What's On at UWA

Ruby is a NAO robot, NAO is the world’s leading and most widely used humanoid robot for education, healthcare, and research. NAO is 58cm tall, autonomous, and fully programmable robot that can walk, talk and listen. Meet Ruby, see what she can do and explore the problem solving required when coding and opportunities to use Robots in learning and teaching.

Many have seen her guiding and touring through the Futures Observatory and now after more work from our Computer Science students we have enabled more of her functionality and designed new code for her better interact with humans. Some of her new abilities include:

THE RED BALL: Explore with Ruby the problem solving required to manoeuvre obstacles using her feet sensors and cameras located on her body. Then work with her to interact and play with a red ball aiming to shoot a goal, and hearing her interactivity as she recognises either a hit or miss.

WHO AM I: Have a conversation with Ruby as she learns to recognise your face and has a personalised conversation with you. Demonstrating her facial recognition technology and ability to transform a conversation with her artificial intelligence you can engage with the future of soft skills that all artificial intelligent robots will possess.

SIMON SAYS: Watch Ruby follow instructions you give her as she replicates the movements spoken. By interacting in this way, you can see her 25 degrees of freedom and dexterity from her fingers, showing humanoid movements a robot can perform that you have never seen before!

We will have some of our students present during these events to talk about the challenges and successes they had in the project and their foray into a career in coding and robotics.

Register for this event via the Eventbrite link listed below.

Are you aware of the mobile test creation tool which is compatible with the Blackboard Learn App? If not attend this demonstration using Blackboard’s Mobile Compatible Test as a feature for students to easily complete tests and surveys using their mobile devices.

There are many great applications for this feature, such as, completing Multiple Choice Questions (MCQs) while on a field trip, or encouraging students to complete a quick survey on a peer activity, or inviting students to upload diagrams as evidence of their formative assessment.

Using current samples from a number of UWA LMS units, Learning Technologist Ezrina Fewings will inform attendees on how to create a Blackboard Mobile Compatible Test app and developing preloaded feedback as well as providing advice on generating a workflow using the Blackboard Learn App.

Register for this event via the Eventbrite link listed below.

A public lecture by Professor Vic Adamowicz, Vice Dean, Faculty of Agricultural, Life and Environmental Sciences, and Professor, Department of Resource Economics and Environmental Sociology, University of Alberta.

This case study will illustrate some of the challenges of endangered species recovery, focussing on caribou in Alberta, Canada, and the threats they face from the oil sands industry.

In any jurisdiction involved in resource extraction there are concerns about the environmental impacts of the extractive activities, including impacts on natural systems, human health, scenery, recreational enjoyment, and other “ecosystem services”. Caribou have been listed as threatened in Canada for sometime, but strategies for their protection are complex and could have significant impacts on forestry and energy sectors. Issues of the development of recovery goals, the economic costs and benefits of caribou recovery, the importance of the timing of recovery, and the policy options that can help achieve recovery at least cost, will be addressed.

Economic analysis has been used to identify options and strategies for reducing adverse impacts and reducing the requirement for costly recovery to maintain the species.

The Rio Tinto Lecture at UWA is part of the Rio Tinto-UWA Education Partnership, established in 2013.

This event is sponsored by Rio Tinto, UWA Faculty of Science, and the UWA Institute of Advanced Studies.

Unfortunately this event has been cancelled.

We have unfortunately had to postpone our public lecture for extenuated circumstances. We are looking forward to organising another time soon to share our research findings.

-----------------

Fish and sharks ... marine parks and our oceans - come share a research journey across Australia’s top end.

Please join the University of Western Australia Marine Futures team at the WA Maritime Museum, Peter Hughs Drive, Victoria Quay, Fremantle to share their findings after four months of research on the motor yacht Pangaea. This free public lecture begins at 6pm on Tuesday 19th September and will showcase recent expedition highlights, followed by an opportunity to discuss the research with team members from 7.15pm in the Museum Cafe.

This paper argues that the literature on ‘norm death’ is both empirically and theoretically flawed. This literature has argued that a wide range of norms, such as the norm against torture, the norm requiring declarations of war, the norm against mercenary use, and the norm against unrestricted submarine warfare, are either ‘dead’ or under significant challenge. The literature argues that the cause of norm death is widespread violation. We argue, in contrast, that these norms are not dead, and that it is more useful to think of norm obsolescence, modification, and replacement. We argue that norm death is unlikely because norms are surprisingly resilient, because they have long life-spans; because implementation makes them hard to alter; and because they are embedded in in wider complexes of norms.

