The engage taxonomy: SDT-based measurable engagement indicators for MOOCs and their evaluation (2023)
Journal Article
Cristea, A. I., Alamri, A., Alshehri, M., Dwan Pereira, F., Toda, A. M., Harada T. de Oliveira, E., & Stewart, C. (2023). The engage taxonomy: SDT-based measurable engagement indicators for MOOCs and their evaluation. User Modeling and User-Adapted Interaction, https://doi.org/10.1007/s11257-023-09374-x

Massive Online Open Course (MOOC) platforms are considered a distinctive way to deliver a modern educational experience, open to a worldwide public. However, student engagement in MOOCs is a less explored area, although it is known that MOOCs suffer... Read More about The engage taxonomy: SDT-based measurable engagement indicators for MOOCs and their evaluation.

PICA-PICA: Exploring a Customisable Smart STEAM Educational Approach via a Smooth Combination of Programming, Engineering and Art (2023)
Conference Proceeding
Nagai, T., Klem, S., Kayama, M., Asuke, T., Meccawy, M., Wang, J., …Shi, L. (2023). PICA-PICA: Exploring a Customisable Smart STEAM Educational Approach via a Smooth Combination of Programming, Engineering and Art. . https://doi.org/10.1109/educon54358.2023.10125184

The STEAM approach in education has been gaining increasing popularity over the last decade. This is due to its potential in enhancing students' learning, when teaching arts and scientific disciplines together. This paper introduces the PICA-PICA con... Read More about PICA-PICA: Exploring a Customisable Smart STEAM Educational Approach via a Smooth Combination of Programming, Engineering and Art.

CEP '23: Proceedings of 7th Conference on Computing Education Practice (2023)
Conference Proceeding
(in press). CEP '23: Proceedings of 7th Conference on Computing Education Practice. In E. Akrida, & M. Zarb (Eds.), . https://doi.org/10.1145/3573260

Computing Education Research in the UK & Ireland (2023)
Book Chapter
Becker, B. A., Bradley, S., Maguire, J., Black, M., Crick, T., Saqr, M., …Quille, K. (2023). Computing Education Research in the UK & Ireland. In M. Apiola, S. López-Pernas, & M. Saqr (Eds.), Past, Present and Future of Computing Education Research (421-479). Springer Verlag. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-25336-2_19

In 1970, SIGCSE had five members from England, Scotland and Wales. By 1983 Ireland had a member, followed by Northern Ireland in 1995. Well before then researchers from these countries had contributed to the growing CER community. In 1998 the 3rd ACM... Read More about Computing Education Research in the UK & Ireland.

Large-scale mammal monitoring: the potential of a citizen science camera-trapping project in the United Kingdom (2022)
Journal Article
Hsing, P., Hill, R., Smith, G., Bradley, S., Green, S., Kent, V., …Stephens, P. (2022). Large-scale mammal monitoring: the potential of a citizen science camera-trapping project in the United Kingdom. Ecological Solutions and Evidence, 3(4), Article e12180. https://doi.org/10.1002/2688-8319.12180

1. In light of global biodiversity loss, there is an increasing need for large-scale wildlife monitoring. This is difficult for mammals, since they can be elusive and nocturnal. In the United Kingdom (UK), there is a lack of systematic, widespread ma... Read More about Large-scale mammal monitoring: the potential of a citizen science camera-trapping project in the United Kingdom.

Narrowing and Stretching: Addressing the Challenge of Multi-track Programming (2022)
Conference Proceeding
Bradley, S., & Akrida, E. (2022). Narrowing and Stretching: Addressing the Challenge of Multi-track Programming. In Proceedings of the 6th Conference on Computing Education Practice CEP 2022 (1-4). https://doi.org/10.1145/3498343.3498344

Given the different amount of programming experience that students have arriving at university, some universities have introduced alternative multiple streams to teach programming. This approach was exemplified by Harvey Mudd College, who successfull... Read More about Narrowing and Stretching: Addressing the Challenge of Multi-track Programming.

Evidence for Teaching Practices that Broaden Participation for Women in Computing (2021)
Conference Proceeding
Morrison, B. B., Quinn, B. A., Bradley, S., Buffardi, K., Harrington, B., Hu, H. H., …Waite, J. (2021). Evidence for Teaching Practices that Broaden Participation for Women in Computing. In ITiCSE-WGR '21: Proceedings of the 2021 Working Group Reports on Innovation and Technology in Computer Science Education (57-131). https://doi.org/10.1145/3502870.3506568

Computing has, for many years, been one of the least demographically diverse STEM fields, particularly in terms of women's participation [12, 36]. The last decade has seen a proliferation of research exploring new teaching techniques and their effect... Read More about Evidence for Teaching Practices that Broaden Participation for Women in Computing.

