Keynote/Plenary Speakers

Prof. Siu Cheung Kong
Professor of the Department of Mathematics and Information Technology
Director of Centre for Learning, Teaching and Technology
The Education University of Hong Kong

Prof. Kong Siu Cheung is Professor of Department of Mathematics and Information Technology, and Director of Centre for Learning, Teaching and Technology at The Education University of Hong Kong. His research interests cover pedagogy in digital classroom; computational thinking education; information literacy education; policy on technology-transformed education; professional development of teacher for learner-centered learning; IT in mathematics education; and IT in science and inquiry-based learning. Prof. Kong has produced 100 academic publications and completed/conducted 71 research projects. Prof. Kong is serving as the Past-President of the Asia-Pacific Society for Computers in Education (APSCE), following his capacities as the President-Elect (2012-2013) and the President (2014-2015) in APSCE. He currently is also the Editor-in-Chief of the international journal Research and Practice in Technology Enhanced Learning (RPTEL) and Journal of Computers in Education (JCE). Prof. Kong was also the Convener of “Theory and Practice of Pedagogical Design for Learning in Digital Classrooms”, International Research Network (IRN) under World Educational Research Association (WERA) from December 2012 to December 2015. He is now member of the Assessment and Monitoring Sub-committee of the Quality Education Fund (QEF) of the HKSAR.

Keynote address

Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) is a new trend in higher education and one of the key initiatives on implementing e-Learning. Many universities are offering their top caliber courses through online open-source platforms. The speech shares an experience of developing a MOOC for teacher professional development in mathematics education. The MOOC “E-pedagogy in Mathematics Learning and Teaching” is developed for pre-service and in-service mathematics teachers in school education to prepare them to realize learner-centered learning and cater learner diversity through e-pedagogy in mathematics learning and teaching. The speech shares the practical issues and pedagogical concerns in the planning, development and implementation stages of this MOOC. It first introduces the features of the MOOC for scheduling module structure of the course, sharing courseware and videos of the modules, managing learning assignments and discussions, and tracking learning process by users. It then introduces the design and organization of e-pedagogy course packs in the MOOC, which include topics on five dimensions in primary mathematics and four dimensions in secondary mathematics, for facilitating learners to explore and develop mathematical concepts and computational skills using e-Learning resources and social learning platforms. It finally discusses the implementation of the MOOC with the purpose of offering open enrollment, supporting blended learning and enriching teaching ePortfolio. Recommendations based on this experience will also be discussed for advancing the practice and research on MOOCs for open and innovative learning in higher education.

Keynote Session II

Title: Social Learning at Massive Scale

Prof. Mike Sharples
Chair and Professor in Educational Technology
Institute of Educational Technology
The Open University

Prof. Mike Sharples is Professor of Educational Technology in the Institute of Educational Technology at The Open University, UK. He leads the Minerva project to transform the University’s process of course development. He also has a post as Academic Lead for the FutureLearn company. His research involves human-centred design of new technologies and environments for learning. He inaugurated the mLearn conference series and was Founding President of the International Association for Mobile Learning.  He is Associate Editor in Chief of IEEE Transactions on Learning Technologies. He is author of over 300 papers in the areas of educational technology, science education, human-centred design of personal technologies, artificial intelligence and cognitive science.

Keynote address

More than 5 million people have registered to learn for free on the FutureLearn platform. In June 2015, a single course, ‘Understanding IELTS’ (for people taking the IELTS language exam) offered by the British Council attracted 441,000 registrations, with 271,000 people starting the course. This is the largest-ever gathering of people for an online learning event. Participants on FutureLearn courses report a high degree of satisfaction and on average 30% of participants engage in discussions (compared to about 12% on other MOOC platforms). Why has learning on FutureLearn been so effective and how can this be extended to other online platforms? The FutureLearn platform has been designed on a pedagogy of ‘social learning at massive scale’. The aim has been to develop a new form of online learning that improves with scale. Some type of teaching, such as sports coaching, get worse as more people take part. Some types of teaching, such as lecturing, give much the same experience at any scale. Lecturing at a distance is the foundation for MOOC platforms such as Coursera and edX. The ‘social learning’ pedagogy of FutureLearn is based on conversations among learners. Each piece of content (e.g., video, article) is linked to a simple conversation which learners can read and then add their comment or reply. Other parts of the course have guided discussions. For assignments, learners are asked to provide a constructive peer review. Thus, learners converse with each other, sharing perspectives and offering comments based on their experience and knowledge. Educators facilitate these discussions by responding to learner comments and asking questions to provoke replies. This method of linking a flow of learner conversations to content has been surprisingly effective. Just one video on the British Council course attracted 65,000 learner comments. Designers of the FutureLearn platform were then faced with the challenge of how to manage this large scale of conversation, so that learners would not feel overwhelmed. They added elements of social networking, including ‘liking’ comments, ‘following’ other learners and educators, and filtering comments by ‘most liked’ and ‘following’. In the talk I shall describe the pedagogy of the FutureLearn platform and show how pedagogy-informed design can produce effective learning at massive scale.

