Q&A with Xavier Ochoa,

Q & A With Xavier Ochoa
Assistant Professor of Learning Analytics

Interview by Chitvan Bindal, LTXD '23

About Xavier

So just to get started and for our listeners/students to know you better, could you please tell us a little bit about your background?

I'm a computer scientist by training. I am from Ecuador, where I completed my bachelor degree in what can be described as a mixture of computer science and computer engineering. Then I went to Belgium to study in a master's program in applied computer science at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel. There, I got involved in artificial intelligence. Then I got back to Ecuador, where I started teaching at ESPOL, the university where I got my bachelor’s degree.

In 2004, I started my Ph.D. in Engineering (Computer Science) in the University of Leuven, Belgium. I worked with the late Prof. Erik Duval in technology-enhanced learning. It was a sandwich PhD so I was part-time in ESPOL and part-time in Belgium. Then, I went back to being a professor at ESPOL where I went through all the professorship levels.

In 2018, looking for new horizons and challenges, I moved to NYU.

What did you do before teaching, how did you get into teaching?

I always enjoyed teaching. I remember that during my senior year in high school the chemistry class was very difficult. I organized a support class with a group of my classmates. Somebody got an old wood blackboard and we set it on top of the furniture of my house’s living room. Those were my first experiences as a “teacher” and they were fun. I think that was one of the key reasons I went into teaching. Later, for similar reasons in the Programming Language course, I ended up as a teacher assistant while I was finishing my bachelor’s. After I got my masters I was officially hired as a professor at ESPOL. Since then, 2002, There has not been a semester when I have not taught in some way or form.

Some professors end up teaching because it is a requirement to have an academic career. In my case, I got an academic career because I liked teaching.

I had a chance to read a little about you on Steinhardt website and it seems that you traveled around the world quite a bit from Ecuador to Belgium & now you live in New York. I would love to know how education differs from these places to NYC?

It is different everywhere. For example, in Ecuador, and I would say in the rest of Latin America, there is a strong societal push to get a bachelor degree. There is a lot of pressure to get one to be called engineer, or medical doctor, because these professions are very important and get you access to decently paid jobs. Also, there is a large focus on grades and objective exams. However, at least during my study years, there is not a similar push to get graduate degrees. They were quite rare even in academia. Some of my professors back then only had a bachelor degree. The rest had only a Master degree. I only knew one or two “Doctors” during my studies. At that stage, a Ph.D. was not in my plans, however, life has a way to take you places.

In Belgium, I got a totally different educational experience. Grades were not important at all. it was more like: you study, because you want to be better. They were rigorous, but at the same time, very flexible. That was especially true during my Ph.D. I received a lot of freedom to search for my path to become an independent researcher. Having these two totally different educational experiences, made me understand better the system here in the US where versions of these two systems meet and interact.

Did you experience any challenges while pursuing your undergraduate, graduate or doctoral studies? If so, could you please elaborate a little.

Definitely yes! As I previously mentioned, my life plan was never to get a PhD. After my master’s I thought that I had finished my studies and started settling into what I thought was my professional phase. Since I was involved in the development of teaching technologies at a research center, I was “encouraged” by my then boss to apply to a PhD student scholarship available because of the collaboration between ESPOL and some Belgian universities.

I was a little bit uncertain about pursuing a doctorate. When I applied I was already married. And, then as soon as I started PhD my wife was pregnant. As I told you before, it was a sandwich program, so my family was not traveling with me to Belgium. I have to spend 3 months every one of the 4 doctoral years away from my wife and my recently born daughter. That was hard (for me, and also for them).

I got a great advisor, the late Erik Duval. He never made a decision for me. He offered expertise and support, but the direction of my research and what to do was all on me. At some point, during my second year I was about to quit as I was uncertain if I was going in the right direction or If I was making any progress. I said that to my Fer, my wife, but she only said: “You started it, you finished it”. She would say that it was advice, it felt more like an order. Now, I am pretty happy that I continued. The lack of hand-holding by Erik, made me an independent researcher. My Ph.D. studies, despite being hard, or maybe because of that, were a time of immense personal and intellectual growth for me.

