Mohammed Saqr

University of Eastern Finland | UEF · School of Computing

Predictive modelling of academic success and retention has been a key research theme in Learning Analytics. While the initial work on predictive modelling was focused on the development of general predictive models, portable across different learning settings, later studies demonstrated the drawbacks of not considering the specificities of course d...

In recent years, using game concepts for educational purposes in digital environments has become continually more popular and relevant. Games can be used to motivate and engage users in regular system use and, in the end, support learners in achieving better learning outcomes. In this context, different kinds of game concepts exist, such as gamific...

Student engagement has a trajectory (a timeline) that unfolds over time and can be shaped by different factors including learners’ motivation, school conditions, and the nature of learning tasks. Such factors may result in either a stable, declining or fluctuating engagement trajectory. While research on online engagement is abundant, most authors...

A prevailing trend in CSCL literature has been to study of students' participatory roles. The majority of existing studies examine a single collaborative task or, at most, a complete course. This study aims to investigate the presence-or the lack thereof-of a more enduring disposition that drives student participation patterns across courses. Based...

Research has repeatedly demonstrated that students with effective learning strategies are more likely to have better academic achievement. Existing research has mostly focused on a single course or two, while longitudinal studies remain scarce. The present study examines the longitudinal sequence of students' strategies, their succession, consisten...

This study offers a comprehensive analysis of COVID-19 research in education. A multi-methods approach was used to capture the full breadth of educational research. As such, a bibliometric analysis, structural topic modeling, and qualitative synthesis of top papers were combined. A total of 4,201 articles were retrieved from Scopus, mostly publishe...

Early research on online PBL explored student satisfaction, effectiveness, and design. The temporal aspect of online PBL has rarely been addressed. Thus, a gap exists in our knowledge regarding how online PBL unfolds: when and for how long a group engages in collaborative discussions. Similarly, little is known about whether and what sequence of in...

Remote learning has advanced from the theoretical to the practical sciences with the advent of virtual labs. Although virtual labs allow students to conduct their experiments remotely, it is a challenge to evaluate student progress and collaboration using learning analytics. So far, a study that systematically synthesizes the status of research on...

Learning analytics is a fast-growing discipline. Institutions and countries alike are racing to harness the power of using data to support students, teachers and stakeholders. Research in the field has proven that predicting and supporting underachieving students is worthwhile. Nonetheless, challenges remain unre-solved, for example, lack of genera...

Network Analysis is an established method in learning analytics research. Network Analysis has been used to analyze learners' interactions, to inform learning design, and to model students' performance. The workshop entitled "Using Network Science in Learning Analytics: Building Bridges towards a Common Agenda", carried out within the LAK2021 confe...

Research on online learning has benefited from intensive data collection to understand students' online behavior and performance. Several learning analytics techniques have been operationalized to examine the temporal nature of learning that includes changes, phases, and sequences of students' online actions. Moreover, to account for the relational...

The NetScila22 workshop builds on the previous iterations of network analysis workshops. The current year themes addressed educational challenges as well as opportunities for future research and for strengthening the community. The workshop included valuable discussions and interactions with both experts and emerging researchers. Such discussions w...

Teachers’ work is increasingly augmented with intelligent tools that extend their pedagogical abilities. While these tools may have positive effects, they require use of students’ personal data, and more research into student preferences regarding these tools is needed. In this study, we investigated how learning strategies and study engagement are...

During the past years scholars have shown an increasing interest in supporting students' self-regulated learning (SRL). Learning analytics (LA) can be applied in various ways to identify a learner’s current state of self-regulation and support SRL processes. It is important to examine how LA has been used to identify the need for support in differe...

This study compared two iterations of the same course where students had the same assignments. In the first iteration, the students had to use the typical discussion forums offered by the popular Moodle learning management system. In the second iteration, students had to use Discord, the popular gaming chat application. Students’ interactions were...

The world that witnessed GDPR see the light has changed and will continue to change at the speed of the Internet. It is not hard to imagine that the challenges will be far different than what we have today while GDPR will stay almost the same.The challenges around GDPR have left many wondering if GDPR is failing, has already failed, or is on the wa...