ExBERT: An External Knowledge Enhanced BERT for Natural Language Inference (2021)
Book Chapter
Gajbhiye, A., Al Moubayed, N., & Bradley, S. (2021). ExBERT: An External Knowledge Enhanced BERT for Natural Language Inference. In I. Farkaš, P. Masulli, S. Otte, & S. Wermter (Eds.), Artificial Neural Networks and Machine Learning – ICANN 2021 30th International Conference on Artificial Neural Networks, Bratislava, Slovakia, September 14–17, 2021, Proceedings, Part V (460-472). Springer Verlag. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-86383-8_37

Neural language representation models such as BERT, pretrained on large-scale unstructured corpora lack explicit grounding to real-world commonsense knowledge and are often unable to remember facts required for reasoning and inference. Natural Langua... Read More about ExBERT: An External Knowledge Enhanced BERT for Natural Language Inference.

Forum-based Prediction of Certification in Massive Open Online Courses (2021)
Conference Proceeding
Alsheri, M. A., Alamri, A., Cristea, A. I., & Stewart, C. D. (2021). Forum-based Prediction of Certification in Massive Open Online Courses.

Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) have been suffering a very level of low course certification (less than 1% of the total number of enrolled students on a given online course opt to purchase its certificate), although MOOC platforms have been offer... Read More about Forum-based Prediction of Certification in Massive Open Online Courses.

Connected Subgraph Defense Games (2021)
Journal Article
Akrida, E. C., Deligkas, A., Melissourgos, T., & Spirakis, P. G. (2021). Connected Subgraph Defense Games. Algorithmica, 83(11), 3403-3431. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00453-021-00858-z

We study a security game over a network played between a defender and k attackers. Every attacker chooses, probabilistically, a node of the network to damage. The defender chooses, probabilistically as well, a connected induced subgraph of the networ... Read More about Connected Subgraph Defense Games.

MOOC next week dropout prediction: weekly assessing time and learning patterns (2021)
Book Chapter
Alamri, A., Sun, Z., Cristea, A. I., Steward, C., & Pereira, F. D. (2021). MOOC next week dropout prediction: weekly assessing time and learning patterns. In A. I. Cristea, & C. Troussas (Eds.), Intelligent Tutoring Systems: 17th International Conference, ITS 2021, Virtual Event, June 7–11, 2021, Proceedings (119-130). Springer Verlag. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-80421-3_15

Although Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) systems have become more prevalent in recent years, associated student attrition rates are still a major drawback. In the past decade, many researchers have sought to explore the reasons behind learner attri... Read More about MOOC next week dropout prediction: weekly assessing time and learning patterns.

The temporal explorer who returns to the base (2021)
Journal Article
Akrida, E., Mertzios, G., Spirakis, P., & Raptopoulos, C. (2021). The temporal explorer who returns to the base. Journal of Computer and System Sciences, 120, 179-193. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jcss.2021.04.001

We study here the problem of exploring a temporal graph when the underlying graph is a star. The aim of the exploration problem in a temporal star is finding a temporal walk which starts and finishes at the center of the star, and visits all leaves.... Read More about The temporal explorer who returns to the base.

Towards Designing Profitable Courses: Predicting Student Purchasing Behaviour in MOOCs (2021)
Journal Article
Alshehri, M., Alamri, A., Cristea, A. I., & Stewart, C. D. (2021). Towards Designing Profitable Courses: Predicting Student Purchasing Behaviour in MOOCs. International Journal of Artificial Intelligence in Education, 31(2), 215-233. https://doi.org/10.1007/s40593-021-00246-2

Since their ‘official’ emergence in 2012 (Gardner and Brooks 2018), massive open online courses (MOOCs) have been growing rapidly. They offer low-cost education for both students and content providers; however, currently there is a very low level of... Read More about Towards Designing Profitable Courses: Predicting Student Purchasing Behaviour in MOOCs.