Career Highlights

One of the most interesting experiences which you would like to share :

During bachelor studies I was what you could call an “A” student. During my master studies, I wanted the same. Most of the exams there were oral exams so I was very nervous. I never had oral exams before. During my first semester, I had three courses, with the same old wise Professor (Jacques Tiberghien). The first exam was open-book. After answering to the best of my ability and with the help of the notes that I have taken, he looked at me and said: “sixteen.. sixteen over twenty”. I was surprised at the score and I realized that maybe the answer was not original enough. In the second exam, I made extra effort in generating a very good, unique answer. Again I got 16/20 and my professor said “Keep up the good work!”. At that point, I was utterly confused. In my examination for the final course, I basically failed the answer. While I remembered most of the concepts, I was missing a key part. After giving the answer to Prof. Tiberghien, he said a little disappointed: “Uhmm… not quite correct… fifteen”. At that moment, I understood what Prof. Tiberghien was teaching me. Grades are just numbers. In real life, the measure of our learning is our capability to use and exploit the new knowledge and skills.

What are one or two of your proudest professional moments or accomplishments?

I do not think there is just one big one, but there are a myriad of small successes that made my love my job. For example, the exhilaration of devising a clever algorithm to solve a wicked problem, or helping a student to understand a complex concept.

If I have to single one out, maybe I would say that it was the defense of my Ph.D. I was in a room for three hours answering questions from very intelligent people. It was like being in a completely different, elevated, mental state. So much, that my advisor insisted on taking me for a beer afterwards, even knowing that I usually do not drink. And yeah, it was the right thing to do (as always). He took me to a bar and after an hour of talking about other things, I was able to get down to normal again.

Other specially proud moments are when you see students years after they were in your class and they said something like “Thank you for teaching me X. I am using it right now in my work”.

That always makes you feel proud that you touched the lives of many people. That's one of the gifts of being a teacher. I think primary educators, more than us. But even at a university, you are able to give something to somebody, and they will take that and use it to make a small change in the world. That's the way you change the world, little by little. That's the magic of teaching. You just plant a seed, but you are giving something that grows.

Coming to NYU

The United States has so many established universities, so what makes NYU special to you? Specifically, what about the ECT department stands out to you?

Diversity. I immediately knew it the moment that I visited NYU. In my previous institution, I was a CS professor working in education. My colleagues did not understand that. CS professors worked on CS problems. Education professors were not interested in using technology. They have this disciplinar way of seeing the academic world that is too common at other universities.

When I visited the ECT department and talked with some of my colleagues, I understood that here we are not just interdisciplinary (several disciplines working together to solve a problem), but transdisciplinary (it does matter what is your discipline, the important thing is the problem at hand). When I saw people with various backgrounds like sociology, physics, learning sciences, CS, music, etc. working to improve educational through technology, I immediately realized that this is the environment where I would like to be; in a place where it doesn't matter what your background was. What defines you is what you are working on. That is quite unique in academia.

I have taken some of the ECT courses with you and I have found the instruction/teaching methods impeccable. From addressing our doubts to giving timely feedback, I have just loved the courses. What are some of the strategies you use to build such an enriching experience for your students and being so organized?

You will not call me organized if you have ever seen my office. Organized and my name are words that normally don't go together in the same sentence. Maybe that is the reason why when I teach, I need the course to be organized. It really helps me to concentrate on the teaching part and not in the management part.

Also, my main teaching philosophy is that teaching is not something that you do to somebody else. For me teaching is also a reflexive verb. I am involved in the course too while I teach. My main role in the course may be teacher, but it does not mean that I do not learn from it. I evaluate my courses by how much I learn in them. So, I try to keep my courses as fresh as possible. I put attention in the structure of the course because I need it. Just like how students are an active part of the course, I consider myself also an active part of it and, I guess, that’s what helps me deliver courses the way that I do.

