I am Karsten Øster Lundqvist. I work as a Senior Lecturer of Software Development at Victoria University of Wellington (VUW) in New Zealand. A position I started on in August 2016. I came from University of Reading where I worked as a lecturer and before that as a Teaching Fellow and Research Assistant from 2005.

I find it fascinating to explore how technology and artificial intelligence can be used to improve teaching and learning. Not only in the subject of computer science or at university level, but broadly and often in unusual settings. My research is often interdisciplinary and socio-technical, yet involves improving technological systems and methods to work better with humans.

The following gives examples of current and previous project areas that I have worked on:

• MOOCs (Massively Open Online Courses).
  • I am academic lead on the popular Computer Science MOOCs Begin Programming, which is a collaboration between University of Reading and Victoria University of Wellington. I am using this course as a platform for research
  • Learning analystics to understand common trends within the course and MOOCs in general
• Studying MOOC pedagogies and how technology can support themExploring benefits of developing MOOCs
• Create and use tools to improve teaching and learning within various cultural settings
  • Games to teach Computer Science to M?ori children
  • Use of avatars in gender segregated societies in the Middle East
  • eLearning methods in Iraq
  • Improvements of using smart phones over feature phones for female business women in sub-Saharan Africa.
• Use of games and gaming methods in education
  • Learning through designing games
  • Design teaching methods using gaming aspects
• Social networking to support formal education
  • Introduced social networking spaces to study how they can aid discovery of common interests amongst student
  • Studied the effect of Facebook, and the active use of Facebook, in higher education
• eTutoring
  • Use data mining to support teachers in online courses.
  • Use conversational agents (chatbots) to automate surveys
• Improve feedback provision
  • Use of video for rapid feedback and feedforward processes

My way into computer science have been long; I’ve had computer science as my hobby since 1984 when I got my first Sinclair Spectrum, and I started programming a year later on my Amstrad CPC 464. I’ve now managed to finish a PhD while working full-time and a BSc in just under 8 years! Before starting studying Computer Science as a mature student, I served my beloved country Denmark for a year, studied economics for 2 years, worked as a salesman selling tools to the furniture industry and the recruitment industry in Denmark in total for more than 7 years and 2 years as a logistic manager in a publishing house before finding my true calling in Computer Science!

If you want to know more about me please download my CV, which you can find to the right.