Rate My Professor Claudia Ott

Dr Claudia Ott is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Information Science within the School of Computing at the University of Otago. She earned a Dipl-Inf from Bauhaus-Universität Weimar and completed her PhD at the University of Otago in 2015, with a thesis entitled "Decoding Feedback: Improving feedback practices for students in introductory programming courses," which addressed enhancements in educational feedback for computer science students. Prior to commencing her PhD in 2011, Ott worked as a freelance software developer for various companies in Germany. Following her doctorate, she was employed as a vision systems engineer at Scott Technology in Dunedin from 2015 to 2016. She then assumed a fixed-term lecturer position in the Department of Computer Science at the University of Otago, before joining the Department of Information Science in 2018, advancing to her current role as Senior Lecturer.

Ott's research focuses on computer science education, learning analytics, and the application of augmented and virtual reality technologies. Her publications include "A framework identifying challenges and solutions for high school computing" (Education & Information Technologies, 2024, with C. K. Samarasekara and A. Robins), "Future scenarios for high school digital technology in New Zealand" (Proceedings of the 25th Australasian Computing Education Conference, 2023, with C. K. Samarasekara and A. Robins), "Ātea presence: Enabling virtual storytelling, presence, and tele-co-presence in an Indigenous setting" (IEEE Technology & Society, 2022, with H. Regenbrecht et al.), "Teachers’ Views on the Implementation of a New High School Computing Curriculum" (Koli Calling Conference, 2022, with C. K. Samarasekara and A. Robins), and the book chapter "Learning analytics enriched by emotions" (Digital Transformation and Disruption of Higher Education, 2022, with V. Liesaputra). A significant project under her leadership is the PKW Map Web Interface, developed in collaboration with Parininihi ki Waitōtara, which digitizes historical records and maps to facilitate whānau reconnection with ancestral whenua, incorporating search, overlay, and annotation features for cultural sites and whakapapa tracing. She teaches INFO 130: Fundamentals and practice of spreadsheets and contributes to the ICT Graduate School.