About

Erica is experienced in Higher Education student support and keen on innovative Higher Degree by Research (HDR) education. She completed her PhD at the University of Sydney, and her research employed computational methods and a data science approach to understand and design collaborative online environments for HDR students and their peer support and learning communities.

Erica's research projects include studying the development of a student-initiated HDR online community, comparing two large-scale doctoral (PhD) communities on Twitter and Reddit, investigating the effects of anonymity on peer support for PhD students, and developing an online platform for creating collaborative HDR learning environments. She was awarded the Paulette Isabel Jones PhD Completion Scholarship by the University of Sydney, and the Australasian Society for Computers in Learning in Tertiary Education (ASCILITE) honoured her research with the ASCILITE Student Bursary Award.

Prior to her PhD, Erica taught at the University of Hong Kong (HKU) and HKU School of Professional and Continuing Education (SPACE) where she gained extensive student learning support experience. Erica received a Certificate of Teaching and Learning in Higher Education with outstanding performance at the University of Hong Kong, and she has been honoured with the annual Best Tutor Award four times in her department.

Erica has been coordinating several HDR student learning groups and providing peer support for HDR students at the University of Sydney since 2019. Currently, she is developing online resources to help HDR students stay on track and streamline the thesis production process with open-source technologies. Her goal is to improve both the wellbeing and success of students in Higher Education.