Research Projects & Interests

Could you please share information about your research projects and interests?

Multimodal Learning Analytics is my area of research expertise, but I think my work is more defined by the problems that I work on. I lead a group that is called Augment-Ed. We seek to augment human intellect in education.

So my work is trying to figure out how technology could help to make us better in an area as delicate as education. Education is a mostly human endeavor. One of the principal concerns of my work is how to use technology to improve, and not to damage, the learning process. For example, I don't want to replace the teachers in education. Rather I want to augment them so they could be better teachers that can provide better feedback, or manage more students, and solve problems that machines are not good at.

My current research topic is how can we help the students develop transversal skills (also called 21st century skills. For example, how to learn collaboration. Nobody teaches you to collaborate, they put you in a collaborative environment and you learn on your own. How can we change that?

That’s one thing like you know I think the humanities care, but what will happen like, how is the technology artificial intelligence going to evolve because there are some fictional movies, that show how artificial intelligence is replacing humans and then the question arises “Who is controlling whom? AI is controlling humans or its the other way around?

If you ask me, it is already happening in some fields. We have machines that make decisions for us. For example, I always find this one scary: when you go to get a loan from the bank. It is no longer a human making that decision, it's a machine making the decision. I understand why they do it, but that means that there are a lot of injustices happening because there's not a human evaluating the data and saying “okay, you should get a loan, yeah even if it is a little bit risky”. Machines do not understand compassion or trust. So we have given decision power to machines. We should be careful not to do the same in a field like education..

How did you discover your passion for Learning Analytics / Augmentation in Education?

I was trying to find what was the best use of what I know. As I said before, changing the world a little bit. For me, education is the meta-problem. Better educated people, doctors, lawyers, engineers, could go and be in a better position to solve the other world’s problems. It was just natural to find a field where CS and Education meet. The intersection I selected was Learning Analytics. Also, I like to work in unexplored fields where very few people has worked before, because it is more exciting. You know, you throw a rock and you are bound to hit something, to discover something. It's challenging sometimes because you don't have too many people to rely on but it's a whole space for you to pioneer something.

How could students be a part of your research work?

Students can write me an email expressing their interest and we can set up a meeting to discuss more about my research work. We can discuss what we're doing and they can select what interests them. Then, we can take it from there. I am very flexible with this setting so that students don’t feel any obligations to work. As my advisor used to say, it is just to have Serious Fun.

Your research involves what kind of work? How can students contribute to that?

Depending on students’ skills and level of interest, work could involve anything from technical to design work. For example, what's the best way to provide feedback to people collaborating around a table with a system of lights. In this instance, programming skills are not required just having a little bit of imagination. After analyzing the problem, they can try to come up with an interesting solution so basically UX design. I also have problems on the more theoretical side, for example, defining a framework to evaluate the quality of collaboration. There are many other interesting projects and problems. Students should not hesitate to contact me directly.

Adding to my last question, sometimes students are apprehensive about their ideas and afraid to share or be judged. So, what do you think about this?

Something that I have learnt is that you should not discard an idea initially without any evaluation or validation. Even something that you think doesn't really work, you need to test it. You don't get to decide what is true. The real truth is out there in the real world and sometimes simple is better. Sometimes you see all these complicated dashboards that don't work, sometimes when you show a simple bar chart would work.

So I'm not worried about somebody coming with a simple solution which is not worth it. I'm worried about somebody coming up with a too complicated solution. Most of the things that I have seen working in education are pretty simple. And again, this is a process of discovery. There are no a-priori right or wrong answers here.

Words of Wisdom!

Keep dreaming big! I'm here. I never planned on living and working in New York. Keep your doors open and be prepared. Keep preparing and keep learning. Keep yourself updated with the latest technologies. An opportunity can knock your door anytime! Be prepared enough to open it!!!