There will be two presentations for this first session:

1.    Dr Hassan Khosravi: Integrating human and machine intelligence towards the development of an adaptive learning system

Adaptive educational systems make use of data about students, learning processes, and learning products to provide an efficient, effective and customized learning experience for students. They achieve this by dynamically adapting instruction, learning content and activities to suit students' individual abilities or preferences. One of the main shortcomings of adaptive educational systems is that they are expensive to develop. In this talk, borrowing from the literature from learning sciences and crowdsourcing, I will facilitate a discussion on how we might be able to integrate human and machine intelligence towards the development of cost-effective adaptive educational systems.

2.    Dr Deanne Gannaway: Establishing the value of boundary learning: discerning the hidden curriculum in generalist degrees

In recent years, numbers of students enrolling in generalist programs such as the BA and BSc have declined. One potential reason is the increasing focus on metrics confirming employment on graduation. In response, Australian universities are increasingly replacing generalist programs with programs with a clearer line of sight to employment on graduation. However, as generalist degrees become less flexible, there is potential to lose the unintended outcomes that come from engaging in a generalist degree. These outcomes – the hidden curriculum – have not been adequately appreciated or understood, but appear to align to the types of graduate outcomes identified by employers and researchers as attributes required for the future. The absence of clear understanding of the hidden curriculum means that curriculum decision-making on a program level is, at best, ill-informed. At worst, if industry needs cross-cultural boundary workers who can be independent creative individuals who can operate across disciplinary boundaries, we may unintentionally be limiting the capacity for students to develop these crucial attributes and capacities. This discussion considers possible approaches to investigating the learning that occurs outside of explicit discipline-focused teaching in generalist degrees in order to better understand curriculum outcomes of generalist degree programs.

About T&L Research Seminar Series

The ‘T&L Research Seminar Series’ provides an opportunity to engage in conversations with our researchers around contemporary issues in higher education.

Venue

Learning Innovation Building (#17), St Lucia campus
Room: 
425