Scientometrics has emerged as a research field for the evaluation and mapping of scientific fields, exploring research themes, collaboration clusters and identifying gaps and future trends. While early implementations have focused on quantitative metrics, recent directions emphasize a more nuanced approach that combines qualitative methods with qua...

Research impact goes beyond academia and exists in the multiplicity of digital platforms that we use to read, share, and discuss knowledge. Computing education research (CER) is no exception: it is created in academia and typical research institutions but is talked about widely on social media, blogs, and news websites. The aim of this study is to...

Research methods, including those of a quantitative nature, are an important part of preservice teacher training in Finland. However, quantitative research methods are considered challenging, often feared, and even hated among preservice teachers. This may be due to previous negative experiences and emotions associated with their use, which also in...

In order to successfully implement learning analytics (LA), we need a better understanding of student expectations of such services. Yet, there is still a limited body of research about students' expectations across countries. Student expectations of LA have been predominantly examined from a view that perceives students as a group of individuals r...

Computerisation and digitalisation are shaping the world in fundamental and unpredictable ways, which highlights the importance of computing education research (CER). As part of understanding the roots of CER, it is crucial to investigate the evolution of CER as a research discipline. In this paper we present a case study of a Finnish CER conferenc...

Emotions in collaborative learning both originate from and are externalized in students' socio-emotional interactions, and individual group members evidently contribute to these interactions to varying degrees. Research indicates that socio-emotional interactions within a group are related with the occurrence of co-and socially shared regulation of...

Background: Group affective states for learning are constantly formed through socio-emotional interactions. However, it remains unclear how the affective states vary during collaboration and how they occur with regulation of learning. Appropriate methods are needed to track both group affective states and these interaction processes. Aims: The p...

Currently there is a need for studying learning strategies within Massive Open Online Courses | (MOOCs), especially in the context of in-service teachers. This study aims to bridge this gap and try to understand how in-service teachers approach and regulate their learning in MOOCs. In particular, it examines the strategies used by the in-service te...

The aim of this study is to understand elementary school pupils' experiences and perspectives of learning analytics (LA) and self-regulated learning after two phenomenon-based learning modules in a blended learning environment. For this, specifically designed modules were built into a learning management system following the principles and key phas...

Preservice teacher training is research intensive in Finland. Additionally, teaching as profession is highly valued among young people. However, quantitative methods courses are challenging for teacher students from many reasons. Particularly, this is due to previous negative experiences and emotions (among other things). Thus, new approaches for t...

Predictors of student academic success do not always replicate well across different learning designs, subject areas, or educational institutions. This suggests that characteristics of a particular discipline and learning design have to be carefully considered when creating predictive models in order to scale up learning analytics. This study aimed...

In this study we provide a new viewpoint on the body of literature regarding rewards in serious and educational games. The study includes a quantitative bibliometric analysis of literature in this context from 1969 to 2020. The dataset from the Scopus abstract and citation database was analyzed with the Bibliometrix R library. The data set was manu...

For over five decades, researchers have used network analysis to understand educational contexts, spanning diverse disciplines and thematic areas. The wealth of traditions and insights accumulated through these interdisciplinary efforts is a challenge to synthesize with a traditional systematic review. To overcome this difficulty in reviewing 1791...

There has been extensive research using centrality measures in educational settings. One of the most common lines of such research has tested network centrality measures as indicators of success. The increasing interest in centrality measures has been kindled by the proliferation of learning analytics. Previous works have been dominated by single-c...

The current study uses a within-person temporal and sequential analysis to understand individual learning processes as part of collaborative learning. Contemporary perspectives of self-regulated learning acknowledge monitoring as a crucial mechanism for each phase of the regulated learning cycle, but little is known about the function of the monito...

For over five decades, researchers have used network analysis to understand educational contexts, spanning diverse disciplines and thematic areas. The wealth of traditions and insights accumulated through these interdisciplinary efforts is a challenge to synthesize with a traditional systematic review. To overcome this difficulty in reviewing 1791...

