Dragan Gasevic

New Faculty, Athabasca University

Athabasca University was awarded its first Ingenuity New Faculty this year and the benefits will be felt by both the researcher and the university. Dragan Gasevic, PhD, specializing in semantic technology, e-learning and distance education, is researching how to use and optimize technology.

Dragan, originally from Serbia, completed his undergraduate, Master’s and Doctoral education at the University of Belgrade. He came to Canada as an NSERC-funded researcher with Simon Fraser University in 2005. Once complete, Dragan chose Athabasca University because its distance-learning structure offered him integration into the perfect learning environment to study his specialty. By studying the university’s semantic technology (software programs) and how it is used by distance-learning students (including himself), he can improve its ease of use.

By creating software programs that read each other’s languages, program cross-over and integration by users will be smoother. Dragan describes his work as, “enabling software programs to speak in each other’s language, and thereby eliminating the need for users to purchase additional software programs.”

By studying the way Athabasca University’s current technology works, Dragan is hoping to produce technology that is effective in auto recognition (of topics and concepts), information and meaning extraction, and categorization that would be commercially viable for e-learning institutions as well as health care facilities, among others.