voyeurism

co-hosting students from CHIJ Secondary for their Work Experience Programme

my team and i are happy to be given the opportunity to co-host some students from the Convent of the Holy Infant Jesus (CHIJ) Secondary School, with a few of my colleagues from the Sustainability Learning Lab, National Institute of Education.

this opportunity comes under the auspices of the school's Work Experience Programme, and our team will be co-hosting on the afternoon of the 1st of November.

the objectives of the programme are:

- to provide an experience in which the students familiarise themselves with a variety of work situations through attachment to a workplace and they learn through direct participation and observation;

- to build life skills for the world of work; and

- to help the students make informed decisions regarding career selection.

we are happy and grateful to be part of this opportunity :-)

hosting a Senior Lecturer from the School of Infocomm, Republic Polytechnic

my team and i are very excited and happy to welcome a Senior Lecturer from the School of Infocomm, Republic Polytechnic, as she prepares to begin her year-long Industrial Attachment with us.

the polytechnic was established in July 2022 and celebrates its twentieth anniversary this year. we will host the Senior Lecturer - with expertise in Financial Technology - from November this year, till October 2023.

we look forward to a journey of learning together!

The Life2Well Project: new student-initiated investigations under its aegis

for about a year, we have been sharing our work on Learning at the intersection of AI, physiology, EEG, our environment and well-being (The Life2Well Project). 

its mandate is deliberately framed broadly to encompass student-initiated inquiry in to their own health and well-being.

this year, we are excited and happy to share that students whom we mentor are currently working on the next suite of projects; these include:

- Implementing Artificial Intelligence in Sleep Analysis systems;

- An investigation on the effects of different types of fragrance on stress level of junior college students;

- Design and prototyping of an AI-based real-time detector for the calisthenic push up exercise;

- Investigation of the effects of microclimate on concentration levels; and

- Mitigating anxiety and stress: Investigating features of Lo-fi Music as attributed to its calming effects.

Disciplinary Intuitions: welcoming college students to NTU's Undergraduate Research Experience on Campus (URECA) AY 2022 / 2023

further to my post two months’ ago, my team and i are really happy and privileged to welcome four college students (from a total of twenty-three applicants) to our projects offered under NTU’s Undergraduate Research Experience on Campus (URECA) programme for the Academic Year 2022 / 2023.

 

three of our students are from the School of Electrical and Electronic Engineering, and the fourth is pursuing a Double Major from the School of Physical and Mathematical Sciences and the School of Computer Science and Engineering.

 

the opportunity to participate in URECA is extended through invitation only to select second- and third-year undergraduates, who will subsequently be conferred as NTU President Research Scholars.

 

the projects we have offered are:

 

NIE22349 – Investigating local micro-climate and thermal comfort with open-source

 

NIE22355 – Designing a neural network-based approach for generating custom feedback based on stakeholder specifications for novice coders

 

NIE22356 – Designing a tool to analyse and score the readability of source code with a view towards encouraging programmers to improve the readability of their code

 

NIE22357 – Training Natural Language Processing (NLP) models to parse and analyse Python code in order to predict logic errors with the aim of improving the process of debugging code

The Life2Well Project: Investigating the Relationship between Physiological Stress and Environmental Factors through Data Science, the Internet of Things and Do-it-Yourself Wearables

my team and i are very happy to share news of our second publication in the field of the Science of Learning :-) our chapter - The Life2Well Project: Investigating the Relationship between Physiological Stress and Environmental Factors through Data Science, the Internet of Things and Do-it-Yourself Wearables - is published in the book 'Citizen Science - Methods, Approaches and New Perspectives' edited by Alessio Vovlas.

since April 2021, we have been working hard on Learning at the intersection of AI, physiology, EEG, our environment and well-being (the Life2Well Project), in which we aim to afford learners opportunities to learn about their own learning, while they are learning, from a citizen science perspective.

the abstract of our chapter reads:

This chapter reports a study conducted by students as an independent research project under the mentorship of a Research Scientist at the National Institute of Education, Singapore. In the Life2Well Project (Learning at the intersection of AI, physiology, EEG, our environment and well-being) identical units of a wearable device containing environmental sensors (such as ambient temperature, air pressure, infrared radiation and relative humidity) were designed and worn respectively by five adolescents from July to December 2021. Over the same period, data from these sensors was complemented by that obtained from smartwatches (namely blood oxygen saturation, heart rate and its variability, body temperature, respiration rate and sleep score). More than 40,000 data points were eventually collected, and were processed through a random forest regression model, which is a supervised learning algorithm that uses ensemble learning methods for regression. Results showed that the most influential microclimatic factors on biometric indicators were noise, and the concentrations of carbon dioxide and dust. Subsequently, more complex inferences were made from Shapley value interpretation of the regression models. Such findings suggest implications for the design of living conditions with respect to the interaction of microclimate and human health and comfort.

sharing with visitors from Chuo University

my team and i are very happy to be invited to share our work on Disciplinary Intuitions as manifested through immersive environments, with Associate Professor Yukie Saito and some of her students, from the Faculty of Global Informatics at Chuo University.

our sharing is scheduled for the 10th of November, and will take place during their visit to Singapore and to the campus of the National Institute of Education.

