Yu Xie Visited AICFE
On November 8, invited by Beijing Advanced Innovation Center for Future Education (AICFE), Yu Xie and four of his colleagues visited AICFE to attend an academic exchange meeting to discuss potential possibilities of future cooperation. Executive director Shengquan Yu of AICFE, Professor Sha Tao of School of Brain and Cognitive Science at Beijing Normal University (BNU), Vice Director Baoping Li of Learning Science Laboratory at AICFE, Director Tom Tang of International Cooperation Office at AICFE attended the meeting.
Yu Xie is Bert G. Kerstetter '66 University Professor of Sociology and Princeton Institute for International and Regional Studies (PIIRS) at Princeton University. His main areas of interest are social stratification, demography, statistical methods, Chinese studies, and sociology of science. Xie used to work 26 years at the University of Michigan, most recently as the Otis Dudley Duncan Distinguished University Professor of Sociology, Statistics and Public Policy and a research professor in the Population Studies Center at Michigan's Institute for Social Research. He is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, Academia Sinica and the National Academy of Sciences. He is Qianren Visiting Chair Professor of Peking University, Honorary Adjunct Professor at Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, Renmin University of China, Shanghai University, and Chinese University of Hong Kong. His recently published works include: Marriage and Cohabitation (University of Chicago Press 2007) with Arland Thornton and William Axinn, Statistical Methods for Categorical Data Analysis with Daniel Powers (Emerald 2008, second edition), and Is American Science in Decline? (Harvard University Press, 2012) with Alexandra Killewald. Xie earned his bachelor’s degree at Shanghai University of Technology, and two master’s degrees and a doctoral degree at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Professor Yu introduced AICFE and Smart Learning Partner (SLP) platform to Xie and his colleagues. In light of the reform of high school entrance examination, SLP is developed to facilitate students, teachers, parents, and other stake holders to solve their problems and meet their requirements. SLP assesses students online at the end of a semester or a unit. By analyzing assessments results, personalized reports are generated and provided to students, teachers, parents, and administrators. Reports intend to evaluate students’ learning outcomes, including content knowledge, related skills, and core literacy. Xie and Professor Tao believed that the diagnosis of students’ content knowledge should be accurate, and the data collected by SLP is big and multi-dimension. Xie discussed data analysis thoroughly from the perspective of sociologist and he pointed out that we could do more on the accuracy and depth of the data, which is that we not only need big data, but also need deep data. Reform of high school entrance examination (Zhong Kao) and college entrance examination (Gao Kao) is in progress, it interests Xie that how it might affect students and families. He would like to discuss more on how to do joint study on this topic with AICFE.
Picture 1: Yu Xie and Professor Yu are discussing Smart Learning Partner platform
Picture 2: Attendees take picture together at AICFE
