The author of this blog, Dr. Kinshuk is a leading expert in improving student learning through adaptivity and personalization of different learning activities, and through comprehensive analysis of the learning process using innovative technique known as Learning Analytics. He is Full Professor in the School of Computing and Information Systems and Associate Dean of the Faculty of Science and Technology, at Athabasca University, Canada. He holds the NSERC/CNRL/Xerox/McGraw Hill Industrial Research Chair for Adaptivity and Personalization in Informatics, funded by the Federal government of Canada, Provincial government of Alberta, and by national and international industries. Kinshuk also serves as the President of the Board of Directors for Smart Informatics Ltd, a recently evolved start-up with focus on improving student learning through innovative fusion of pedagogy and technology. After completing first degree from India, he earned his Masters’ degree from Strathclyde University (Glasgow) and PhD from De Montfort University (Leicester), United Kingdom. His work has been dedicated to advancing research on the innovative paradigms, architectures and implementations of online and distance learning systems for individualized and adaptive learning. He is particularly interested in advancing research in learning analytics; mobile, ubiquitous and location aware learning systems; cognitive profiling; and, authentic learning.
With more than 400 research publications in refereed journals, international refereed conferences and book chapters, he is frequently invited as keynote or principal speaker in international conferences and visiting professor around the world. He has been twice awarded the prestigious fellowship of Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (2008 and 2013). He has served as guest editor for numerous prestigious international journals, and continues to serve on a large number of editorial boards of high-impact journals and program committees of international conferences. He receives frequent invitations to serve on grant review panels for the governmental funding agencies of various countries, including the European Commission, Austria, Canada, Hong Kong, Israel, Italy, the Netherlands, Qatar, Taiwan and the United States. He also has a successful record of procuring external funding over 13 million Canadian dollars as principal and co-principal investigator.
In his on-going sustained professional activities, he has initiated several professional movements at international and national levels. At the international level, he is Founding Chair of IEEE Technical Committee on Learning Technologies, and Founding Editor of the Journal of Educational Technology & Society (SSCI indexed and in top three international journals as per Google matrices in educational technology category). At the national level, he is Founding Chair of the New Zealand Chapter of ACM SIG on Computer-Human Interaction, and Past President of the Distance Education Association of New Zealand.
Recently Dr Kinshuk has been instrumental in founding the International Association for Smart Learning Environments and Springer’s open access Smart Learning Environments journal. He has also initiated the new Springer book series Lecture Notes in Educational Technology, which aims at disseminating research advances in the form of books, proceedings and e-books.