:-)

the Life2Well Project at GeekcampSG

i am very happy and humbled to share that our team has been given an opportunity to share our work on Learning at the intersection of AI, physiology, EEG, our environment and well-being (the Life2Well Project) as part of the Headline Track at this year's GeekcampSG.

as the name suggests, GeekcampSG is a community tech conference. this year's event is taking place on the 29th of October.

my team and i are excited to have been given this opportunity, and we hope to see you at this year's event :-)

The Life2Well Project: Investigating the Effects of Microclimate on Physiological Stress and Brain Function with Data Science and Wearables

my team and i are very happy to share news of our very first publication in the field of the Science of Learning, with specific reference to neuroscience :-) our paper is published in a special issue of Sustainability, themed on 'Aspirations within Interdisciplinary STEM/STEAM Education under the Education for Sustainable Development (ESD)'.

since April 2021, we have been working hard on Learning at the intersection of AI, physiology, EEG, our environment and well-being (the Life2Well Project), in which we aim to afford learners opportunities to learn about their own learning, while they are learning, from a citizen science perspective.

an important part of our work is the validation of our maker-centric electroencephalographic headsets against industrial grade headsets. 

with the help of Dr Yuvaraj Rajamanickam and Dr Jack Fogarty of the Science of Learning in Education Centre at the National Institute of Education, we report our work in Volume 14 Issue 17 of the journal, as Investigating the Effects of Microclimate on Physiological Stress and Brain Function with Data Science and Wearables.

the abstract of our paper reads:

This paper reports a study conducted by students as an independent research project under the mentorship of a research scientist at the National Institute of Education, Singapore. The aim of the study was to explore the relationships between local environmental stressors and physiological responses from the perspective of citizen science. Starting from July 2021, data from EEG headsets were complemented by those obtained from smartwatches (namely heart rate and its variability and body temperature and stress score). Identical units of a wearable device containing environmental sensors (such as ambient temperature, air pressure, infrared radiation, and relative humidity) were designed and worn, respectively, by five adolescents for the same period. More than 100,000 data points of different types—neurological, physiological, and environmental—were eventually collected and were processed through a random forest regression model and deep learning models. The results showed that the most influential microclimatic factors on the biometric indicators were noise and the concentrations of carbon dioxide and dust. Subsequently, more complex inferences were made from the Shapley value interpretation of the regression models. Such findings suggest implications for the design of living conditions with respect to the interaction of the microclimate and human health and comfort.

the Life2Well Project at the 12th annual symposium of the Mobiles for Education Alliance

today our team received news that we have been invited to share Learning at the intersection of AI, physiology, EEG, our environment and well-being (the Life2Well Project) during the 12th annual symposium of the Mobiles for Education Alliance.

we thank God for His continued grace and provision.

this year, the symposium is being conducted as a series of online events, with the overarching theme of Wondrous Learning is ...!

the particular event which will feature the Life2Well Project is scheduled as a STEM-themed panel moderated by Michael McCabe, who is the Regional Director, Inter-America and Pacific Region, Peace Corps, on the 2nd of November.

The mEducation Alliance was formed by USAID in 2010. It is an international collaborative effort between bilateral and multilateral donors, NGOs, foundations, private sector partners, and academic researchers. The collective agenda of the alliance is to: highlight and catalyze promising information and communications technology for education (ICT4E) practices and initiatives, particularly in low-resource and developing country context; to reduce duplicative efforts; to promote collective knowledge-sharing, and to identify and support efforts to evaluate and scale promising ICT4E interventions.

:-)

invited to speak by the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy, National University of Singapore

my team and i are thrilled to share that - by God's grace alone - we have been invited to speak as part of the programme Transforming Higher Education Leaders through Effective Policy Reforms, organised by the Executive Education department of the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy, National University of Singapore.

we will be facilitating an in-person session with about thirty-five leaders, administrators and consultants from higher education institutions from the Philippines, on the topic of Reinventing Education for the Digital Age, within the campus of the school on the 17th of November 2022.

the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy was founded in 2004 with the mission of developing thought leadership, improving standards of governance and transforming lives for a more sustainable world.

we are greatly humbled to be afforded this opportunity, and we thank the leadership and staff of the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy for so graciously extending trust to us.

we will do our very best.