Paul Mulholland

• The Open University

Knowledge representation languages are frequently difficult to understand, particularly for those not trained in formal logic. This is the case for Description Logics, which have been adopted for knowledge representation on the Web and in a number of application areas. This work looks at the difficulties experienced with Description Logics; and in...

Risk assessment methods are used to map the threat posed by organised crime and assist in the prioritisation of policing resources. Within policing, risk assessment methods are currently in use that either focus on the attributes of organised crime groups or the types of harm posed. Statistical analysis was undertaken of risk assessment data produc...

Digital archives of memory institutions are typically concerned with the cataloguing of artefacts of artistic, historical, and cultural value. Recently, new forms of citizen participation in cultural heritage have emerged, producing a wealth of material spanning from visitors’ experiential feedback on exhibitions and cultural artefacts to digitally...

This paper describes the use of Citizen Curation to explore ways in which cross-modal experiences can be used and created by museum visitors. Citizen Curation can be defined as individuals and groups from outside the museum profession engaging in curatorial activities to communicate their own ideas and stories. Previous work has explored how Citize...

This paper describes the design and use of Deep Viewpoints, a software platform for eliciting and sharing citizen perspectives associated with museum artworks. The design of the platform is inspired by the process of Slow Looking in which museum visitors are guided to observe artworks and develop their own response. Within Deep Viewpoints, the proc...

Our study has investigated the effect of music on the experience of viewing art, investigating the factors which create a sense of connectivity between the two forms. We worked with 138 participants, and included multiple choice and open-ended questions. For the latter, we performed both a qualitative analysis and also sentiment analysis using text...

This article explores and presents innovative methods and technologies for supporting citizen curation of cultural heritage. Relevant outcomes of the SPICE project (Social Participation, Cohesion, and Inclusion through Cultural Engagement) are presented, focusing on enhancing the state of content management and delivery strategies in museums and me...

Universities are increasingly adopting data-driven strategies to enhance student success, with AI applications like Learning Analytics (LA) and Predictive Learning Analytics (PLA) playing a key role in identifying at-risk students, personalising learning, supporting teachers, and guiding educational decision-making. However, concerns are rising abo...

Mapping complex structured data to RDF, e.g. for the creation of linked data, requires a clear understanding of the data, but also a clear understanding of the paradigm used by the mapping tool. We illustrate this with an empirical study comparing two different mapping tools, in particular considering the likelihood of user error. One tool uses pat...

Educational outcomes from traditionally underrepresented groups are generally worse than for their more advantaged peers. This problem is typically known as the awarding gap (we use the term awarding gap over ‘attainment gap’ as attainment places the responsibility on students to attain at equal levels) and continues to pose a challenge for educati...

Awarding gaps have been commonly observed between different socio-demographic categories of students, especially in the domains of sociology and learning science. Recent research has shown that using Learning Analytics models could be exploited to reduce these gaps, and therefore contribute to making the learning process more inclusive and equitabl...

Data integration is the dominant use case for RDF Knowledge Graphs. However, Web resources come in formats with weak semantics (for example CSV and JSON), or formats specific to a given application (for example BibTex, HTML, and Markdown). To solve this problem, Knowledge Graph Construction (KGC) is gaining momentum due to its focus on supporting u...

The two dominant paradigms for graph databases, edge-labelled graphs and property graphs, may appear quite different. Yet, to the user, they have strong similarities. A usability study, comparing RDF-star/SPARQL-star and Cypher, found evidence for only limited differences in preferences between the modelling paradigms. This suggests the possibility...

We discuss the potential of a mobile app for news tips to local newspapers to be augmented with artificial intelligence. It can be designed to encourage deliberative, consensus-oriented contributions from citizens. We presume that such an app will generate news stories from multi-modal data in the form of photos, videos, text elements, location inf...

This study compares participant acceptance of the property graph and edge-labelled graph paradigms, as represented by Cypher and the proposed extensions to the W3C standards, RDF* and SPARQL*. In general, modelling preferences are consistent across the two paradigms. When presented with location information, participants preferred to create nodes t...

The Semantic Web research community understood since its beginning how crucial it is to equip practitioners with methods to transform non-RDF resources into RDF. Proposals focus on either engineering content transformations or accessing non-RDF resources with SPARQL. Existing solutions require users to learn specific mapping languages (e.g. RML), t...

Contemporary theories of social cohesion emphasize the importance of people accepting and appreciating differences across social groups. The SPICE project aims to promote social cohesion by researching and developing tools and methods to support citizen curation for groups at risk of exclusion. We define citizen curation as a process in which citiz...

The Semantic Web research community understood since its beginning how crucial it is to equip practitioners with methods to transform non-RDF resources into RDF. Proposals focus on either engineering content transformations or accessing non-RDF resources with SPARQL. Existing solutions require users to learn specific mapping languages (e.g. RML), t...

Shedding is a term used to describe a musical conversation between drummers with the aim to improve their drumming vocabulary, gain confidence in real-time trading of musical ideas, develop an understanding for their original voice on the drum kit and enjoy the process of exploring creativity with a fellow drummer. However, in practice drummers hav...