The need for organized computing education efforts dates back to the 1950s. Since then, computing education research (CER) has evolved and matured from its early initiatives and separation from mathematics education into a respectable research specialization of its own. In recent years, a number of meta-research papers, reviews, and scientometric s...

Supporting teaching and learning with different technologies has a long and broad history. The theories of learning have changed in recent decades, and new technologies have been invented that provide possibilities for supporting learning processes based on different learning theories. Recently, this field has been studied using bibliometric method...

Learning analytics methods have proven useful in providing insights from the increasingly available digital data about students in a variety of learning environments, including serious games. However, such methods have not been applied to the specific context of educational escape rooms and therefore little is known about students' behavior while p...

Network Analysis is an established method in learning analytics research. Network Analysis has been used to analyze learners' interactions, to inform learning design, and to model students' performance. The workshop entitled "Using Network Science in Learning Analytics: Building Bridges towards a Common Agenda", carried out within the LAK2021 confe...

Social Network Analysis (SNA) has enabled researchers to understand and optimize the key dimensions of collaborative learning. A majority of SNA research has so far used static networks, ie, aggregated networks that compile interactions without considering when certain activities or relationships occurred. Compressing a temporal process by discardi...

Over the past decade, epistemic network analysis (ENA) has emerged as a quantitative ethnography tool for modeling discourse in different types of human behaviors. This article offers a comprehensive systematic review of ENA educational applications in empirical studies ( $\text{n}=76$ ) published between 2010 and 2021. We review the ENA methods t...

Learning analytics methods have proven useful in providing insights from the increasingly available digital data about students in a variety of learning environments , including serious games. However, such methods have not been applied to the specific context of educational escape rooms and therefore little is known about students' behavior while...

Bibliometric studies on the field of multiple sclerosis (MS) research are scarce. The aim of this study is to offer an overarching view of the body of knowledge about MS research over eight decades-from 1945 to 2021-by means of a bibliometric analysis. We performed a quantitative analysis of a massive dataset based on Web of Science. The analysis i...

Research has shown the value of social collaboration and the benefits it brings to learners. In this study, we investigate the worth of Social Network Analysis (SNA) in translating students' interactions in computer-supported collaborative learning (CSCL) into proxy indicators of achievement. Previous research has tested the correlation between SNA...

There is extensive research using centrality measures in educational settings. One of the most common lines of such research has tested network centrality measures as indicators of success. The increasing interest in centrality measures has been kindled by the proliferation of learning analytics. Previous works have been dominated by single-course...

Oikeustieteellisellä alalla valtakunnallinen suomenkielinen valintakoe otettiin käyttöön vuonna 2018. Samalla valintakokeeseen osallistujien määrä kasvoi ja tarkistus muutettiin kaksivaiheiseksi siten, että ensimmäisessä vaiheessa hakijat karsitaan monivalintatehtävien perusteella. Kaikilta kokeeseen osallistuneilta tarkistetaan monivalintatehtävät...

Supporting teaching and learning programming with learning analytics is an active area of inquiry. Most learning management systems were not developed to support learning programming. Therefore, educators have to resort to other systems that support the programming process, which can pose a challenge when it comes to understanding students’ learnin...

Supporting teaching and learning programming with learning analytics is an active area of inquiry. Most data used for learning analytics research comes from learning management systems. However, such systems were not developed to support learning programming. Therefore, educators have to resort to other systems that support the programming process,...

This study empirically investigates diffusion-based centralities as depictions of student role-based behavior in information exchange, uptake and argumentation, and as consistent indicators of student success in computer-supported collaborative learning. The analysis is based on a large dataset of 69 courses (n = 3,277 students) with 97,173 total i...

Abstract—IEEE/ASEE Frontiers in Education turned 50 at the 2020 virtual conference in Uppsala, Sweden. This paper presents an historical retrospective on the first 50 years of the conference from a scientometric perspective. That is to say, we explore the evolution of the conference in terms of prolific authors, communities of co-authorship, cluste...

