Dr Katrina Falkner

Biography/ Background

• Associate Dean (Learning and Teaching), Faculty of ECMS
  
• Senior Lecturer, School of Computer Science, University of Adelaide
  
• 2003-2008: Lecturer, School of Computer Science, University of Adelaide
  
• 2000-2003: Postdoctoral Research Fellow, School of Computer Science, University of Adelaide
  

Awards & Achievements

• 2008 Australian Learning and Teaching Council Citation
  
• 2008 Stephen Cole the Elder Award for Excellence in Teaching
  
• 2007 ECMS Faculty Prize for Excellence in Teaching
  
• 2007 Executive Dean’s Award for Excellence in Teaching

Teaching Interests

Associate Dean (Learning and Teaching), Faculty of ECMS

Director of Teaching, School of Computer Science

As Director of Teaching within the School of Computer Science, I am responsible for coordination of course and program reviews, orientation and support programmes and the School's Learning and Teaching Committee. If you have a teaching idea that you would like to discuss, or comments to make regarding L&T with the School of Computer Science, please contact me.

In 2009 I am Course Co-ordinator for the Introduction to Mechanical Engineering (and related courses) and Communication and Study Skills (Semester 1). I am also Program Co-ordinator for the Bachelor of Computer Science.

Research Interests

Software Architecture Research

I am a member of the Software Architecture and Distributed Algorithms research group (the Jacaranda group). The Jacaranda Research Group is interested is appropriate support environments for long running applications, including software architectures, languages and algorithms that support persistence, flexibility, scalability and evolution.  

Education Research

My education research interests include transition support for first year students, supporting international students, and cooperative learning strategies. I am interested in exploring new ways of improving student engagement and motivation, and apply these ideas within my courses. 

I am a founding member of the Education Research Group of Adelaide (ERGA), which provides opportunities for collaboration and dissemination of education research across South Australia. ERGA runs an annual education research conference, which provides academics with a venue to discuss new and innovative education strategies and new problems needing solutions. In 2009 we held the fourth in the ERGA Conference series: Feedback and Flexible Learning.

Current Research Students

• Yuval Yarom
• Stanislava Ovtcharova
• Peter Nguyen
• Ekim Kocadag

Past Research Students

Dr William Brodie-Tyrrell, Surf: An Abstract Model of Distributed Garbage Collection, PhD, University of Adelaide, May 2008.

Research Funding

Sustained Sessional Teacher Support,  K. Falkner, T. Rainsford, C. Kestell, J. Denier, University Learning and Teaching Performance Fund Grant ($50,000) (2009-2010)

Sessional teachers play a crucial role within the University system, acting as the main point of contact with the University for many first year students, and providing the majority of one-on-one learning opportunities. However, sessional teachers are often untrained and underprepared for their role. The requirements of these teachers are complex, in that they must quickly transition from student expectations to those of a teacher. They must provide appropriate support for our diverse classes, encompassing international and domestic students, high school leavers and adult learners, who are each dealing with their own transition concerns. Within this environment, sessional teachers must offer both generic approaches to academic study as well as discipline- and course-specific support. This project proposes the development of a sustained sessional teacher support programme that provides exposure to relevant pedagogical approaches, and opportunities for community reflection on the nature of pedagogy within a discipline-specific context.

A Problem Solving Curriculum in Computing, B. Alexander, K. Falkner, H. el-Gindy, F. Brown, Z. Michalewicz, Google Research Grant ($46,500) (2007-2008) 

University graduates with good problem-solving skills are a rare and highly-prized resource. This scarcity limits innovation and the creation of wealth world wide. Part of this shortfall is natural - innovation, by itself, creates new niches and challenges and new demand for problem solvers. However, it can be argues that part of this scarcity is artificial - people have an innate desire to solve problems but, for the most part, our education systems do little to hone an develop problem-solving skills. This deficiency is perhaps most acute in Universities where it is generally assumed that students are already accomplished at weaving new information into their problem-solving repertoire. This proposal works toward two broad objectives: to create a curriculum to develop student's problem solving skills at all levels of University study and distribute this curriculum widely. The specific aim of the proposal is to develop, test, and distribute the first two courses in this curriculum to lay the foundation for the remainder. The curriculum has an emphasis on computing because computing problems pervade almost all modern endeavours.

 

Full list of Grant Funded Projects

Publications

Some of my recent publications: 

K. Falkner, Engaging Large First Year Classes. To be presented at the 20th Australasian Association for Engineering Education Conference (AAEE 2009), Adelaide, Australia, December 2009. 

K. Falkner, Integrating Communication Skills with Discipline Content. In Proceedings of the 4th Education Research Group of Adelaide Conference, (ERGA 2009), Adelaide, Australia, September 2009, pp 18. 

K. Falkner and E. Palmer, Developing Authentic Problem Solving Skills in Introductory Computing Classes. In Proceedings of the 40th ACM Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education (SIGCSE 2009), March 2009, Chattanooga, TN, USA.

P. Nguyen, K. Falkner, H. Detmold and D.S. Munro, A Domain Specific Language for Execution Profiling & Regulation. In Proceedings of the 32nd Australasian Computer Science Conference (ACSC 2009), Wellington, New Zealand, January 19-23, 2009. 

K. Falkner and D.S. Munro, Easing the Transition: Computer Science Learning Communities. In Proceedings of the Australasian Computing Education Conference (ACE 2009), Wellington, New Zealand, January 2009. 

H. Detmold, A. van den Hengel, A. Dick, A. Cichowski, R. Hill, E. Kocadag, Y. Yarom, K. Falkner and D. S. Munro, Estimating camera overlap in large and growing networks. In Proceedings of the 2nd ACM/IEEE International Conference on Distributed Smart Cameras (ICDCS 2008), Stanford University, California, USA, 7-11 September 2008, DOI: 10.1109/ICDSC.2008.4635694.

Full List of Publications

Entry last updated: Monday, 26 Oct 2009