Visiting Fellows

Katrina Falkner

August 2 - September 21, 2012

Katrina Falkner is a Senior Lecturer in the School of Computer Science, Faculty of Engineering, Computer, and Mathematical Sciences at the University of Adelaide in South Australia. Katrina is passionate about student learning, and the future of Computer Science education.

Katrina began teaching in the School in 2003, and served as Director of Teaching, and Associate Dean (Learning and Teaching) for the Faculty from 2009 to 2011. During this time, Katrina helped establish training programs for sessional staff, early intervention strategies and programs for struggling students, and a network to assist and mentor young female engineers and computer scientists. Katrina was awarded the University of Adelaide Stephen Cole the Elder Award for Excellence in Teaching in 2008, and a 2008 ALTC Citation for 'Enhancing learning and contributing to the successful transition of first-year computer science students through cooperative learning activities.' In 2012, Katrina received an Endeavour Executive Award to support her research and development in the area of collaborative learning. 

Katrina leads the Computer Science Education Research Group, and has a strong interest in applying and understanding social constructivist pedagogy. Her research work in the areas of collaborative learning, contributing student pedagogy and authentic, collaborative problem solving has been published both nationally and internationally. The CSER group explores how Computer Science itself can benefit learning, including the areas of large scale data analysis and visualisation to aid in understanding student behaviour and early intervention strategies, and the development of intelligent teaching systems.

Katrina also leads the Defence Information Group, working with local Defence partners in the exploration of high quality software development methodologies to support the development of distributed and real-time embedded systems. This group explores the use of model driven engineering, system execution modelling and information representation to support the development of large, complex software systems.