Student Perceptions of Assessment and Feedback - are they valid? (2021)
Conference Proceeding
Crosby, R. (2021). Student Perceptions of Assessment and Feedback - are they valid?. In CEP '21: Proceedings of the 5th Conference on Computing Education Practice (5-8). https://doi.org/10.1145/3437914.3437970

Although good assessment and feedback practices are widely recognised as crucial to learning, historical UK NSS results illustrate that current practices leave students dissatisfied the most in terms of their overall learning experience. This paper o... Read More about Student Perceptions of Assessment and Feedback - are they valid?.

GamiCSM: relating education, culture and gamification - a link between worlds (2020)
Conference Proceeding
Toda, A., Klock, A. C. T., Palomino, P. T., Rodrigues, L., Oliveira, W., Stewart, C., …Isotani, S. (2020). GamiCSM: relating education, culture and gamification - a link between worlds. . https://doi.org/10.1145/3424953.3426490

The potential of gamification to improve users' motivation and engagement influenced many researchers and professionals to analyse its effects in educational settings. While some studies focus on adapting game elements according to demographic and be... Read More about GamiCSM: relating education, culture and gamification - a link between worlds.

Bilinear Fusion of Commonsense Knowledge with Attention-Based NLI Models (2020)
Book Chapter
Gajbhiye, A., Winterbottom, T., Al Moubayed, N., & Bradley, S. (2020). Bilinear Fusion of Commonsense Knowledge with Attention-Based NLI Models. In I. Farkaš, P. Masulli, & S. Wermter (Eds.), Artificial Neural Networks and Machine Learning – ICANN 2020 (633-646). Springer Verlag. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-61609-0_50

We consider the task of incorporating real-world commonsense knowledge into deep Natural Language Inference (NLI) models. Existing external knowledge incorporation methods are limited to lexical-level knowledge and lack generalization across NLI mode... Read More about Bilinear Fusion of Commonsense Knowledge with Attention-Based NLI Models.

How fast can we reach a target vertex in stochastic temporal graphs? (2020)
Journal Article
Akrida, E. C., Mertzios, G. B., Nikoletseas, S., Raptopoulos, C., Spirakis, P. G., & Zmaraev, V. (2020). How fast can we reach a target vertex in stochastic temporal graphs?. Journal of Computer and System Sciences, 114, 65-83. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jcss.2020.05.005

Temporal graphs abstractly model real-life inherently dynamic networks. Given a graph G, a temporal graph with G as the underlying graph is a sequence of subgraphs (snapshots) of G, where . In this paper we study stochastic temporal graphs, i.e. stoc... Read More about How fast can we reach a target vertex in stochastic temporal graphs?.

Citizen scientists: school students conducting, contributing to and communicating ecological research – experiences of a school–university partnership (2020)
Journal Article
Hsing, P., Coghill, L., Ryder, J., Austin, M., Dooley, S., Ellison, A., …Stephens, P. (2020). Citizen scientists: school students conducting, contributing to and communicating ecological research – experiences of a school–university partnership. School science review, 101(376), 67-74

Started in north-east England in 2015, MammalWeb aims to improve our knowledge of British mammals through the use of motion-sensing camera traps. Fundamental to the project is the involvement of local communities and individuals who act as citizen sc... Read More about Citizen scientists: school students conducting, contributing to and communicating ecological research – experiences of a school–university partnership.

Creative Assessment in Programming: Diversity and Divergence (2020)
Conference Proceeding
Bradley, S. (2020). Creative Assessment in Programming: Diversity and Divergence. In Proceedings of the 4th Conference on Computing Education Practice 2020. https://doi.org/10.1145/3372356.3372369

Negative stereotypes persist in computing, and align poorly with research into the motivations of female students. In particular, female students are more inclined to want to work creatively and have a positive impact through their work. However prog... Read More about Creative Assessment in Programming: Diversity and Divergence.

Addressing Bias to Improve Reliability in Peer Review of Programming Coursework (2019)
Conference Proceeding
Bradley, S. (2019). Addressing Bias to Improve Reliability in Peer Review of Programming Coursework. In Koli Calling '19 : proceedings of the 19th Koli Calling International Conference on Computing Education Research (1-19). https://doi.org/10.1145/3364510.3364523

Peer review has many potential pedagogical benefits, particularly in the area of programming, where it is a part of everyday professional practice. Although sometimes used for formative assessment, it is less commonly used for summative assessment, p... Read More about Addressing Bias to Improve Reliability in Peer Review of Programming Coursework.