Digital Commons Network^™

Measuring Effects Of Mini-Lectures On Improving Student Engagement And Outcomes, Vincent Engbers, Rowel Gündlach, Marta Regis, Maria Vlasiou

Practice Papers

In the current age, digital advancements have shaped the educational landscape by providing numerous possibilities for a fast and on-demand influx of information for students. This brings an additional difficulty for course designers in how to incorporate such technologies in teaching in an optimal way. Key examples are educational videos, which are especially relevant now due to the increase in accessibility of pre-made videos and recording technology since the pandemic. This puts post-pandemic teaching in the new but revolutionary position to complement in-person teaching with videos.

In this study, we examine the effect of videos combined with in-person teaching in …

Enhancing Professional Skills Among Engineering Students By Interdisciplinary International Collaboration, Thomas Mejtoft, Helen Cripps, Melissa Fong-Emmerson, Christoper Blöcker

Practice Papers

Providing necessary knowledge and skills for engineering students to become successful professionals is a tricky task. Besides disciplinary knowledge, e.g., communication skills, ability to work in teams, and international experience are often mentioned as important. Regarding internationalization, most engineering programs in Sweden rely on either student exchange or low-level internationalization-at-home, such as international literature and lecturers. This paper explores sustainable international experiences for students on their home turf provided through an international interdisciplinary collaboration where engineering students in Sweden and marketing students in Australia work together on a project. The setup simulates a consultancy firm with development and marketing offices …

Centering Meaning-Filled Design Within Engineering Education: Recommendations On How To Integrate Interdisciplinary Architectural Design Charrettes, Community Engagement, Sustainability Principles, And Adapted Agile Methodologies Into A Student-Centered, Project-Based Engineering Program, David D Gillette, Michael Haungs, Thomas Fowler

Practice Papers

The Liberal Arts and Engineering Studies program (LAES) is a hybrid engineering and humanities degree housed in both the engineering and liberal arts colleges. LAES requires the same required math and science courses of standard engineering degrees, adding upper-level concentrations split equally between advanced engineering and humanities courses.

LAES was designed for retaining and recruiting a diversity of students in engineering, and to address recent innovations in industrial practice, technology design, and community-centered education. Through fifteen years of trial and error, the LAES program has developed a set of meaning-filled design guidelines for project work, combining engineering and humanistic problem …

The Immersive Placement Experience: Sink Or Swim?, Mohammed Shaikh, Abed Alaswad, Sarah Junaid

Practice Papers

To excel in their respective engineering fields, engineering students need to be equipped with a combination of technical and interpersonal skills. Central to excellent interpersonal skills is good communication. The aim of the study is to evaluate how well-prepared mechanical and design engineering students felt entering into their industrial placements, using a UK university as a pilot case study. For the study interviews were carried out with final year students who had previously completed an industrial placement year, focussing on communication, workplace diversity, technical working methods and university teaching styles. Reponses were anonymised, coded and analysed using quantitative and qualitative …

Engineering Solutions For A More Inclusive Society: A Case Study With Europe-Wide Challenge-Based Learning, Lennart Osterhus, Ulrike Bulmann, Viktoria Constanze Schneider, Kaline Furlan

Practice Papers

Engineering practices directly impact our society and yet, traditional engineering courses often present a lack of emphasis on social and sustainable responsibility. Therefore, a course was designed to increase societal awareness and promote social-conscious engineering practices, and also interdisciplinary and intercultural collaboration. The course followed the concept of challenge-based learning (CBL) and was offered within the framework of the European Consortium of Innovative Universities (ECIU). In such framework, students from 13 European partner universities could join, as well as professionals and citizens as so-called continuous learners. The challenge addressed the issue of an increasingly aging European society and the physical …

Developing Research Culture Among Staff Under Conditions Of Organizational Change, Mariia Perelygina, Denise O' Leary

Research Outputs: 2025-Present

No abstract provided.

