Research Groups

SICSA Workshop on Learning Analytics in Education

The Higher Education Research Group is happy to announce the SICSA-sponsored workshop on learning analytics on Aug 6th 2018.

Goals

The purpose of this SICSA-sponsored workshop is to encourage an evidence-based approach to teaching by leveraging quantitative and qualitative data available to CS schools. Most importantly, we plan to organise a multi-institution study on using machine learning and AI-based techniques on existing data to improve learning outcomes across multiple universities. The workshop will serve to formulate the goals of such a study and forge the necessary collaborations to make this happen.

Format

We are very happy to announce that the chief regulatory adviser at Jisc Technologies Andrew Cormack will give an invited talk about the legal and ethical framework for learning analytics. In addition to the invited talk, the workshop will consist of a set of breakout sessions and a final discussion dedicated to preparing a follow-up study. The breakout sessions will involve discussions about existing quantitative and qualitative data available to educators, how these data influence teaching, what (statistical and other) data procesisng is useful for driving decisions, and which algorithmic approaches could be applied across institutions.

Background

Evidence-based teaching is of particular importance in fast-moving fields like Computer Science, and is therefore of interest to many higher education institutions. We have more data on students and courses than ever before including grades, entry requirements, qualitative and quantitative feedback, and career paths after leaving the university, and as computer scientists we are well equipped to process such data. It is important to measure the positive and negative impact of changes to the delivery (e.g. lecture capture, different lecturers) and content (slides, supporting material, organisation) in order to maintain and hopefully improve learning outcomes over time.

However, measuring how teaching approaches affect learning outcomes can be challenging because of issues such as data protection, small numbers of students, changes in the curriculum, or changes in admission procedures. Measuring differences between institutions is even harder because of differences in course structure, class sizes and marking scales. We believe that computer science techniques such as data mining, machine learning and artificial intelligence will become increasingly important in this field, and would like to set up an ambitious study across several universities based on the findings of this workshop. Such a study is only possible if coordinated well across institutions and this workshop aims to provide the basis for such collaboration.

Target Audience

The workshop will involve 24 academics, mainly from SICSA-affiliated institutions, aiming to foster an exchange of ideas and best practice. While the central topic is CS education, we hope to also appeal to CS academics engaged in data ethics, machine learning, and artificial intelligence (e.g. for processing data in natural text form) because the topic provides an important application of CS, and has great potential for impact.

To register, contact Kasim at kt54@st-andrews.ac.uk, or go to the Eventbrite page:

http://learning-analytics-workshop.eventbrite.com/

Event details

  • When: 6th August 2018 09:30 - 15:30
  • Where: Gateway Bldg
  • Format: Workshop

Seminar: AI-augmented algorithms — how I learned to stop worrying and love choice

The speaker is Lars Kotthoff, previously a PhD student here, now and Assistant Professor at the University of Wyoming. All welcome.

 

Often, there is more than one way to solve a problem. It could be a different
parameter setting, a different piece of software, or an entirely different
approach. Choosing the best way is usually a difficult task, even for experts.
AI and machine learning allow to leverage performance differences of
algorithms (for a wide definition of “algorithm”) on different problems and
choose the best algorithm for a given problem automatically. In AI itself,
these techniques have redefined the state of the art in several areas and led
to innovative approaches to solving challenging problems.

In this talk, I will give examples of how AI can help to solve challenging
computational problems, what techniques have been applied, and how you can do
the same. I will argue that AI has fundamental implications for software
development, engineering, and computer science in general — stop making
decisions when coding, having more algorithmic choices is better!

 

Why Homotopy type Theory (HoTT) matters – Professor Thorsten Altenkirch

Abstract:
Dependent types are a wonderful way to construct correct functional programming and specify interfaces as Edwin has shown in his nice book on type driven development using a welsh dragon. But shall we go further in the esoteric world of homotopy type theory? I will try to motivate this and I am looking forward to some discussions with people who have a more pragmatic attitude to dependent types.