Sarah Percy moved to UQ from UWA in 2016. Prior to her appointment at UWA, Sarah was University Lecturer and Tutorial Fellow in International Relations at the University of Oxford (Merton College). At Oxford, Sarah was on the steering committee of the Oxford Programme on the Changing Character of War. Sarah did her M.Phil and D.Phil as a Commonwealth Scholar at Balliol College, Oxford.

In this workshop gain practical hands on experience in creating high quality videos to engage, inspire and motivate students using your smartphone or tablet. You will learn how to plan, compose, record, and edit your video before having a chance to put your new skills into action in the field!

Note: Bring your own mobile device for the workshop or borrow one of ours.

A public lecture by Tony Ballantyne, Professor of History and Pro-Vice Chancellor Humanities at the University of Otago, and Co-Director of the Centre for Research on Colonial Culture.

The links between British empire building and its shifting relationships with Europe have frequently been overlooked by historians, in part because they have been seen as two fundamentally distinct fields of inquiry.

Using the debates around Brexit as it departure point, this talk explores some of the key connections between the project of empire building and Britain’s engagements with Europe, tracing some key points of convergence from the 1760s on. But it will also explore the shifting terrain of recent historiography, tracing the ways in which Europe and empire have figured within British historical writing since the 1970s and how those relationships have also figured in important work from the former settler colonies.

Speaker: Jeroen Schillewaert (University of Auckland) Title: Small maximal independent sets Time and place: 16:00 Friday 22/09/2017 in Engineering LT2 G04 (NOTE unusual location)

Abstract: We study random constructions in incidence structures using a general theorem on set systems. Our main result applies to a wide variety of well-studied problems in finite geometry to give almost tight bounds on the sizes of various substructures. This is joint work with Jacques Verstraete (UCSD).

Past and future seminars may be found at http://www.maths.uwa.edu.au/~glasby/S17.html

Performance maker Mayu Kanamori and artist Terumi Narushima present a live performance of their work You’ve Mistaken Me for a Butterfly. A multi-media presentation with piano accompaniment, Butterfly tells the story of Okin, a Japanese prostitute who travelled to the goldfields in Western Australia in the late 19th century. Following the performance, Mayu will present a brief lecture, discussing story-telling and memory-making in performance, and some of the issues of identity, heritage, and gender that this work addresses. After the lecture, there will be time for audience Q&A and discussion with the artists.

The Women in Asia (WIA) Conference continues a tradition started by the Asian Studies Association of Australia (ASAA) Women’s Caucus (now Women’s Forum) in 1981.

This will be the first time this Conference has been held on the west coast, and it follows the UWA hosting of the Asian Studies Association of Australia Conference in 2014.

The 2017 Women in Asia Conference provides an opportunity to showcase the work of scholars who research women and gender relations in Asia. WIA conferences particularly attract scholars and practitioners from Asia, as well as local and domestic participants from the community sector, academia and government.

Forecasting is required in many situations: deciding whether to build another power generation planting the next five years requires forecasts of future demand; scheduling staff in a call centre next week requires forecasts of call volume; stocking an inventory requires forecasts of stock requirements. Forecasts can be required several years in advance (for the case of capital investments), or only a few minutes beforehand (for telecommunication routing). Whatever the circumstances or time horizons involved, forecasting is an important aid in effective and efficient planning.

The Seminar: Modern research in public health can make substantial differences to millions of people. With this scale in change comes responsibility. Responsibility in ensuring high quality evidence-based decisions are made, resting on good, sound evidence. It brings substantive risk when evidence is misused, misinterpreted, or reflecting a situation that is removed from reality, through inappropriate sampling or data analysis perceptions. Decisions that affect millions of people, and cost hundreds of millions of dollars, may not result in the change that was originally desired, or see resources directed where they are needed. This is a substantial pressure added to public health researchers to ensure sound scientific methodology and clarity in their data and analysis. This seminar will reflect on these pressures and dilemmas as learnings for all.

