Invited Speakers 邀请报告人

Assoc. Prof. Kelum Gamage

University of Glasgow, UK

Kelum Gamage received the B.Sc. Electrical Engineering degree from University of Moratuwa, Sri Lanka and the PhD from University of Lancaster, UK. He is an Associate Professor in the School of Engineering at University of Glasgow, UK and holds the position of Visiting Professor at the University of Electronic Science and Technology of China (UESTC) and Sri Lanka Technological Campus (SLTC). He is an academic accreditor and also a Professional Registration Advisor (PRA) of the IET. His research interests are in radiation detection, instrumentation methods, engineering education, educational development and innovation, education for sustainability, quality assurance and enhancement. He has authored over 120 peer-reviewed technical articles and holds a patent for a system designed to image fast neutron-emitting contamination (Patent No. GB2484315, April 2012). Kelum is an Editor for Radiation Protection and Dosimetry (Publisher: Oxford University Press), Sensors (Publisher: MDPI, Switzerland, ISSN 1424-8220) and Education Sciences (Publisher: MDPI, Switzerland, ISSN 2227-7102) journals, and an active reviewer for leading international peer-review journals. Currently, he is the guest editor for a Special Issue of Education Sciences (ISSN 2227-7102), titled "COVID-2019 Impacts on Education Systems and Future of Higher Education". He is a Chartered Engineer of the Engineering Council (UK), a Senior Fellow of the Higher Education Academy, a Fellow of the IET, a Fellow of Royal Society of Arts and a Senior Member of IEEE.

Assoc. Prof. HEW Khe Foon, Timothy

The University of Hong Kong, China

Dr. Khe Foon HEW is an Associate Professor at the Faculty of Education, the University of Hong Kong (HKU). Trained as a Systems Engineer with a bachelor degree in Computer Technology, Dr. Hew had worked for 4 years in Sony before moving on to the educational field. He has a master degree in Instructional Design and Technology, and a PhD in Instructional Systems Technology from Singapore and USA respectively. His primary research interests are in how technology can be used to support learning and engagement in both formal and informal contexts. Dr. Hew is listed as a World Top 1% scholar in his field by Essential Science Indicators based on Web of Science indexed journal article citations, Thomson Reuters for 6 consecutive years (2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020 http://hub.hku.hk/local/top1pc/top1pc.jsp). He has won a total of 11 research projects as a Principal/Co-Principal Investigator amounting over HK$5 million. Dr. Hew has won more than 40 types of international recognitions and awards. These include various best/excellent paper awards, and highly-cited or most-cited article recognitions. He won a Scholarship of Teaching and Learning Award in 2017, and the Faculty Outstanding Research Student Supervisor Award in 2020 from the Faculty of Education, HKU.

Assoc. Prof. David Geelan

Griffith University,  Australia

David has taught high school science and maths in Victoria, NSW and WA, and worked as a science educator in Papua New Guinea and Canada as well as Australia. His books 'Weaving Narrative Nets' and 'Undead Theories' explore ideas around qualitative approaches to educational research, and he won an Australian Publishing Award for the 'Science Ways' series of textbooks for Queensland schools. David has been helping beginning teachers learn about teaching science since 2000. He has conducted research on teachers' explanations in physics classrooms, videoconference teaching and learning and his own teaching practice, and his current work is on the use of interactive simulations ('virtual labs') in chemistry and physics education.

Assoc. Prof. Vincent CS LEE

Monash University, Australia

Dr. Vincent CS Lee is currently Associate Professor at Machine learning and Deep Learning Discipline of the Department of Data Science and Artificial Intelligence, Faculty of IT, Monash University, Australia. He received Australia Federal Government scholarship to pursue PhD from 1988 through to 1991 at The University of New Castle, NSW, in Australia. Lee is also a registered professional electrical engineer in Singapore; Licensed Electrical Engineer (High voltage switching authorisation) in Singapore; Chartered Engineer,Senior members of IEEE USA.