Event details

  • When: 25th May 2018 11:00 - 12:30
  • Where: Cole 1.33a
  • Format: Seminar

The OpenMP and MPI refactoring with ParaFormance – Turkey Alsalkini

Abstract:

The increasing complexity of codes with the growing number of cores that should be utilised make such codes hard to optimise and maintain. In this talk, we present the OpenMP and MPI refactoring implemented in the ParaFormance tool. This tool transforms the sequential code into parallel code able to run on shared memory machines. Further refactoring is implemented to adapt the source code to exploit a larger number of processors on large HPC clusters with message passing support. In addition, the resulting MPI code can be used by developers as a starting point for further optimisation. Both refactorings are preceded by an advanced safety checking which reports concurrency problems and gives hints and suggestions on how to fix them.

Event details

  • When: 17th May 2018 12:00 - 13:00
  • Where: Cole 1.33a
  • Format: Talk

Professor Aaron Quigley to Join ACM Distinguished Speaker Program


Congratulations to Aaron on being appointed as a Distinguished Speaker for the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM). The esteemed Distinguished Speaker Program brings together international thought leaders from academia, industry, and government to give presentations to ACM chapters, members, and the greater IT community in a variety of venues and formats. The outreach program coordinates speaker lectures to consider the most important challenges in computing today and facilitates professional networking.

Aaron has developed four lectures for the DSP program here can deliver, these include:

Discreet Computing
Computing and interaction are changing the nature of humanity. As individuals our capabilities can be extended, our memories augmented and our senses attuned. Societies are being reshaped…

Global Human Computer Interaction
Global Human Computer Interaction is the study of HCI when considering global challenges, languages, concerns, cultures and different economic drivers. Digital technologies now underpin the…

Immersive Analytics
Human activity (in all its forms) can result in large volumes of data being collected and simply stored in the hope that one day it can be analysed and explored. From business to health…

Ubiquitous User Interfaces (UUI)
UbiComp or Ubiquitous Computing is a model of computing in which computation is everywhere and computer functions are integrated into everything. It can be built into the basic objects,…

Professor Quigley is Chair of Human Computer Interaction in the School of Computer Science at the University of St Andrews. His research interests include surface and multi-display computing, body worn interaction, human computer interaction, pervasive and ubiquitous computing and information visualisation.

SACHI research group in Canada for the annual CHI conference

  

This week members of the SACHI research group are in Canada for the annual CHI conference where they are presenting 8 papers and other research work.

Their research papers have been attracting media interest this week. The Times has covered their paper on Change blindness in proximity-aware mobile interfaces quoting Professor Quigley. 

         

 

App developers urged to cure phone ‘blindness’

While the verge and Engadget has covered the best paper Project Zanzibar: A Portable and Flexible Tangible Interaction Platform.

Hui-Shyong Yeo contributed to this research while he was a research intern at Microsoft Research last summer in Cambridge.

 

The research group has put together a page which describes all the efforts at CHI 2018 here

Next year CHI 2019 will be in Scotland while CHI 2020 will be in Hawaii on its way to Asia in 2021.

Members of SACHI are already involved in the planning for 2019 as associate chairs for the program and are looking forward to CHI here in Scotland next year

SACHI at CHI 2018 in Montreal next week

 

 

 

The ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI) series of academic conferences is generally considered the most prestigious in the field of human-computer interaction. It is hosted by ACM SIGCHI, the Special Interest Group on Computer-Human Interaction. CHI has been held annually since 1982 and attracts thousands of international attendees. Next week members of SACHI will be at the CHI 2018 conference in Montreal where they will be presenting 6 full papers (1 best paper), 1 demonstration, 1 late-breaking work and other activities.

This work includes pointing all around you, the design of visualization tools,  physicalization, change blindness, multi-user interfaces, tangible interaction and augmented reality.

You can find the research papers, videos and more details on SACHI @ CHI2018 here.

Montreal, Canada