Identifying The Characteristics, Constraints, And Enablers To Creating Value In Applied Performance Analysis, Denise Martin, Peter G. O'Donoghue, Jonathan Bradley, Sam Robertson, Denise Mcgrath

Articles

While applied performance analysts (PAs) are a well-established applied sports science practitioner group, there is no clear definition of the purpose of an analyst, their key relationships, or the expertise required to execute the role successfully. This research sought to understand how PA practitioners and educators perceive their role as applied PA practitioners. Twenty-seven applied PAs and educators with applied PA experience participated in six online focus groups, completing an online survey in advance. Reflexive thematic analysis of transcripts and survey data generated an overarching theme: embedded applied PA practitioners have a value co-creation role within performance ecosystems which is …

Detection Of Truthful, Semi-Truthful, False And Other News With Arbitrary Topics Using Bert-Based Models, Elena Shushkevich, John Cardiff, Anna Boldyreva

Conference Papers

Easy and uncontrolled access to the Internet provokes the wide propagation of false information, which freely circulates in the Internet. Researchers usually solve the problem of fake news detection (FND) in the framework of a known topic and binary classification. In this paper we study possibilities of BERT-based models to detect fake news in news flow with unknown topics and four categories: true, semi-true, false and other. The object of consideration is the dataset CheckThat! Lab proposed for the conference CLEF-2022. The subjects of consideration are the models SBERT, RoBERTa, and mBERT. To improve the quality of classification we use …

Determining Child Sexual Abuse Posts Based On Artificial Intelligence, Susan Mckeever, Christina Thorpe, Vuong Ngo

Conference papers

The volume of child sexual abuse materials (CSAM) created and shared daily both surface web platforms such as Twitter and dark web forums is very high. Based on volume, it is not viable for human experts to intercept or identify CSAM manually. However, automatically detecting and analysing child sexual abusive language in online text is challenging and time-intensive, mostly due to the variety of data formats and privacy constraints of hosting platforms. We propose a CSAM detection intelligence algorithm based on natural language processing and machine learning techniques. Our CSAM detection model is not only used to remove CSAM on …

Using Machine Learning To Identify Patterns In Learner-Submitted Code For The Purpose Of Assessment, Botond Tarcsay, Fernando Perez-Tellez, Jelena Vasic

Conference papers

Programming has become an important skill in today’s world and is taught widely both in traditional and online settings. Instructors need to grade increasing amounts of student work. Unit testing can contribute to the automation of the grading process but it cannot assess the structure or partial correctness of code, which is needed for finely differentiated grading. This paper builds on previous research that investigated machine learning models for determining the correctness of programs from token-based features of source code and found that some such models can be successful in classifying source code with respect to whether it passes unit …

The Role Of Soc In Ensuring The Security Of Iot Devices: A Review Of Current Challenges And Future Directions, Hajar Bennouri, Abdiaziz Abdi, Iqbal Hossain, Alexandre Pujol

Conference papers

The growing popularity and deployment of Internet of Things (IoT) devices has led to serious security concerns. The integration of a security operations center (SOC) becomes increasingly important in this situation to ensure the security of IoT devices. In this article, we will present a summary of IoT device security issues, their vulnerabilities, a review of current challenges to keep these devices secure, and discuss the role that SOC can bring in protecting IoT devices while considering the challenges encountered and the directions to consider when implementing a reliable SOC for IoT monitoring.

Work In Progress: A Virtual Educational Robotics Coding Club Framework To Improve K-6 Students Emotional Engagement In Stem, Kate Carmody, Julie Booth, Jospehine Bleach, Pramod Pathak, Paul Styles

Conference papers

The growing popularity and deployment of Internet of Things (IoT) devices has led to serious security concerns. The integration of a security operations center (SOC) becomes increasingly important in this situation to ensure the security of IoT devices. In this article, we will present a summary of IoT device security issues, their vulnerabilities, a review of current challenges to keep these devices secure, and discuss the role that SOC can bring in protecting IoT devices while considering the challenges encountered and the directions to consider when implementing a reliable SOC for IoT monitoring.