Writing in an academic context often requires students in higher education to acquire a new set of skills while familiarising themselves with the goals, objectives and requirements of the new learning environment. Students’ ability to continuously self-regulate their writing process, therefore, is seen as a determining factor in their learning succ...

Research on online engagement is abundant. However, most of the available studies have focused on a single course. Therefore, little is known about how students’ online engagement evolves over time. Previous research in face-to-face settings has shown that early disengagement has negative consequences on students’ academic achievement and graduatio...

Student engagement has a trajectory (a timeline) that unfolds over time and can be shaped by different factors including learners' motivation, school conditions, and the nature of learning tasks. Such factors may result in either a stable, declining or fluctuating engagement trajectory. While research on online engagement is abundant, most authors...

The frustration resulting from lack of generalizability of group-based insights is well-recognized. Several threads of research are emerging to address such challenges. Precision medicine, person-based research, and idiography are among the most promising. The main principle behind such methods is to devote more attention to the individual to ident...

Research on online engagement is abundant. However, most of the available studies have focused on a single course. Therefore, little is known about how students’ online engagement evolves over time. Previous research in face-to-face settings has shown that early disengagement has negative consequences on students’ academic achievement and graduatio...

Research on online engagement is abundant. However, most of the available studies have focused on a single course. Therefore, little is known about how students’ online engagement evolves over time. Previous research in face-to-face settings has shown that early disengagement has negative consequences on students’ academic achievement and graduatio...

Idiographic methods have emerged as a way to examine individual behavior by using several data points from each subject to create person-specific insights. In the field of learning analytics, such methods could overcome the limitations of cross-sectional group-level data that may fail to capture the dynamic processes that unfold within each individ...

Functional neuroimaging modalities vary in spatial and temporal resolution. One major limitation of most functional neuroimaging modalities is that only neural activation taking place inside the scanner can be imaged. This limitation makes functional neuroimaging in many clinical scenarios extremely difficult or impossible. The most commonly used r...

Interest in using networks in the analysis of digital data has long existed in learning analytics (LA). Applications of network science in our field are diverse. Some researchers analyze social settings in online discussions, knowledge building software, and group formation tools. Others use networked techniques to capture epistemic and cognitive p...

Network science methods are widely adopted in learning analytics, an applied research area that focuses on the analysis of learning data to understand and improve learning. The workshop, taking place at the 11th International Learning Analytics and Knowledge conference, focused on the applications of network science in learning analytics. The works...

Learning programming is a complex and challenging task for many students. It involves both understanding theoretical concepts and acquiring practical skills. Hence, analyzing learners' data from online learning environments alone fails to capture the full breadth of students' actions if part of their learning process takes place elsewhere. Moreover...

Learning programming is a complex and challenging task for many students. It in-volves both understanding theoretical concepts and acquiring practical skills. Hence, analyzing learners’ data from online learning environments alone fails to capture the full breadth of stu-dents’ actions if part of their learning process takes place elsewhere. Moreov...

One of the main obstacles impeding the widespread use and adoption of learning analytics is the threat that it poses to students’ data privacy. In this article, we present a proposal for generating person-centered insights for learners by combining data from multiple sources while preserving students' privacy. The basis of our approach is idiograph...

Recent findings in the field of learning analytics have brought to our attention that conclusions drawn from cross-sectional group-level data may not capture the dynamic processes that unfold within each individual learner. In this light, idiographic methods have started to gain grounds in many fields as a possible solution to examine students' beh...

One of the main obstacles impeding the widespread use and adoption of learning analytics is the threat that it poses to students’ data privacy. In this article, we present a proposal for generating person-centered insights for learners by combining data from multiple sources while preserving students' privacy. The basis of our approach is idiograph...

Recent findings in the field of learning analytics have brought to our attention that conclusions drawn from cross-sectional group-level data may not capture the dynamic processes that unfold within each individual learner. In this light, idiographic methods have started to gain grounds in many fields as a possible solution to examine students’ beh...