Category: Announcement

New publication from the CIRES team at The University of Queensland. Congratulations to PhD researcher Mehrnoush Mohammadi, Chief Investigators Assoc. Prof. Hassan Khosravi, Prof. Wojtek Tomaszewski, Centre Director Prof. Shazia Sadiq, and colleagues & co-authors Elham Tajik and Roberto Martinez-Maldonado. Full details & insights below.

“Delighted to share our newly published work, “Artificial Intelligence in Multimodal Learning Analytics: A Systematic Review,” in Computers & Education: Artificial Intelligence. We chart the evolving intersection of AI and Multimodal Learning Analytics (MMLA), providing the first comprehensive systematic review in this space. Huge Thanks to the ARC Training Centre for Information Resilience (CIRES) for supporting this work!

What We Did: We reviewed 686 records (2019–2024), synthesising 43 peer-reviewed studies to develop a structured framework for integrating AI in the MMLA pipeline—from data collection and pre-processing to modelling and feedback.

Key Insights:
► AI is transforming MMLA’s modelling and analysis layers, but links to pedagogy and impact on learning remain underdeveloped.
► Research is concentrated in higher education and lab settings, with limited focus on early learning, diverse stakeholders, or ecological validity.
► While AI enhances real-time feedback and insight generation, challenges like small sample sizes, generalisability, and transparency persist.

Forward: With the rapid rise of generative AI, new opportunities are emerging to advance MMLA, enabling richer feedback, adaptive interventions, context-aware support, and deeper insights into human learning.

What opportunities or risks do you see in embedding AI across multimodal learning environments?

We are delighted to announce that CIRES Centre Director, Professor Shazia Sadiq, has become the latest member of the Kingston AI Group, Australia’s most highly regarded professors of artificial intelligence (AI).

“We are absolutely thrilled that Shazia has joined the Kingston AI Group,” said Kingston AI Group Convenor, University of Adelaide Professor Anton van den Hengel. “Shazia’s experience and contribution to the field makes her one of the foremost experts of AI in Australia.”

Congratulations Shazia!

Welcome to Timo Spinde who joined us this week from Germany! Timo is a visiting PhD researcher from the The University of Göttingen. His research is primarily focused on automatically identifying media bias, and he coordinates the Media Bias Group a research network dedicated to studying media bias. During his PhD, Timo also founded a local German-based fashion company, Bodenseeliebe. He will be based with the CIRES Team at The University of Queensland.

“I am excited to join CIRES for the next few months. Together with Associate Professor Gianluca Demartini, we will work on a project comparing processes that increase media literacy based on both human-generated and computer-generated bias explanations. I am very much looking forward to getting to know Australia, Brisbane, UQ, and ideally finding partners for future projects”.

It is amazing to see that work redesign approaches proposed in our AI thought leadership report – Redesigning Work with Artificial Intelligence: Accelerating the Adoption of Artificial Intelligence in Government Organizations – have been adopted by NSW Department of Planning, Housing and Infrastructure for their Invoice Processing. The research takes a risk perspective to classify tasks and proposes four work redesign approaches based on risk levels and domain expertise/specialisation required. The approaches proposed are backed by case studies from the public sector.

For the full report refer to this link.

The research is jointly published by The University of Queensland and the SAP Institute for Digital Government.

Collaborators: CIRES CI Dr Ida Asadi Someh and CIRES Research Director, Professor Marta Indulska, Dr Reihaneh Bidar, Dr Tapani Rinta-Kahila, Dr Katie Williams,  Ian Ryan, Ryan van Leent [UQ Business School, SAP Australian User Group & CIRES]

CIRES celebrated 2024 International Women’s Day with the launch of the UQ Association for Computing Machinery – Women (ACM-W) Chapter, a new initiative to support and encourage women in computing at UQ and beyond. As the first university in Australia to establish a Student Chapter, UQ is excited to be welcomed into a global network of professional women in computing.

The UQ ACM-W Student Chapter will provide an environment for students to make professional and social connections, learn about technology, get career advice, participate in mentoring, organise events, and provide community service. The chapter is led by CIRES Centre Director, Professor Shazia Sadiq and supported by ten Student Leaders who promote and celebrate the achievements of UQ’s women in computing community.

The Association for Computing Machinery – Women (ACM-W) celebrates, and advocates for Women in Computing with more than 70,000+ members world-wide.

As the use of AI in education rapidly evolves and generates increasing interest, how can we obtain a comprehensive view of its current state-of-the-art developments in research and practical applications?

CIRES CI, A/Prof Hassan Khosravi’s recent paper “A meta systematic review of artificial intelligence in higher education: a call for increased ethics, collaboration and rigour “ published by the International Journal of Educational Technology in Higher Education investigates this question.

Read the paper open access at https://lnkd.in/gaR4826x

The January 2024 issue of the Communications of the ACM, Association for Computing Machinery is out and its cover features CIRES CI, A/Prof Gianluca Demartini’s work on Data Bias Management: Envisioning a unique approach toward bias and fairness research.

Here is Gianluca being interviewed about data bias management for CACM.

Full article.

A number of CIRES students and staff participated in the 34th Australasian Conference on Information Systems [ACIS 2023] 5-8 December 2023, Wellington New Zealand.

CIRES posdoctoral researcher, Dr Javad Pool, shared his PhD journey as part of the ACIS Doctoral Consortium program, as well as presenting his research paper at the main conference.

CIRES students, Daisy Xu presented her current research into “Transforming Data to Value: a Multi-Case Study” at the ACIS 2023 Doctoral Consortium, while Jorge Retamales,  presented his research paper “Becoming data-driven: Integrating inertia and dynamic capabilities perspectives” at the main conference.

We’d like to welcome Zhuochen Wu to CIRES! Zhuochen joined the Centre as a Data Engineer in November 2022 and is based at Swinburne University of Technology. Her main work includes data curation, resilient data pipelines, graph databases and distributed ETL systems, with a focus on data extraction and analytics pipeline integration. Zhuochen has a degree of Master of Computing with Data Science specialisation from the Australian National University. She works closely with Chief Investigator Associate Professor Amir Aryani.  She is excited by the diverse projects within the Centre and is looking forward to collaborating with other researchers to find meaningful insights from data.

We’d like to welcome Dr Shaoyang Fan to CIRES! Shaoyang joined CIRES as a Data Engineer in July 2023 at The University of Queensland. Shaoyang is a data scientist and specialises in microtask crowdsourcing, data quality, and bias. He works closely with Chief Investigator Associate Professor Gianluca Demartini, working in data curation and human computation research, including constructing crowd-sourced data curation processes. He has a PhD in Computer Science and Master of Science in Information Technology, both from UQ, and Master of Science in Econometrics from The University of Manchester.

Shaoyang is looking forward to applying his technical skills and passion for data science to make impactful contributions to the Centre.

Welcome to Dr Javad Pool who joins CIRES as a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at The University of Queensland.

Javad completed his PhD in Business Information Systems with the UQ Business School, focusing on data privacy, and the effective use of information systems, particularly in the digital health context.

He will work closely with Professors Shazia Sadiq, Marta Indulska, Andrew Burton-Jones, and Dr Ida Asadi Someh. His research aims to understand and address socio-technical challenges in information systems, including data governance, privacy, trust, data breaches, misinformation, the effective use of data, and data protection. Javad is looking forwarding to collaborating with a diverse range of stakeholders to advance research on information resilience and data protection practices.

Welcome Javad!