Cybernetics and learning analytics - how feedback control paradigms may improve education
Damiano Varagnolo
Norwegian University of Science and Technology
DEIB - Alpha Room (Building 24)
May 24th, 2022
11.30 am
Contacts:
Simone Formentin
Research Line:
Control systems
Norwegian University of Science and Technology
DEIB - Alpha Room (Building 24)
May 24th, 2022
11.30 am
Contacts:
Simone Formentin
Research Line:
Control systems
Sommario
On May 24th, 2022 at 11.30 am, Prof. Damiano Varagnolo, Norwegian University of Science and Technology, will hold a seminar on "Cybernetics and learning analytics - how feedback control paradigms may improve education" in DEIB Alpha Room.
The concept of learning analytics is that of "measuring, collecting, analyzing and reporting of data about learners and their contexts, for purposes of understanding and optimizing learning and the environments in which it occurs". This concept, that has been around for at least two decades, clearly involves that of system identification, state estimation, and feedback control - the turf of the automatic control community. Despite this, it seems that we haven't been contributing to the development of learning analytics theories and tools more than marginally. In this talk we will discuss why this has been the case, what is changing now, and which increased possibilities our researchers have to contribute to novel education technologies. And, to exemplify these concepts, we will present some recent results that show the potential of automatic control paradigms in making learning analytics truly adoptable (and tools that we believe simplify and streamline our daily job as teachers). The seminar will combine classical talk parts together with interactive discussions on what we may do as a community to make higher education more effective, e.g., by means of embedding cybernetics concepts in its processes.
The concept of learning analytics is that of "measuring, collecting, analyzing and reporting of data about learners and their contexts, for purposes of understanding and optimizing learning and the environments in which it occurs". This concept, that has been around for at least two decades, clearly involves that of system identification, state estimation, and feedback control - the turf of the automatic control community. Despite this, it seems that we haven't been contributing to the development of learning analytics theories and tools more than marginally. In this talk we will discuss why this has been the case, what is changing now, and which increased possibilities our researchers have to contribute to novel education technologies. And, to exemplify these concepts, we will present some recent results that show the potential of automatic control paradigms in making learning analytics truly adoptable (and tools that we believe simplify and streamline our daily job as teachers). The seminar will combine classical talk parts together with interactive discussions on what we may do as a community to make higher education more effective, e.g., by means of embedding cybernetics concepts in its processes.
Biografia
Damiano Varagnolo received the Dr. Eng. degree in automation engineering and the Ph.D. degree in information engineering from the University of Padova, respectively in 2005 and 2011. He worked as a research engineer at Tecnogamma S.p.A., Treviso, Italy during 2006-2007 and visited UC Berkeley as a scholar researcher in 2010. From March 2012 to December 2013, he worked as a post-doctoral scholar at KTH, Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm. From January 2014 to November 2019, he worked first as Associate Senior Lecturer and then as Senior Lecturer at LTU, Luleå University of Technology in Sweden, teaching system identification and state-space based automatic control. He is now serving as Professor at NTNU in Trondheim within the Department of Engineering Cybernetics and as Associate Professor at the Department of Information Engineering in Padova. His research interests include statistical learning, distributed algorithms, learning analytics, and physical rehabilitation.
