Andreas Paepcke

Finding me...

Email Address:

U.S. Mailing Address:
Stanford University
Gates Computer Science, rm 426
Stanford, CA 94305
Work Phone: (650) 723-9684
Fax: (650)-725-2588

My Bibliography
Independent Study Opportunities
Web Archive Cooperative: Make Web archives useful today
WebBase: Web archive and crawl feeds
BioACT: Tools for biodiversity researchers (project finished)

Biography:

Dr. Andreas Paepcke is a Senior Research Scientist and Director for Data Analytics in support of online teaching efforts at Stanford University. His interests include user interfaces and systems for teaching and learning. He uses data analytics to create tools that benefit these online efforts. In the past Dr. Paepcke and his groups of students designed and implemented WebBase, an experimental storage and high speed dissemination system for Web content. Their work on small devices focused on novel methods for summarizing and transforming Web pages, and browsing images on small displays. Dr. Paepcke has served on numerous program committees, including a position as Vice Program Chair, heading the World-Wide Web Conference's 'Browsers and User Interfaces' program track, and as Program Chair for the Joint Conference on Digital Libraries 2008. He served on several National Science Foundation proposal evaluation panels and was co-founding associate editor of ACM Transactions on the Web. Dr. Paepcke received BS and MS degrees in applied mathematics from Harvard University, and a Ph.D. in Computer Science from the University of Karlsruhe, Germany. Previously, he worked as a researcher at Hewlett-Packard Laboratory, and as a research consultant at Xerox PARC. He has served on a number of technical advisory boards for startup companies.

Current research interests

My current interest is research in support of online teaching. My activities include data analysis, and the construction of systems that prototype advancements towards effective online learning activities. I work with large interaction logs of fine granularity actions that learners take during their study activities. These data include forum posts, video player manipulations, and homework submissions. Here are examples of questions students might pursue:

Can we automatically select forum posts that are indicative of learners in trouble, and draw instructor attention to those posts? For example, can we construct visualizations such as word clouds that in one glance show what is happening on the forum, and what is actionable among the posts?
Can we make these visualizations interactive such that learners can find their way to related learning materials?
Can we automatically construct FAQs from past forum exchanges?
How can we improve learning experiences once courses go on 'auto-pilot,' i.e. are self paced with instructors no longer involved.? Increasing numbers of online courses are being delivered this way.

In addition to these focused individual projects, I would like a small team of students to construct a prototype that would allow a course in choreography to be taught to hundreds of geographically distributed learners.

All learners will operate their own robot simulation/animation environment for choreographing dances. Learners will animate the 'performers' within the environments to create dances. All environments will be interconnected so that learners and instructors can collaborate.

Course participants will be able to route all joint motion data among themselves, applying them to different performers in different scenes. Additionally we want to create visualizations that summarize all learner created dances. For example, we will experiment with projection of joint location frequencies onto motion planes, creating heat maps. These maps will serve both illustration, and the selection of example dances.

Interested students: please contact me.

Hobbies:

Piano studies and simple composition. Listen to Spring-24. (4.5MB!), performed by I'lana Cotton. You may have to increase the volume on your Windows machine to hear the music. Double-click on the yellow loudspeaker in the task bar.
Or, listen to "Der Ewige Sturzbach (850KB)**", performed by I'lana Cotton. I composed this right after I learned about counterpoint. Thus another example of neo-convert enthusiasm: when all you have is counterpoint, everything looks like a cantus. The first theme is a tiny snippet from a work by Bach. Roughly translated, the title reads "The Eternal Tumbling Mountain Brook." The 'eternal' is for my taking an entire year to finish the piece. The 'brook' (in German 'Bach') is a tribute to the composer. 'Tumbling,' because I started with Bach and then went downhill. A big 'Thank you, ' though, to my composition teacher I'lana, who stemmed the downward slide. I imagine her teeth all worn out from the weekly secret grinding during our lesson.
** If your player cannot play the piece, try this larger, but fixed-bitrate version (1.5MB).
Worrying. Here's the description of my workshop Worry First!, which I teach upon request... Having Bouts of Well-Being? Jolted by Good Cheer? Battling those Uncomfortable Feelings of Contentment and Happiness? We can help! Learn to Worry in 10 Easy Steps. In this one-day intensive tutorial, we will lead you through a rigorous, supervised program that will leave you able to create worry from nothing! Master the talent of sensing non-existent dangers, and making them real. Find out how to dwell on a conversation until you are convinced that you have insulted your (former) best friend. Experience the dread of expecting the worst from your next meeting. Surprise your friends with your newfound ability to wake up in a sweat at 3am. Our personal worry trainer will explore your emotional childhood trauma, and will work with you to make it come to life in your everyday experience. Here are some testimonials from our clients: "Ever since I took the class, I've been worried sick!". "My blood pressure has doubled since I started applying the 'worry-first' principles I learned in class". "My sleep patterns have changed so much that they aren't patterns any more. Thank you for turning my life around!". --- But hurry. Classes fill up fast, you may end up not getting a spot, while your colleagues do.
Read my 'poem' about vacuous start-up company speak.

Miscellaneous...

	The Stanford Infolab Group
	My wonderful, midlife-crisis-red Honda scooter. (actually, its official color is 'Candy-Glory-Red'!)
	Or, follow me deeper into the crisis...
	Daniel's technical tutorial website.