The Speaker: Marc has been an academic for over 25 years he is currently the Director (and Founder) of the International Research Collaborative - Oral Health and Equity in Human Sciences at UWA and has served in senior leadership roles in Universities across Australia. The Collaborative is a global leader in driving reform focused on marginalisation and addressing health inequality. The team is recognised as the leading oral health R&D group in Western Australia and in 2015-16 Marc was again the most published Australian in dentistry. Marc remains in the top half dozen dental Australian academics for impact, with 200 publications and $15-20million in R&D funding. He and the Collaborative team hold 8 of the top dozen most cited articles in oral health in Western Australian history. The Collaborative is strongly focused on enhancing the leadership base in health globally; influence stretching from the Middle East through the sub-continent to Asia and out into the Pacific (www.ircohe.net) and has more than 120 Fellows and about 40 graduate students. This world-class group has been acknowledged by WHO within inclusion in its Global Workforce Influences. Marc is also a member of the FDI global expert team on quality in dental practice. Marc has received many awards acknowledging this lifetime commitment to the reform agenda in oral health. Recently had a café named in his honour. Marc has honourary professorial appointments in 6 Universities, is a life-Fellow of the Brocher Foundation (Geneva), a life-Fellow of the dental students society for services (UWA) to services to students and a life-Fellow of Saint Catherine’s College (Perth), for services to the community. Marc is a Fellow of the RACDS by acclimation; one of only two in WA history and has received awards for his commitment to health consumers in WA. Marc’s social media influence is substantial his Twitter handle is the most read personal handle in dental public health in Australia (and one of the top half dozen at UWA) with 75,000+ readers each day and his YouTube channels have reached over a third of a million viewers in 125 countries. Marc has served in many executive leadership roles (Dean and Head of School roles) in Dental Schools both locally and interstate; managing complex stakeholder interactions, including government, universities and communities. He has led the resurgence of dental education in Australia. Marc continues his lifelong efforts towards reducing social disadvantage and marginalisation

Learn how to: develop a search strategy; identify relevant, scholarly information resources; use tools and techniques to follow the published trail of research in your field, and more.

Unfortunately this event has been cancelled.

We regret to advise that unfortunately the ‘Futures Enthusiasts Meet-Up and Windows into Homelessness Experience’ event scheduled to take place on Wednesday, 27 September 2017 from 4pm to 5pm has been cancelled.

Apologies for any inconvenience caused.

Kind regards

Centre for Education Futures

-----------------

Futures Enthusiasts are people who are keen to be a part of the next wave of developments in higher education using technology and concepts to innovate learning and teaching practices.

This FEMU event for September will feature a presentation by the UWA Centre for Social Impact on 'Windows into Homelessness 360 Experience'

The Windows into Homelessness project uses the latest consumer mobile and 360° video technologies to immerse students in local experiences of homelessness in a safe, authentic environment.

Register for this event via the Eventbrite link listed below.

Set on a lovely bush block in Mundaring, this Quiet Day provides some space to 'be alone' in the company of other UWA academics and professional staff with the intention of marking out some good quality thinking/reflection time.

There is no formal content to the day – no presentations or flip chart paper! Rather we seek to create an environment of quiet, trust and collegiality in which things become clearer and creative new ideas can emerge. This involves a combination of small group reflections on poetry (which helps slow down the pace and takes us into a deeper level of contemplation) and an extended period of silence, in which participants can rest and reflect. ‘We do less in order to achieve more’. This is not a ‘religious’ event.

The principles underpinning the Quiet Day are based on the work of Parker J Palmer (The Courage to Teach; The Heart of Higher Education), more of which can be found at: www.couragerenewal.org

Cost: $60 including lunch, morning and afternoon teas ($45 for unwaged PhD students)

A registration form can be obtained by emailing [email protected] or phone Michael for more information on 0435 065326

Registration and payment is needed by Thursday 21st September

Previous participants have commented:

"this retreat provided a rare opportunity to quietly reflect on what's going on for me internally as a teacher, helped by excellent facilitators and a wonderful peaceful location"

"the benefits of this retreat to my personal and professional life have been immense"

“Thank you for the retreat - I found it really useful, have a sense of focus, realised I was missing an important work goal and came home and wrote a research paper that has been bugging me for some time” (from unsolicited email)

“it is good because it forces you to disengage in order to more fully engage – well done and many thanks”

“useful, health-giving and creative time”

“definitely go!”

“The best thing about the day was the space to think (but the whole deal was great) – yes, go. Important opportunity to reflect. Thank you to the organisers. I feel positively that UWA supported this”.

This will be a workshop based presentation drawing on Martin’s experience as “a flipper” and also on others from UWA that have been involved in a research project scoping student experiences in flipped classrooms. We will explore what the research shows as well as tips for shifting the focus from teaching to active learning, which is the main aim of shifting face to face engagement between lecturers and students from the delivery of content towards activities engaging the content that students have accessed in other places – usually their local LMS.

Register for this event via the Eventbrite link listed below.

As a young man, Aldo Di Toro made his debut in opera as Oronte in Alcina for West Australian Opera at the Festival of Perth. He has sung with all the major opera companies in Australia, making his Opera Australia debut in 2007 singing Alfredo (La Traviata). Now living in Italy and performing internationally, Aldo di Toro returns to Perth to perform Edgardo in West Australian Opera’s forthcoming production of Lucia di Lammermoor.

In this WAO Distinguished Artists Lecture Series, don't miss this opportunity to hear Aldo talk about his experience working with directors and preparing roles for the world’s stages.

Entry is free - bookings essential

RSVP to [email protected]