Lee has been awarded 22 internationally competitive research grants in signal processing, decision support systems, AI/ML, Digital health informatics, and financial engineering research projects. Lee's current research interests are multidisciplinary spreading across signal processing; adaptive knowledge representation and information engineering; data, text, and graph mining for knowledge discovery; decision theory; information system research based on design science paradigm; and Neuro-financial engineering, ICU patient health support systems, Thyroid cancer prognostic and treatment analytics. He has attracted research grants from ARC DP and LPs, A*STAR, and Swift Institute, UK.

Senior Lecturer Dr. Neil Gordon

University of Hull, UK

Neil Gordon is a senior lecturer in the Department of Computer Science & Technology at the University of Hull, where he is the programme leader for the Computer Science family of degrees. His doctorate was in applied mathematics, considering the use of computer algebra, and provided the basis of later work at the interface of mathematics with computing. He has published research around the use of technology in teaching, from team work to intelligent and adaptive assessment. He has produced a number of high impact reports related to Higher Education, including Technology Enhanced Learning for flexible pedagogy in Higher Education.

Topic: Flexible Technology-based Education for a Post-pandemic World

Abstract:This talk will outline an approach to blended learning using a variety of technologies, building on a framework for Flexible Pedagogy [1] and utilizing an agile approach to ensure it responds to student and staff needs. Flexible pedagogy focusses on providing students with some control on the how, when and what of learning. The pandemic experience of 2020 saw institutions rapidly and without planning having to move all their provision to online, for prolonged periods. Flexible approaches provided solutions to some of these challenges [2].
The talk is based on experiences of the author during the 2019-20 and 2020-21 academic sessions, adopting an engagement framework [3] as teaching pivoted to online learning and required adaptions and updates as teaching and assessment moved from a face-to-face biased blended model, to one that was nearly entirely online.
The talk will present an outline of how data on student engagement can provide insights into student support needs, and the challenges for teachers and lecturers that such a move requires. The work is primarily presented as a case study from Computer Science, though with a focus on what aspects are applicable to more general STEM education in the future.
1.Flexible pedagogies: technology-enhanced learning, NA Gordon, Advance HE, 2014,
https://www.advance-he.ac.uk/knowledge-hub/flexible-pedagogies-technology-enhanced-learning
2.Handbook on Facilitating Flexible Learning During Educational Disruption: The Chinese Experience in Maintaining Undisrupted Learning in COVID-19 Outbreak, RH Huang, DJ Liu, A Tlili, JF Yang, HH Wang - Beijing: Smart Learning Institute of Beijing University, 2020
3.Redmond, P., Abawi, L.A., Brown, A., Henderson, R. and Heffernan, A., 2018. An online engagement framework for higher education. Online learning, 22(1), pp.183-204.

Assoc. Prof. Wei Gao

Beijing University of Technology, China

Dr. Wei Gao is an associate professor in the Institute of Higher Education at the Beijing University of Technology, and the founder and CEO of Ease Education International, a platform for educational thinkers and doers. He obtained his doctorate in Teaching and Curriculum from the School of Education, Syracuse University, with a M.Eng. from the Industrial and Systems Engineering Department, National University of Singapore, and a B.S. from the Automation Department, Tsinghua University. He has been an elementary teacher in Inner Mongolia and a specialist with the UNV-Cisco program to promote ICT literacy among under-represented populations in Sichuan. Before taking the current position, he served as a Special Education and Rehabilitation Director with the Half the Sky Foundation, C.A., and trained special educators in orphanages across China. Beyond the issues of learning efficiency and effectiveness, he is more concerned with the roles of technologies and schooling that play in affecting students’ physical and mental health. His recent book on China’s mathematics curriculum reform, No School Left Behind, is published by the Routledge. His research is published in journals like British Journal of Education Studies and International Journal of Special Education.