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Category: Talks

Invited talk about Flipped Classroom

Who: Professor Ljiljana Stevovic-Brankovic, The University of Newcastle, Australia

Title: “Flipped Classroom, Dynamic Worked Examples and Gamification of Computer Science Courses”

When: Thursday, 28th April, 12:30-13:30
Where: Acm15 C1/2.1.009 (25 pers)

Abstract:  Flipped classroom is a teaching method in which the students watch pre-recorded lectures before actually coming to the class. It is a type of blended, learner-centred model that enables skills such as teamwork, problem solving and higher order thinking. Flipped Classroom is now becoming more widespread and has found its way into many universities in USA, Australia and world-wide. In computer science and software engineering programs, many students many students already work part time in their second or third year.  Therefore, their opportunities for attending all lectures and tutorials are greatly reduced. In such an environment, it is important to provide a blended learning environment to give equal opportunities to bot working and studying-only student cohorts. Gamification refers to the use of elements of games in non-game contexts and has been applied in workplace, marketing, health programs and other areas, with mounting evidence of increased interest, involvement, satisfaction and performance of the participants. More recently gamification has been emerging as a teaching method that has a great potential to improve students’ motivation and engagement. Gamification in education should not be confused with playing educational games, as it only uses concepts such as points, leader boards, etc, rather than computer games themselves.

In this talk we describe our experience with introducing flipped classroom, dynamic worked examples and gamification in  two theoretical computer science courses, namely Introduction to Algorithmic and data Security. Majority of the students felt that Flipped Classroom is helpful and should be introduced into other computer science and software engineering courses.  They also thought that the quizzes both motivated them to watch the lecture recordings before coming to the class,  and were helpful for their learning. In addition to student perception, it appears that Flipped Classroom helps improve the learning outcomes. In both courses, the percentage of High Distinctions remained similar after introducing Flipped Classroom, while the percentage of Distinctions,  or Distinctions and Credits increased. In both courses the percentages of Passes and Fails dropped.  Through the Games we observed improved student motivation, engagement and commitment.  It was almost always hard to get students to submit their work and leave the classroom at the end of Game sessions as they always worked to the last minute and felt they had more to add to their papers. Anonymous student surveys that we conducted indicated that gamification supported their learning and motivation, and that these outcomes improved with second and third Games implementations as we learned what worked and what did not.

Professor Ljiljana Brankovic
Assistant Dean (Student Engagement)
Faculty of Engineering & Built Environment
The University of Newcastle
Callaghan NSW 2308
AUSTRALIA

E-mail: Ljiljana.Brankovic@newcastle.edu.au
Tel: 61 2 4921 6054
Fax: 61 2 4921 6929

Talk by Mads Græsbøll Christensen & Hendrik Purwins

Mads Græsbøll Christensen & Hendrik Purwins, Audio Analysis Lab, Aalborg University gave talk at the Danish Neuroscience Center in connection with the Music in the Brain Seminars.

The Audio Analysis Lab, Modelling Musical Category Formation, and Neural Correlates of Musical Attention.

Abstract:

