Welcome to the July issue of the CIC Newsletter! This provides you with a snapshot of our many activities over the last quarter, all directed towards building the capacity of UTS staff and students to benefit from data science and analytics — across teaching, learning, research and business operations.

 Among this issue’s headlines, we celebrated our first Alumni from the Master of Data Science & Innovation; we’re ramping up our internal training program; we've hired a new data scientist to support UTS teams; and there’s growing media interest in our work in the exploding field of AI and analytics in education.

Enjoy browsing our CIC website, and as ever, don’t hesitate to get in touch to learn more.

 Regards,

Simon Buckingham Shum
Director & Professor of Learning Informatics

UTS:CIC celebrates its first MDSI graduates

This month, UTS celebrated its very first Master of Data Science and Innovation graduates – a momentous occasion for the university’s ground-breaking trans-disciplinary postgraduate degree.  The three MDSI graduates - Eduardo Lynch, Pedro Fernandez and William De Azevedo - accepted their certificates in the UTS Great Hall, before returning to the UTS Connected Intelligence Centre in Chippendale to celebrate the occasion …

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Dr Simon Knight on "fake news", epistemic cognition & the double-edged sword of data

CIC Lecturer Dr Simon Knight has produced an article for The British Psychological Society addressing the rise of so-called "fake news", and the way we process information online. The piece, entitled "A lens on fake news" begins as follows: Every day we face complex situations in which the information we need, and who we trust to provide that information, has a …

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Theresa Anderson on the "slow information" movement

Associate Professor Theresa Dirndorfer Anderson was recently interviewed by Alexandra Cain from the Sydney Morning Herald's MySmallBusiness publication on the topic of "slow information". An extract from the article: "...we all grapple with the pace of commercial life. At the same time, we have more information at our fingertips than ever before.This is great in lots of ways as it gives us …

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Special Issue on Multimodal Learning Analytics accepted for publication in UMUAI journal

Roberto Martinez-Maldonado (UTS) and colleagues have had a Special Issue on Multimodal Learning Analytics  & Personalised Support Across Spaces  accepted for publication in the Journal of User Modeling and User-Adapted Interaction ...

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The great potential of AI in Education (if used wisely)

Data big and small have come to education, from creating online platforms to increasing standardised assessments. But how can AI help us use and improve it? UTS CIC academics Simon Buckingham-Shum and Simon Knight reflect on the promise and potential pitfalls of Artificial Intelligence in Education. Read their full Conversation AU piece here.

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CIC research presented at international Learning Analytics conferences

In April 2017, CIC academics Roberto Martinez-Maldonado, Andrew Gibson and Simon Buckingham-Shum had multiple learning analytics research papers accepted for two international conferences held in Romania and Slovakia this month (July 2017) ...

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Data Protection and Privacy: In conversation with Sheila FitzPatrick at CIC

On Friday July 14, UTS:CIC hosted world-renowned data protection law expert Sheila FitzPatrick for a conversation on the changing landscape of data protection, data sovereignty and privacy laws. Sheila is the Chief Privacy Officer at data management solutions company NetApp and a global authority on data protection and privacy, particularly in the cloud.

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Learning Analytics "UnConference"

Piggybacking off the LA Leadership Summit held in Sydney on 20-21 June 2017, the UTS Connected Intelligence Centre decided to host its own Learning Analytics "UnConference" in CIC's Ideation Studio on Monday the 19th of June, 2017...

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OnTask OLT Project Workshop for UTS Staff

Ever wondered how to provide your students with individual feedback and recommendations on their learning progress both quickly and easily? On Thursday June 22, the UTS Connected Intelligence Centre (CIC) hosted a hands-on workshop to demonstrate the potential applications of OnTask software for UTS staff ...

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Writing Analytics Workshop for UTS Staff

The Connected Intelligence Centre ran a hands-on workshop for UTS staff on Writing Analytics on Tuesday June 6. The workshop exposed attendees to the use of Natural Language Processing (NLP) tools, explored the potential and pitfalls of writing analytics and discussed the broader educational issues in this space ...

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Developing Resilient Learners: CLARA workshop

This internal workshop brought together academics and professional staff who have been piloting the Crick Learning for Resilient Agency (CLARA) dispositional analytics tool in a range of contexts across UTS. We shared and discussed the findings of the CLARA pilot evaluation, before moving on to consider how we can collaborate to build capacity to further develop and embed it as an analytics tool …

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Mapping Information, Ideas and Arguments with Visual Sensemaking Tools

In recent years, UTS staff from diverse faculties and business units have expressed interest in information mapping schemes and tools. At this full-day workshop, speakers Paul Culmsee, Kailash Awati and Simon Buckingham-Shum described a scheme for mapping information, issues and arguments, and introduced a visual hypertext tool (Compendium), which has been in research and development for over 20 years …

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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…

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Michael Pracy joins CIC as Data Scientist

CIC is delighted to announce that astrophysicist Michael Pracy has joined the team in a Data Scientist role. We'll let Mike introduce himself! My new role at CIC is as a Data Scientist. It is a service position, tasked with providing analytic support, data analysis and modelling to other UTS business units. I will also provide advice or collaborate with research …

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