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Rafael A. Calvo

Rafael A. Calvo

Teaching - Research - Professional Community - Publications - Projects - Bio

If you need more information about me:
Some of my Roles
  • contact me at:
    University phonebook
    Department of Electrical Engineering
    The University of Sydney NSW 2006, Australia
    tel: +61 2 9351 8171
    Fax: +61 2 9351 3847
  • Not to be confused with this Rafael Calvo (my dad)
  • Consultation times: Monday 4-7pm Lab 424. First book by email.
  • Associate Professor in Software Engineering
  • Director Learning and Affect Technologies Engineering group.
  • Director for IT, Director for Scholarships, EIE
  • Director Software Engineering Program
  • Associate Editor IEEE Transactions on Affective Computing
  • Associate Editor IEEE Learning Technologies

Teaching

Current

Year
Semester 1
 Semester 2
2010
  • E-Business Analysis and Design (ELEC3610)
  • Real Time Systems (elec5614 with Frank Moisiadis)
  • Software Quality Engineering (elec5618 with Frank Moisiadis)
  • Object Oriented Application Frameworks (ELEC5619)
  • Internet Software Platforms (elec3609 with Frank Moisiadis)
  • Model Based software engineering (elec5620 with Eugene Doma)

Teaching Awards:

  • Vice Chancellor's Award for Outstanding Teaching (2010)
  • Dean's Award for Outstanding Teaching - EIE (2010)
  • Australasian Association for Engineering Education - Citation for Outstanding Contributions to Student Learning in Engineering (2008)
  • Faculty of Engineering Dean's Award for Teaching And Learning (2004)
  • School Teaching Excellence Award (2003)

Teaching History

Research

I am interested in Learning: how machines learn and how people can learn better with the support of technology.

Three projects currently describe my research interests:

Tools for 'learning through writing' in Engineering disciplines

Background: Writing can help develop cognitive disciplinary knowledge. To provide a successful learning experience timely feedback is necessary. Providing this feedback to increasing numbers of students poses a major challenge for instructors.
Aims: develop tools for supporting writing activities including automatic feedback, question generation. Process mining is used to explore successful writing processes.
Methods: Language technologies and data mining, web engineering and cloud computing.
Outcomes: Hundreds of students are using the tools and content we built.

Affect-sensitive learning technologies

Background. Strong evidence showing that emotions are important in learning, and the development of new sensing and pattern recognition techniques have triggered increasing research into technologies that recognize, adapt, play out emotions. 
Aims: 'affective prospecting' where the goal is to use affective LT to understand the relations between linguistic, mental and bodily processes but specifically in the contexts of real learning scenarios, in which subjects have real motivations.
Methods. Pattern recognition, Psychophysiology.

Informing learning technologies with student conceptions, perceptions and approaches to learning

Background: LT are typically developed following the same methodologies used to develop non-educational software systems. As a consequence, the principles underpinning the design of these systems are not mediated by how the students experience the technologies in pursuit of their learning outcomes.
Aims: Inform other the development of LT
Methods: The studies involve in-depth interviews, and the analysis employs a phenomenographic approach in which student conceptions of the activity with the tools are investigated in relation to face-to-face equivalents, perceptions of the tool in general and their academic achievement.

Thesis students: I am looking for students who want to do a thesis on one of these projects.

Publications and Grants

You can take a look at some of my publications and grants.

Biography

For more information read my Bio.

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