The talk has three parts:
I. The Audio Analysis Lab was founded in 2012 and is located at the Dept. of Architecture, Design & Media Technology at Aalborg University in Denmark. The lab conducts basic and applied research in signal processing theory and methods aimed at or involving analysis of audio signals. The research currently focuses on audio processing for communication systems (VoIP, cellphones, etc.), hearing aids, music equipment, surveillance, and audio archives (e.g., compression and information retrieval). In this talk, we will present the lab, its members and our ongoing major projects and highlight our biggest contributions so far.
II. We present a system that learns the rhythmical structure of percussion sequences from an audio example in an unsupervised manner, providing a representation that can be used for the generation of stylistically similar and musically interesting variations. The procedure consists of segmentation and symbolization (feature extraction, clustering, sequence structure analysis, temporal alignment). In a top-down manner, an entropy-based regularity measure determines the number of clusters into which the samples are grouped. A variant of that system that adjusts the number of (timbre) clusters instantaneously to the audio input. A sequence learning algorithm adapts its structure to a dynamically changing clustering tree. The prediction of the entire system is evaluated using the adjusted Rand Index, yielding good results.
III. In a multi-streamed oddball experiment, we had participants shift selective attention to one out of three different instruments in music audio clips. Contrasting attended versus unattended instruments, ERP analysis shows subject- and instrument-specific responses including P300 and early auditory components. The attended instrument can be classified online with a mean accuracy of 91% across 11 participants. This is a proof of concept that attention paid to a particular instrument in polyphonic music can be inferred from ongoing EEG, a finding that is potentially relevant for both brain-computer interface and music research.
I:http://www.create.aau.dk/audio/
II:http://www.youtube.com/user/audiocontinuation
http://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007%2F978-3-642-23126-1_14
arxiv.org/abs/1502.00524
III:http://vbn.aau.dk/files/197609875/musicBCI_11.pdf

PhD defense by Niels Böttcher

Niels Böttcher will defend his PhD on April 7th here at Medialogy :: CPH

Monday, April 7th, 2014. 13.00-16.00 – A.C. Meyers Vænge 15, 2450 Kbh.SV. Room C1-2.1.042

 

Title: “Procedural audio for computer games with motion controllers: Evaluating the design approach and investigating the player’s perception of the sound and possible influences on the motor behaviour.”

For more information see here

Supervisor: Professor Stefania Serafin

Assessment Committee:

  • Associate professor Sofia Dahl (chairwoman), Department of Architecture, Design and Media Technology, Aalborg University Copenhagen.
  • Associate professor Morten Breinbjerg, Department of Aesthetics and Communication, Aarhus University
  • Associate professor Karen E. Collins, Department of English Language and Literature, University of Waterloo

Aalborg University Conference on "Applied Digital Game Research"

We would like to invite you to the first Aalborg University Conference on “Applied Digital Game Research”, Tuesday the 3rd of December. The conference is open 9:00-12:00 for everyone interested in games research and development.

Please see the tentative schedule here and sign up (at the end of the doc) here:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1M3KH6JMuaz31UV0OJfHaknru6IQL9Irln0dUF5Cg5_4/edit#heading=h.d96bhpj9slym
Place: Aalborg University Copenhagen, Frederikskaj 10A, 2450 København. Room 0.108
Time: Tuesday December 3rd from 9:00-12:00

Please save the date, and we are looking forward to seeing as many of you as possible.
If you are researching games, and are interested in participating with a short 5 minutes presentation of your latest research, there is still time to participate – and you are very welcome to contact us here: Henrik Schønau Fog <hsf@create.aau.dk>.

All the best,
Henrik Schønau Fog, Lars Reng og Thorkild Hanghøj
Aalborg Universitet

Invited Talk by Julian Togelius: Replacing game designers with an algorithm

On Wednesday the 4th of December at 2:30, Julian Togelius will give a talk on artificial intelligence for adaptation and procedural content generation in computer games. The title of the talk will be “Replacing game designers with an algorithm”, it will be given in room 4.058 (the small lecture room on the 4th floor of A.C. Meyers Vænge 15).

Julian Togelius is associate professor at the IT University Of Copenhagen. His research aims to make computer games adapt to their players through finding out what players want (whether they know it or not) and creating new game levels, challenges or rules that suit the players.
Related to this, is the challenge of making sense of large amounts of data generated by computer games, and on assisting human game designers in creating great game experiences. He is also working on how to make opponents and collaborators more intelligent and believable, research that has applications far outside of computer games. Additionally, He is working on some more theoretical topics in learning and optimisation.