Show, Prefer And Tell: Incorporating User Preferences Into Image Captioning, Annika Lindh, Robert J. Ross, John Kelleher

Conference papers

Image Captioning (IC) is the task of generating natural language descriptions for images. Models encode the image using a convolutional neural network (CNN) and generate the caption via a recurrent model or a multi-modal transformer. Success is measured by the similarity between generated captions and human-written “ground-truth” captions, using the CIDEr [14], SPICE [1] and METEOR [2] metrics. While incremental gains have been made on these metrics, there is a lack of focus on end-user opinions on the amount of content in captions. Studies with blind and low-vision participants have found that lack of detail is a problem [6, 13, …

Capturing The Behaviour Of Volunteer Pedestrians In A Newly-Developed University Campus Using A Distributed Array Of Bluetooth Low Energy Devices, Ahlam Al Anbouri, Mayank Parmar, David Powell, Paula Kelly, Niall Holmes Dr., Damon Berry, Lorraine D'Arcy

Conference papers

Contemporary public infrastructure projects emphasise sustainable options that integrate pedestrian routes, leisure facilities and convenient access to public transport systems. It is important to understand the effectiveness of these contemporary designs. In the age of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), there is a need to develop technologybased solutions that collect information about the behaviour of pedestrians in public spaces as they commute and engage in leisure pursuits while simultaneously preserving the privacy of these citizens. Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE), has privacypreserving features that make it worth considering as part of a technology solution for studies of this type. This …

Indication Of Pedestrian’S Travel Direction Through Bluetooth Low Energy Signals Perceived By A Single Observer Device, Mayank Parmar, Paula Kelly, Damon Berry

Conference papers

This paper presents a study to understand the directional sensitivity of a Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) monitoring device (Observer) and whether, using a single such Observer, the characteristics of its antenna can be used to identify the direction of a pedestrian’s movement. To comprehend the directional characteristics of the antenna of the Observer employed for this study, the device is subjected to BLE signals emitted from a BLE beacon (Broadcaster) in an anechoic chamber. The results of this study confirmed that in the clean, noiseless environment of the chamber, the antenna we employed is clearly more receptive to signals emerging …

Exploring The Impact Of Competition And Incentives On Game Jam Participation And Behaviour, John Healy, Niamh Germaine

Conference papers

Competitive elements are a common feature of many game jams. However, there has been little research to date on the impact of competition on participants and their behaviours. To better understand how incentives and competition may affect the motivations and behaviour of game jam participants, we surveyed 47 game jam participants and analysed data from 4,564 online game jams. We found that incentives and competition were neither strong deterrents nor significant motivators for game jam participation. However, a significant percentage of the participants surveyed indicated that incentives and competition would affect their behaviour during a game jam. Our findings suggest …

The Power Of Education In A Globalised World: Challenging Geoeconomic Inequalities, Ozéias Rocha, Daniel Kamphambale, Cormac Macmahon, Jon Hans Coetzer, Lucía Morales

Articles

The globalization process has led to significant levels of controversy, as over the past few years, researchers have highlighted its negative connotations in terms of exacerbating economic inequalities, environmental degradation, exploitation of workers, loss of cultural diversity, and negative influence on democratic systems and financial stability. The negative connotation associated with the globalization process is not surprising. The implications for the global educational system significantly dominated by the influence of Western values, culture, and economic models based on consumerism to the detriment of traditional cultural and local identities have been eroded. The world economies are facing emerging areas of significant …

Circular Pedagogy To Advance The Integration Of Learning Technologies: Supporting Technological Universities Cultural Transformation, Nadia Barkoczi, Iulia Stefan, Ivaylo Peev, Todor Todorov, Lia Pop, Claudia Marian, Cristina Campian, Sonia Munteanu, Patrick Flynn, Jon-Hans Coetzer, Lucia Morales

Working Papers

European countries need active and proactive educational systems assisted by models that can drive a cultural transformation that supports sustainable socio-economic and environmental development. In this paper, we reflect on the future of European education. We offer some insights on how the foundations of a new educational model (ANEM) could be cemented and solidly supported by pillars that acknowledge our societies' rich and diverse cultures. Furthermore, the European University of Technology's (EUt+) future educational model is taken as a case study to enable us to reflect and analyse the need for novel pedagogies that drive change for a more sustainable …

An Accumulation Of Care: Affect In The Role Of The Contemporary Curator, Sara-Jayne Parsons

School of Art, Design and Architecture Theses

This research portfolio investigates an affective approach to contemporary curatorial practice that is shaped by an accumulation of care. By retracing my working methods and noticing small shifts or interruptions, I reveal transformative, incremental changes in my work as a curator. I introduce curatorial practice where care is described as the physical and intellectual concern for objects in a museum, and consider traditional narratives ascribed to the role of a curator. I then propose an expanded understanding of care in curatorial practice that goes beyond stewardship to encompass engagement, empathy and allyship. Adopting a posthumanist methodological strategy which negotiates subjectivity …

