AUS engineering team wins Best Short Paper Award at international conference

A team from American University of Sharjah (AUS) won the Best Short Paper Award at the 21st IEEE International Conference on Advanced Learning Technologies held recently.

Entitled “Unsupervised Clustering of Skills for an Online Learning Platform," the paper was co-authored by Afaf Ahmed, graduate student in computer engineering; Dr. Imran Zualkernan, Professor in Computer Science and Engineering and Hend Elghazaly, Computer Science and Engineering Lab Instructor.

IEEE International Conference on Advanced Learning Technologies is an annual international conference on Advanced Learning Technologies and Technology-Enhanced Learning organized by the IEEE Computer Society and the IEEE Technical Committee on Learning Technology.

Speaking on the research and its importance, Dr. Zualkernan said: “This research will eventually play a role in improving the learning and teaching practices for both online and offline education at all levels. Our paper examines the use of artificial intelligence in understanding the reasons behind the performance of groups of students based on a measurement of their current skills.”

He added: “Typically, student groupings, or banding, are based on gross criteria like average grades. Instead, our paper proposes the concept of keystone questions that can be used in student groupings to better design learning content and practices and to train educators.”

It was graduate student Ahmed’s passion for machine learning and data analysis that motivated her to participate in the research. She particularly focused on the data analysis section of the work and in helping with the writing of the paper.

“I cannot find words to express how I felt the moment the prize was announced, it was really a mixture of an extreme pleasure, pride, and satisfaction. This award is something that I will cherish and remember throughout my life. Taking part in such a leading conference means a lot to me as I believe it adds a great value to my career in academia and research. I am also thankful to my family, friends and professors for their support,” she said.

Ahmed added that she would like to remind AUS students of one quote she loves: “The secret of winning any prize is knowing that your own treasure and potential is equal to it, and worthy of it.”

For more information on the computer and science and engineering program at AUS, please visit: www.aus.edu/cen/department-of-computer-science-and-engineering