Keynote Session III

Title: Bridging Learning Analytics to Learning Design through a Pattern Language Based Learning Design Studio

Prof. Nancy Law
Professor
Division of Information and Technology Studies
Faculty of Education
The University of Hong Kong

Prof. Nancy Law is a Professor in the Information and Technology Studies Division of the Faculty of Education at the University of Hong Kong. She is the corresponding co-convener for the Science of Learning at the University, and founding honorary director for the Centre for Information Technology in Education (CITE).  Her research interests include international comparative studies of technology-enabled learning innovations, models of ICT integration in schools and change leadership, computer supported collaborative learning and the use of expressive and exploratory computer-based learning environments. She has served on a number of policy advisory boards/working groups related to ICT in education for the University of Hong Kong, the Hong Kong government and other community groups. She has also been contributing as expert/consultancy to the European Commission, UNESCO and OECD on various aspects of technology-enhanced learning.

Keynote address

Learning analytics has been attracting much attention as one of the key technology development areas in education. However, much of the literature in this area has been focused on participation and behavior analytics as surrogates for “learning engagement”, without reference to the intended learning outcome goals or the pedagogical design considerations of the teacher. There is a disconnect between those who design learning analytics and visualization tools and the teaching and instructional design communities, which would not be easily bridged without an appropriate platform that can link both activities together. More importantly, there is a lack of a comprehensive learning design language that can adequately capture the design goals to the multiple levels of design from decisions about pedagogical approaches, to activities, social organization and interactions, assessment and feedback, to the design of individual learning resources. In this talk, I will describe ongoing work in a multi-disciplinary and multi-institutional Project involving HKU, HKUST and MIT in the development of An Open Learning Design, Data Analytics and Visualization Framework for E-learning. the talk will focus on the open learning design platform being developed in this project, the Learning Design Studio (LDS). LDS is underpinned by a learning design pattern language developed by the team, which encompasses three levels of hierarchically embedded granularity: course, learning unit and learning activity. The use of LDS and the pedagogical design pattern language to capture the design of MOOCs will be illustrated.

Plenary Sessions I & II

Prof. Pedro Isaias
Associate Professor
Institute for Teaching and Learning Innovation
The University of Queensland

Prof. Pedro Isaias is an Associate Professor at the Institute for Teaching and Learning Innovation (ITaLI), The University of Queensland, Australia. He teaches topics in Management Information Systems (MIS). He has a background in MIS, having obtained a Doctorate in Information Management (Information and Decision Systems speciality) in 2002.

Previously he was Associate Professor at the Universidade Aberta (Portuguese Open University) in Lisbon, Portugal, responsible for several courses and director of the master degree program in Management / MBA. In the past he was director of master degree program in Electronic Commerce and Internet for 10 years. He has also been invited associate professor at ISEG - Lisbon School of Economics and Management in Portugal. He has taught postgraduate and undergraduate courses in Decision Support Systems, Data Mining, Business Intelligence, E-Marketing, E-Business, CRM and ERPs, Applied Project [MIS], Strategy in the Digital Context, and Research Methods in Business. He has supervised successfully to master and PhD completion more than 60 students in MIS and related areas. At the moment he conducts research activity related to E-Commerce and E-Business, Learning Technologies, Information Systems in general, and WWW related areas.

Plenary Session I

Title: Devising and Implementing a Student Dashboard at a Renowned University

Universities usually conduct teaching and learning activities in a traditional way for several hundred years. At The University of Queensland, Brisbane, Australia, the student experience in considered as a key driver of the University’s direction and innovation . One of the key aspects of the enhancement of the student experience is building a Student Dashboard.

Planning and developing a Student Dashboard comprises key aspects, challenges and concerns. This workshop will detail the key aspects to be considered. It will address several strategies to respond to the challenges and concerns (i.e. having students as partners for the dashboard development, adopting a staged approach). Finally, this workshop intends to foster a discussion on how the mentioned aspects should be considered for a university to be successful in this particular aspect.

Plenary Session II

Title: Using a Risk Management Model for Curriculum and Program Quality Enhancement

The use of institutional analytics, with a risk management approach, provides university executives, teaching and administrative staff with relevant and actionable information to make evidence-based decisions in setting strategic priorities and driving performance results. This workshop will discuss how The University of Queensland is using an analytics-driven risk management model to facilitate data-driven decision making. This model is called the CTQRA (Curriculum and Teaching Quality and Risk Appraisal). Alongside with the risk management model, a series of dashboards and reports have also been developed. This is an attempt to provide comprehensive, relevant, and actionable information to key stakeholders to encourage the use of evidence-based practices. The implementation of an online response system acts as an effective means to close the loop of the risk management process and ensure proposed actions are undertaken to drive performance results. The ultimate goal of this risk management approach in curriculum and program quality assurance is to enhance and enrich student learning experience at universities.