User Group Meetings

Venue: C.3.08

Synopsis:
Effective assessment and feedback practices can support assessment for learning as well as assessment of learning. This session will explore the pedagogy behind assessment, highlight current trends and then look at resources and tools to help you implement the pedagogic approaches that work for you.

Speakers: Stephen CLARKE, Solutions Engineering Manager, International, Blackboard and Lau Eng Tang, Solutions Engineer, Blackboard

Profile:
Stephen CLARKE is the manager for the International Solutions Engineering team covering the Asia-Pacific Region and Latin America. His team of pedagogically-focused experts work with clients to identify solutions that help them to meet their current and future educational challenges and aspirations. Stephen has worked in education for nearly 30 years, including 10 years as a secondary school teacher, 12 years in higher education at the Universities of Oxford and Birmingham and over 7 years with Blackboard.

Venue: C.3.09

Synopsis:
Why is it important for an LMS to be agile? How does a cloud based learning management solution help to create a great user experience? An awesome LMS engages communities. It enables better communication and collaboration between learning institutions - and between lecturers and students.

This presentation covers these three key elements in the selection process - True Cloud + Agile Development + Community Engagement... And we help you discover the awesomeness that is Canvas!

Speaker: Travis Cornes, Solutions Engineer

Profile:
Travis Cornes is one of the most knowledgeable and passionate solutions engineers at Canvas. Having been with the company for over 4 years, he was part of the very first technical support team and has helped numerous schools and universities to make their Canvas dream a reality.

With passion and intelligence (he has over 10 years experience in Network Administration, Technology Consulting and Technical Support), Travis will talk about redefining your LMS and unique approaches to learning using Canvas.

Travis worked as an Implementation Project Manager and has local knowledge, having spent several months in Asia Pacific (namely, Australia) helping to officially launch Canvas in the region.

He has worked with schools of every size, giving him a wealth of knowledge to draw from about everything from Canvas’ security, architecture, open API and reporting capabilities. Most importantly, he understands, and can provide guidance on, unique approaches to learning and teaching using Canvas as an LMS.

Venue: C.3.10

Synopsis:
Students submit a wealth of comments with online course evaluations, but universities and colleges can’t easily process them. This means administrators don’t always hear the top-of-mind concerns of students. To hear everything that students are saying, higher education needs a powerful, automated way to process natural language comments. This calls for a different form of computer software designed for text — not numbers — called "text analytics."

Blue/Evaluation is a comprehensive course evaluation and information gathering solution that can seamlessly integrate with your Student Information System (SIS) and Learning Management System (LMS). In addition, Blue/Evaluation is equipped with a powerful reporting engine that can link various parameters and metrics to facilitate advanced qualitative and quantitative analytics and provide key performance indicators.

Join us for to learn how other institutions are leveraging Blue/Evaluation to enhance the learning experience, gather meaningful business intelligence and support strategic decisions.

Speaker: Samer JAFFER, Executive VP, Global Operations, eXplorance

Profile:
Samer JAFFAR is responsible for the global operations at eXplorance. He has spent over eight years at the company; initially leading the sales, loyalty and professional services organizations before moving to focus on international expansions. Samer has been part of the team that helped the company become a leading provider for course evaluation, social feedback, text analytics, and learning experience management (LEM) solutions for higher education.  eXplorance has recently been recognized by the Great Place to Work® Institute as one of the “Best Workplaces in Canada ” for creating a culture of continuous improvement. Gartner has also named eXplorance as part of the prestigious “Cool Vendors in Education” report for providing cutting-edge technologies that assist leaders in identifying new digitization trends in the industry.

Perry is a co-founder of The Weather Underground (http://www.wunderground.com), a popular weather source, and LectureTools, which provides active learning tools through Echo360 Inc (http://www.echo360.com).

Venue: C.3.11

Synopsis:

1. Deeper dive into LINK technology capabilities and how they can impact learning outcome. (15 mins)
2. Demonstration of the HP-Knewton collaboration solution. (15mins)
3. Hands on creation of your document into a LINK product. (30 mins)
4. Collaboration discussion (30 mins)

Speaker: Ehud CHATOW, Worldwide Strategy & Business Development Manager-Education, Graphics Solutions Business, Hewlett-Packard Company

Profile:
Udi CHATOW leads the strategy and worldwide business development team for Education Solutions and part of HP’s Graphic Solutions Business.

Udi has over 26 years of business and technology innovation and R&D management experience. He has led teams and programs across multiple geographies and technical areas from software and mobile development to digital printing, color, material science and cloud solutions. Udi is an inventor of more than 50 patents. He is currently leading the innovation, partnership and strategy for the HP Graphic Business Solutions group in Education.

Venue: C.3.12

Synopsis:
In lectures with a large group of students, it is a challenge to engage students much less interact with them. Students often lose the chance to clarify concepts at their learning moment due to shyness or reluctance to interrupt the lecture. Lectures typically end with instructors not knowing how much their students have understood and internalised. To address these challenges, Eric Mazur, Gary King and Brian Lukoff developed Learning Catalytics.

Learning Catalytics is a “bring your own device” student engagement, assessment and classroom intelligence system. Using real-time analytics, it allows instructors to identify misconceptions and monitor responses to find out where students are struggling during lectures. It also helps students to build teamwork and collaboration skills by providing them with the structure to come up with a team answer.

Join us in this session to experience Learning Catalytics first hand. Please bring your mobile phone/laptop or tablet and connect to UniSIM’s free wifi.

Speaker: TAN Yu Yuan, Portfolio Manager for Higher Education, Pearson

Profile:
TAN Yu Yuan is the Portfolio Manager for Higher Education in Pearson’s partner markets in Asia. Yu Yuan, better known by his initials YY, is responsible for the planning and execution of the go-to-market strategy for this portfolio of Higher Education products in the region. YY is also a product specialist, and a keen advocate of the usage of technology in everyday learning. YY graduated from the National University of Singapore, where he majored in Economics.