On this week’s The Sci-Files, your hosts Chelsie and Danny interview Hamid Karimi.

Hamid is a 5th year Ph.D. student in the MSU Department of Computer Science and Engineering and a member of the Data Science and Engineering Lab. His research is generally focused on data science and machine learning where he seeks to extract insightful patterns in data that can then be used to both understand/analyze the past and to make predictions about the future. More specifically, he is interested in applying and developing data mining and machine learning algorithms in the field of educational data mining (EDM) which refers to techniques, tools, and research designed for automatically extracting meaning from large repositories of data generated by or related to people’s learning activities in educational settings. His research is currently focused on ensuring fairness in EDM algorithms, for instance in the online course performance methods. Hamid is also an active member of the Teachers in Social Media Project. As teachers direct their information and professional learning from the cloud to class, Teachers in Social Media uses big data and rich data to gain a better understanding of teachers’ engagement within social media. In particular, Hamid develops advanced machine learning algorithms to characterize instructional resources on online social media as well as understand and promote teacher-teacher connections on Pinterest — a popular image-based social media platform. In his recent publication in the Journal of Teachers College Record, titled A Roadmap for Incorporating Online Social Media in Educational Research,  the proposed general guidelines to help new researchers use vast online social media data, as a manifestation of “big data,” in their education research.

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