engineering and Ecology.

Read more.

Key Technology Partner Visiting Fellowship Program

One of CIC’s research fellows, Roberto Martinez-Maldonado was awarded a grant to fund, Mykola Pechenizkiy a Professor at Eindhoven University of Technology and a leading researcher in Educational Data Mining to travel to UTS and CIC in 2017. With the aim to develop long-term collaborations with the universities. 

Read more.

CIC at the International Conference of the Learning Sciences

In June, CIC academic, Simon Knight attended the 12th International Conference of the Learning Sciences (ICLS) in Singapore. The conference theme "Transforming Learning, Empowering Learners" brought a focus onto design features of pedagogy and the empowerment of students to design their own social futures through participation in their global world. 

Read more.

Course Pathways: Making the right choices for the right reasons

This project aims to uncover statistically significant and meaningful patterns in students’ course pathway choices and to derive individual student course-longitudinal performance indicators. The objective is to provide support units, course and subject coordinators with longitudinal indicators that may be used to facilitate student personal-support actions.

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Declara

CIC are exploring the potential of using Declara at UTS, as part of its mission to understand how data and analytics will shape the future student experience. Declara will provide UTS with a private social platform for teams (students, staff and researchers) to build, annotate, share and discuss websites or PDF's.

Read more.

CIC-Around

CIC-Around has now welcomed its second cohort of students in the Spring semester, with planned work for the stability of the platform, and plans to explore (and develop analytics for) supporting community development within the space. We plan for some of these innovations to be implemented in the wider context of WordPress deployment around the university.

Read more.

Flipping the Textbook: Student-created textbook for students

The aim of this project is to investigate the processes and procedures required to embed open education resources (OER) as a key component for student learning in a course. The project will involve students in the co-creation of OER, developing their academic and digital literacies as they contribute to knowledge construction in their subject.

Read more.

Journal of Learning Analytics: Special Issue Editors

A special issue of the Journal of Learning Analytics will be published shortly (Vol.3, No.2). Edited by Profs. Simon Buckingham Shum and Ruth Deakin Crick (School of Education & Institute for Sustainable Futures), the focus is aligned closely with CIC’s work to deliver learning analytics for learning.futures.

Read more. 

CIC@LAK

CIC was very active at the 6th International Learning Analytics and Knowledge (LAK) Conference in April, the foremost event in the field. The team presented papers and co-chaired workshops, a panel and the Doctoral Consortium. 

Read more.

Master of Data Science & Innovation - Postgrad Info Evening

Interested in applying for the Master of Data Science and Innovation for Autumn 2017? Attend our Postgraduate Information Evening.

Date: Thursday 15th September 2016
Time: 5.30pm - 8.30pm
Location: Faculty of Engineering and IT Building, Building 11, Level 04, Room 400.

Register.

Simon Knight

CIC academic, Dr Simon Knight, has recently joined the Data Governance Sub-Committee and is working with CIC and the committee to think about appropriate learning analytics ethics policy. Check out his blog post for his thoughts on this position.

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Kailash Awati

CIC continues to grow as we welcome our new Senior Lecturer in Data Science - Kailash Awati. Kailash joins us with a broad background in data and analytics, and we look forward to welcoming him to the CIC and MDSI community.                               

Read more.

Bridget Payne

For the month of June, CIC's admin assistant, Bridget traveled to Bangalore, India to take part in a volunteering internship program with 40K Globe. Read about her amazing experience.

Read more.