Who am I?

My name is Gloria Milena Fernández Nieto. I am originally from Bogotá, Colombia, and have a passion for data, analytics, and visualisations. My interest in using data to support others’ practices grew during both my bachelor’s and master’s degrees. I am a computer system engineer and obtained my degree in 2012 from the Universidad Distrital and my master degree in 2015 from Universidad de Los Andes.
In 2023, I completed my PhD in Learning Analytics. I am fascinated by the potential of physical and online data traces that could be used to support a better understanding of learning/teaching activities. Data traces are valuable resources for teachers and students to identify insights and reflect on their co-located activities such as teamwork, collaboration, self-regulated learning, or spatial behaviours.

Current work

I’m a Research Fellow at the Faculty of Information Technology, Monash University, Australia. My research focuses on designing and deploying innovative tools to enhance teaching and learning analytics across physical and digital spaces.

My work aims to find the optimal alignment between learning pedagogies and the potential of emerging technologies, providing lasting support for both learners and educators.

Key areas of my research include:

• Knowledge Management Systems: I work on the design and development of a system that facilitate knowledge management within communities of practice for educators. My research includes the exploration of the role of data comics, a storytelling approach, in communicating and disseminating knowledge within the context of teachers’ natural workflows. This research is funded by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA-KMASS) under the “Large-scale multimodal knowledge management: From organization and user modelling to fast contextual presentation” project.
• Teamwork Analytics: I investigate the use of data traces to provide feedback through visualisations and data storytelling elements, assisting teachers and students in their sensemaking processes. More information about this research is available on Teamwork Analytics

About my research

I explore alternative feedback methods to analyse learner and educator digital/physical traces, aiming to stimulate reflection in teaching and learning practices. I leverage my expertise in human-computer interaction, collaborative learning, and artificial intelligence to design analytics dashboards, knowledge management systems, and data storytelling tools for regular classrooms and healthcare settings. Recently, I pioneered the application of different forms of participatory design such as co-design at the intersection of education and data science.

Publications

Journal papers

Roberto Martinez-Maldonado, Vanessa Echeverria, Gloria Fernandez-Nieto, Lixiang Yan, Linxuan Zhao, Riordan Alfredo, Xinyu Li, Samantha Dix, Hollie Jaggard, Rosie Wotherspoon, Abra Osborne, Simon Buckingham Shum, and Dragan Gašević. 2023. Lessons Learnt from a Multimodal Learning Analytics Deployment In-the-Wild. ACM Trans. Comput.-Hum. Interact. 31, 1, Article 8 (February 2024), 41 pages. doi: https://doi.org/10.1145/3622784

Vanessa Echeverria, Roberto Martinez-Maldonado, Lixiang Yan, Linxuan Zhao, Gloria Fernandez-Nieto, Dragan Gašević, Simon Buckingham Shum, “HuCETA: A Framework for Human-Centered Embodied Teamwork Analytics,” in IEEE Pervasive Computing, vol. 22, no. 1, pp. 39-49, 1 Jan.-March 2023, doi: https://doi.org/10.1109/MPRV.2022.3217454

Gloria Milena Fernandez-Nieto, Pengcheng An, Jian Zhao, Simon Buckingham Shum, and Roberto Martinez-Maldonado. 2022. Classroom Dandelions: Visualising Participant Position, Trajectory and Body Orientation Augments Teachers’ Sensemaking. In CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI’22), April 29-May 5, 2022, New Orleans, LA, USA. ACM, New York, NY, USA, 17 pages. https://doi.org/10.1145/3491102.351773.

Gloria Milena Fernandez-Nieto et al. 2021, “Storytelling With Learner Data: Guiding Student Reflection on Multimodal Team Data”, in IEEE Transactions on Learning Technologies, doi: https://doi.org/10.1109/TLT.2021.3131842

Gloria Milena Fernandez-Nieto, Roberto Martinez-Maldonado, Vanessa Echeverria, Kirsty Kitto, Pengcheng An,and Simon Buckingham Shum. 2021. What Can Analytics for Teamwork Proxemics Reveal About Positioning Dynamics In Clinical Simulations?. Proc. ACM Hum. Comput. Interact.5, CSCW1, Article 185 (April 2021),24 pages. doi: https://doi.org/10.1145/3449284

Roberto Martinez-Maldonado, Vanessa Echeverria, Gloria Milena Fernandez-Nieto, and Simon Buckingham Shum. 2020.From Data to Insights: A Layered Storytelling Approach for Multimodal Learning Analytics. In CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems CHI’20. 15 pages. doi https://doi.org/10.1145/ 3313831.3376148