‘My Blood Is In It’: A Phenomenological Study Of International Doctoral Students’ Embodied Experience Of A University Campus, Anne Bentley

School of Law, Humanities and Social Sciences Theses

Reflecting its Cartesian underpinnings, academic scholarship privileges discourse over embodiment, resulting in a lack of research about international doctoral students' bodily experience of Higher Education. International students represent a significant income stream for UK universities and offer the opportunity for the meeting of different cultures, minds and bodies. Using phenomenological theory and taking embodiment as its starting point, this thesis explores the implicit dimensions of international doctoral students' everyday experience of campus. Walking interviews, photo-elicitation and semi-structured interviews with eight international doctoral students yielded embodied, visual and discursive methods. Merleau-Ponty, Ahmed and Arendt were used to theorise the interrelated embodied, …

Editorial: Investigating The Effect Of The Physical Context On Customer Experience, Helen L. Bruce, Ewa Krolikowska, Tara Rooney

Articles

This editorial introduces a special issue of the Journal of Services Marketing, dedicated to articles discussing the effect of the physical context on customer experience. The editorial identifies diverse areas of extant knowledge which researchers might draw upon when investigating the effect of the physical context on customer experience. to inform future research agendas.

Women Microbusiness Owners’ Entrepreneurial Marketing Decision-Making During A Crisis, Helen L. Bruce, Tara Rooney, Ewa Krolikowska

Articles

Understanding effective marketing decision-making is key to driving business performance. However, knowledge of marketing decision-making by microbusiness owners is limited. Moreover, little is known about how microbusiness owners make marketing decisions under crisis conditions. This article explores entrepreneurial marketing decision-making by women microbusiness owners during the COVID-19 pandemic, through qualitative interviews with providers of children’s activities, who migrated their services online during lockdown. Findings shed light on their marketing decision-making by highlighting transitions between causation and effectuation approaches and identifying key resources leveraged in effectuation decision-making. We also observe how distinct principles of effectuation may be combined to make effective …

How Online Discourse Networks Fields Of Practice: The Discursive Negotiation Of Autonomy On Art Organisation About Pages, Tommie Soro

Articles

This article examines how the online discourse of art organisations forges relationships between the artworld and the fields of politics and economy. Combining elements of Pierre Bourdieu’s field analysis and Norman Fairclough’s critical discourse analysis, the article analyses an elite art magazine, e-flux, and an elite art museum, IMMA, and the activities of discourses, genres, and utterances on their about pages. Its results suggest that the about pages of these organisations forge links between the artworld and the fields of politics and economy by mobilising discourse in these fields and by incorporating discourse practices from these fields. The ideological tension …

Implementing The Fast Full-Wave Electromagnetic Forward Solver Using The Deep Convolutional Encoder-Decoder Architecture, He Ming Yao, Lijun Jiang, Michael Ng

Electrical and Computer Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

In this communication, a novel deep learning (DL)-based solver is proposed for the electromagnetic forward (EMF) process. It is based on the complex-valued deep convolutional neural networks (DConvNets) comprising an encoder network and a corresponding decoder network with pixel-wise regression layer. The encoder network takes the incident EM wave and the contrast (permittivity) distribution of the object as the input. It channels the processed data into the corresponding decoder network to predict the total EM field due to the scatter of the input incident EM wave. The training of the proposed DConvNets is done using the simple synthetic dataset. Due …

Consumer Behavior Analysis On Sales Process Model Using Process Discovery Algorithm For The Omnichannel Distribution System, Ferra A. Tridalestari, Mustafid, Ferry Jie

Research outputs 2022 to 2026

Currently, Omnichannel distribution services are experiencing very rapid development around the world. In the Omnichannel distribution services, each existing sales channel will be connected to each other through integration capabilities so that no channels are left neglected. This is able to provide the best experience for consumers when shopping both online through mobile devices, laptops, and in physical stores. But on the other hand, this creates problems for business people who develop Omnichannel services. On the one hand, it facilitates the marketing process, but on the other hand, business people have difficultyreading the behavior of consumers who use Omnichannel distribution …