Professor Ville Pulkki (Aalto, FI) gives talk and demos

On September 11th Professor Ville Pulkki from the spatial sound research group at the Aalto University (Department of Signal Processing and Acoustics) will visit Medialogy Copenhagen to give talks and demos. 
PROGRAM (Please note SEM7 is the new Semester 7 workspace in [2], 3rd floor. SEM7 has been moved to [1] room 2.1.43)
11:00 – SEM7:  Introduction: Current work of the Spatial Sound team at Aalto (see [1] on the map)
12:00 – Lunch (see [1] on the map)
13:00 – SEM7:  Parametric time-frequency domain spatial audio reproduction techniques (see [1] on the map)
14:30 – LAB:     Demos (see [1] on the map)

Interesting Talk by Till Bovermann Friday at 14:00

Till Bovermann is visiting us on Friday talking about Electronic Music Practice for Neurodiverse People.

Time and place: June 14th in the main auditorium at A.C. Meyers Vænge 15 at 2PM

== Website ==

http://tai-studio.org/index.php/projects/deind/

== Abstract ==
Electronic digital music practice for Neurodiverse People<!–more–>

Caused by recent technological as well as cultural developments ­cheap electronics, rapid prototyping technologies, respectively the DIY, maker and demo scenes ­ the majority of people in the western
world are able to creatively express themselves in a multitude of ways. Apart from mainstream hypes such as the hipstamatic phenomenon the tools for digital content creation as well established social and
cultural niches featuring unique expression vocabularies, e.g., embodied by experimental electronic music practice.

People with disabilities, however, mostly lack the possibility to take part in such cutting-edge movements: assistive technologies and careful design considerations are often of secondary interest to the designers and developers of the required technology, especially when it comes to the facilitation of cultural niches (This is by far not caused by bad faith, furthermore grounded in the very constraints inherent to such cutting edge movements).

However, questions remain on how e.g. electronic music practice can be scaffolded to support people facing challenges in society due to differences in their neurologic development. How can it support them in
expressing themselves in an experimental way beyond mainstream? How can it make the fun part accessible for them without pressing it into too much guidance? Can it empower them to even shape their own social
niche(s) in the above-mentioned sense?

In my talk, I will give insights on how the DEIND project at Aalto University approaches these questions. In the project, we aim to connect neurodiverse people with the field of contemporary electronic and digital music practice. In pursuit of this, people with autistic spectrum disorders are invited to take part in the design process of electronic musical instruments. To facilitate music practice, we aim for a holistic instrument experience rather than a modular approach in which the underlying modules of electronic instruments, interface & mapping & sound synthesis, would become too evident, possibly interfere
with the flow experience.

The close integration of target group members into the design cycle encourages a bilateral learning process: on the one hand, there is an intense and fruitful experience for the participants, on the other hand, it opens the opportunity for the involved researchers to identify challenges that are specific to this group yet reveal new perspectives on the broader view of their respective research area.

== Bio ==

Till Bovermann, born 1979, studied Computer Science in the Natural Science, majoring in Robotics, from 1999 to 2006 at Bielefeld University. He worked from 2006 to 2010 as a research assistant at various Bielefeld University institutes in Germany, most recently in the Ambient Intelligence Group of the CITEC Cognitive Interaction Technology, Center of Excellence. In 2010, he received a PhD for his work on Tangible Auditory Interfaces.

Since 2010, Till works as a post-doctoral researcher on tangible and auditory interaction at Media Lab Helsinki, School of Art, Design and Architecture, Aalto University, Helsinki, Finland where he runs TAI-stuido.org. As the principal investigator of the ³Aalto Media Factory²-funded project ³Electronic digital music practice for Neurodiverse People², his aims to connect Neurodiverse People with the field of contemporary electronic and digital music practice.

Till has been teaching at various international institutions, among others the Institute For Music And Media of the University of Music, Duesseldorf and the Institute for Time-based media, UdK Berlin.

Till¹s artistic works are mostly concerned with the relationship between contradictory systems such as the digital and physical realm or noise and harmony. Alongside his academic and artistic work, he also develops software in and for SuperCollider.