Conference proceedings

Fernandez-Nieto, G., Swiecki, Z., Tsai, Y.-S., Sha, L., Wei, Y., Wen, J., . . . Gašević, D. (2024). Co-designing a knowledge management tool for educator communities of practice. ACM - DIS, 1970–1990. recent publication. doi: https://doi.org/10.1145/3643834.3660682

Gloria Milena Fernandez-Nieto, Roberto Martinez-Maldonado, Vanessa Echeverria, Kirsty Kitto, Dragan Gašević, and Simon Buckingham Shum. 2024. Data Storytelling Editor: A Teacher-Centred Tool for Customising Learning Analytics Dashboard Narratives. In LAK24: 14th International Learning Analytics and Knowledge Conference (LAK 2024), March 18–22, 2024, Tokyo, Japan.

Lixiang Yan, Vanessa Echeverria, Gloria Fernandez Nieto, Yueqiao Jin, Zachari Swiecki, Linxuan Zhao, Dragan Gašević, and Roberto Martinez-Maldonado. 2024. Human-AI Collaboration in Thematic Analysis using ChatGPT: A User Study and Design Recommendations. 1, 1 (November 2024), 12 pages. link

Gloria Milena Fernandez-Nieto,Simon Buckingham Shum, Kirsty Kitto, and Roberto Martinez-Maldonado. 2022. Beyond the Learning Analytics Dashboard: Alternative Ways to Communicate Student Data Insights Combining Visualisation, Narrative and Storytelling. In LAK22: 12 th International Learning Analytics and Knowledge Conference (LAK22), March 21 \textendash 25, 2022, Online, USA.ACM, New York,NY, USA, 16 pages. https://doi.org/10.1145/3506860.3506895 PDF - 2-col PDF

Gloria Milena Fernandez-Nieto, Roberto Martinez-Maldonado, Kirsty Kitto,and Simon Buckingham Shum. 2021. Modelling Spatial Behaviours in Clinical Team Simulations using Epistemic Network Analysis: Methodology and Teacher Evaluation. In LAK21: 11th International Learning Analytics and Knowledge Conference (LAK21), April 12\textendash16, 2021, Irvine, CA, USA.ACM,New York, NY, USA, 11 pages. https://doi.org/10.1145/3448139.3448176

Lixiang Yan, Roberto Martinez-Maldonado, Beatriz Gallo Cordoba, Joanne Deppeler, Deborah Corrigan, Gloria Fernandez Nieto, and Dragan Gasevic. 2021. Footprints at School: Modelling In-class Social Dynamics from Students’ Physical Positioning Traces. In LAK21: 11th International Learning Analytics and Knowledge Conference (LAK21). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, 43-54. DOI:https://doi.org/10.1145/3448139.3448144

Martinez-Maldonado, R., Gasevic, D., Echeverria, V., Fernandez-Nieto, G., Swiecki, Z., and Buckingham Shum, S. (2021). What Do You Mean by Collaboration Analytics? A Conceptual Model. Journal of Learning Analytics, 8(1), 126-153. doi: https://doi.org/10.18608/jla.2021.7227

Roberto Martinez-Maldonado, PhD; Vanessa Echeverria; Katerina Mangaroska; Antonette Shibani; Gloria Fernandez-Nieto; Jurgen Schulte; Simon Buckingham Shum. International Journal of Artificial Intelligence in Education (IJAIED’21). Moodoo the Tracker: Spatial Classroom Analytics for Characterising Teachers’ Pedagogical Approaches. doi:
https://doi.org/10.1007/s40593-021-00276-w [best paper]

Workshop papers:

Gloria Fernandez-Nieto, K. Kitto, and R. Martinez Maldonado, Four Challenges in Crafting Multimodal Collaboration Analytics for non-Data experts, 2019. In CSCL 2019, Collaboration Analytics. PDF

Miguel A. Ronda, Olga C. Santos, Roberto Martinez-Maldonado and Gloria Fernandez-Nieto. Exploring Emotional Reactions in Teamwork using Multimodal Physiological Data. MAIEd’21. 12 pages.

Workshop/Tutorial Chair:

LAK24 Workshop Chair LAK24 Web page

Workshop Organiser: Gloria Milena Fernandez-Nieto, et al., Converging Data Storytelling Narratives and Learning Analytics Dashboards. LAK24. Web page

Workshop Organiser: Vanessa Echeverria, Lu Lawrence, Yi-Shan Tsai, Shaveen Singh, Gloria Fernandez-Nieto, Roberto Martinez-Maldonado. A Tutorial on Data Storytelling for Learning Analytics Dashboards. LAK21 Workshop.

Workshop Organiser: Roberto Martinez-Maldonado and Gloria Fernandez-Nieto. Multimodal Analytics for Classroom Proxemics. ALASI 2019.