Synthesis, Densification, And Cation Inversion In High Entropy (Co,Cu,Mg,Ni,Zn)Al2o4 Spinel, Cole A. Corlett, Nina Obradovic, Jeremy Lee Watts, Eric W. Bohannan, William Fahrenholtz

Materials Science and Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

The synthesis, densification behavior, and crystallographic site occupancy were investigated for four different spinel-based ceramics, including a high-entropy spinel (Co_0.2Cu_0.2Mg_0.2Ni_0.2 Zn_0.2)Al₂O₄. Each composition was reacted to form a single phase, but analysis of X-ray diffraction patterns revealed differences in cation site occupancy with the high-entropy spinel being nearly fully normal. Densification behavior was investigated and showed that fully dense ceramics could be produced by hot pressing at temperatures as low as 1375°C for all compositions. Vickers' hardness values were at least 10 GPa for all compositions. The …

Final-Stage Densification Kinetics Of Direct Current–Sintered Zrb2, Austin D. Stanfield, Steven M. Smith, Suzana Filipović, Nina Obradović, Vladimir Buljak, Gregory E. Hilmas, William Fahrenholtz

Materials Science and Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

Final-stage sintering was analyzed for nominally phase pure zirconium diboride synthesized by borothermal reduction of high-purity ZrO₂. Analysis was conducted on ZrB₂ ceramics with relative densities greater than 90% using the Nabarro–Herring stress–directed vacancy diffusion model. Temperatures of 1900°C or above and an applied uniaxial pressure of 50 MPa were required to fully densify ZrB₂ ceramics by direct current sintering. Ram travel data were collected and used to determine the relative density of the specimens during sintering. Specimens sintered between 1900 and 2100°C achieved relative densities greater than 97%, whereas specimens sintered below 1900°C failed to …

Morphological And Structural Characterization Of Mgal2o4 Spinel, Nina Obradović, Suzana Filipović, William Fahrenholtz, Bojan A. Marinkovic, Jelena Rogan, Steva Lević, Antonije Đorđević, Vladimir B. Pavlović

Materials Science and Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

Magnesium aluminate has the spinel structure along with good mechanical, chemical, and thermal properties. Magnesium aluminate has a wide range of applications including refractory ceramics, optically transparent ceramic windows, and armors. Its low dielectric permeability and low loss tangent enable its applications for integrated electronic devices, as well. In this paper, MgO and Al₂O₃ powders were mixed in a one-to-one molar ratio and calcined at temperatures ranging from 1500 to 1800o C to produce phase pure spinel. Thereafter, pellets were crushed and treated in a planetary ball mill for 60 min to obtain a fine powder. All …

Strength Retention Of Single-Phase High-Entropy Diboride Ceramics Up To 2000°C, Lun Feng, William Fahrenholtz, Gregory E. Hilmas, Yue Zhou, Jincheng Bai

Materials Science and Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

The mechanical properties of single-phase (Hf_0.2,Nb_0.2,Ta_0.2,Ti_0.2,Zr_0.2)B₂ ceramics with high purity were investigated. The resulting ceramics had relative density greater than 99%, and an average grain size of 4.3 ± 1.6 μm. At room temperature (RT), the Vickers hardness was 25.2 ± 0.6 GPa at a load of 0.49 N, Young's modulus was 551 ± 7 GPa, fracture toughness was 4.5 ± 0.4 MPa m1/2, and flexural strength was 507 ± 10 MPa. Flexural strength increased by more than 50% from 507 ± 10 MPa at RT to 776 ± …

Strengths-Based Leadership Traits In Intercollegiate Student-Athletes, Caitlin Thilges

Dissertations and Theses @ UNI

The purpose of this study was to examine the top five HIGH5 leadership strengths of collegiate level student-athletes in relation to formal and informal leaders. Collegiate student-athletes (N = 97) completed the HIGH5 Test, designed to assess leadership strengths. A frequency analysis was conducted on the whole population resulting in the strengths of: Coach, Empathizer, Deliverer, Time Keeper, and Philomath emerging as prominent. Formal and informal leaders’ strengths were also analyzed. Emergent strengths shared between formal and informal leaders were: Deliverer, Time Keeper, Coach, and Empathizer. Whereas the strength of Believer emerged in formal leaders and Optimist and Thinker emerged …