This study investigated difficulties in the comprehension of SPARQL. In particular, it compared the declarative and navigational styles present in the language, and various operators used in SPARQL property paths. The study involved participants selecting possible answers given a SPARQL query and knowledgebase. In general, no significant difference...

Nonlinear dynamic processes are fundamental to the behavior of acoustic musical instruments, as is well explored in the case of sound production. Such processes may have profound and under-explored implications for how musicians interact with instruments, however. Although nonlinear dynamic processes are ubiquitous in acoustic instruments, they are...

The SPICE project builds on the growing trend for museums, rather than providing an authoritative view, to present multiple voices related to their collection and exhibitions. In SPICE, an approach we term citizen curation is proposed as a way of supporting visitors to share their own interpretations of museum objects and reflect on the variety of...

This study investigated difficulties in the comprehension of SPARQL. In particular, it compared the declarative and navigational styles present in the language, and various operators used in SPARQL property paths. The study involved participants selecting possible answers given a SPARQL query and knowledgebase. In general, no significant difference...

Background: Huntington disease (HD) is an inherited genetic disorder that results in the death of brain cells. HD symptoms generally start with subtle changes in mood and mental abilities; they then degenerate progressively, ensuing a general lack of coordination and an unsteady gait, ultimately resulting in death. There is currently no cure for H...

Background: Movement analysis in a clinical setting is frequently restricted to observational methods to inform clinical decision making, which has limited accuracy. Fixed-site, optical, expensive movement analysis laboratories provide gold standard kinematic measurements; however, they are rarely accessed for routine clinical use. Wearable inertia...

BACKGROUND Huntington’s Disease (HD) is an inherited genetic disorder that results in the death of brain cells. HD symptoms generally start with subtle changes in mood and mental abilities and degenerate progressively, ensuing a general lack of coordination and an unsteady gait, ultimately resulting in death. There is currently no cure for HD. Walk...

BACKGROUND Movement analysis in the clinical setting is frequently restricted to observational methods to inform clinical decision making, which has limited accuracy. Fixed-site optical expensive movement analysis laboratories provide ‘gold-standard’ kinematic measurements, however they are rarely accessed for routine clinical use. Wearable inertia...

Open Educational Resources (OERs), now available in large numbers, have a considerable potential to improve many aspects of society, yet one of the factors limiting this positive impact is the difficulty to discover them. This study investigates and proposes strategies to better support educators in discovering OERs, mainly focusing on secondary ed...

Algorithmic composition typically involves manipulating structural elements such as indeterminism, parallelism, choice, multi-choice, recursion, weighting, sequencing, timing, and looping. There exist powerful tools for these purposes, however, many musicians who are not expert programmers find such tools inaccessible and difficult to understand an...

This special issue celebrates the 50th anniversary of the International Journal of Human-Computer Studies (IJHCS), which published its first volume in January 1969. The special issue comprises 15 contributions from a number of experts in Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) and other areas relevant to IJHCS. These contributions are best characterized a...

Nonlinear dynamical processes play a central role in many acoustic instruments, yet they rarely feature in digital instruments, and are little understood from an interaction design perspective. Such processes exhibit behaviours that are complex, time-dependent, and chaotic, yet in the context of acoustic instruments can facilitate interactions that...

A number of studies have analyzed SPARQL log data to draw conclusions about how SPARQL is being used. To complement this work, a survey of SPARQL users has been undertaken. Whilst confirming some of the conclusions of the previous studies, the current work is able to provide additional insight into how users create SPARQL queries, the difficulties...

Algorithmic music composition involves specifying music in such a way that it is non-deterministic on playback, leading to music which has the potential to be different each time it is played. Current systems for algorithmic music composition typically require the user to have considerable programming skill and may require formal knowledge of music...

Personalised physiotherapy using wearables.

In a straightforward meta-level shift of focus, we use design patterns as a medium and process for capturing insight about the process of design. We survey mainstream design genres, and draw conclusions about how they can help inform the design of intelligent systems.

Toward personalised physiotherapy

For people with neurological conditions such as stroke and brain injury, gait rehabilitation can lead to a significantly more independent lifestyle. Existing gait rehabilitation studies with stroke survivors using rhythmic haptic cueing via wearable devices have demonstrated improvements in temporal symmetry, increase in stride length and walking s...

Many people with long-term neurological and neurodegenerative conditions such as stroke, brain injury, multiple sclerosis or Parkinson's disease suffer from an impaired walking gait pattern. Gait improvement can lead to better fluidity in walking, improved health outcomes, greater independence, and enhanced quality of life. Existing lab-based studi...

Stroke is one of the leading causes for long-term adult disabilities. More than half of all stroke survivors depend on others for everyday activities after they are discharged from hospital. One of the conditions a stroke survivor may experience is hemiparetic gait. Typical characteristics of hemiparetic gait are: reduced speed, increased step vari...

Many people with long-term neurological and neurodegenerative conditions such as stroke, brain injury, multiple sclerosis or Parkinson's disease suffer from an impaired walking gait pattern. Gait improvement can lead to better fluidity in walking, improved health outcomes, greater independence, and enhanced quality of life. Existing lab-based studi...

For people with neurological conditions such as stroke and brain injury, gait rehabilitation can lead to a significantly more independent lifestyle. Existing gait rehabilitation studies with stroke survivors using rhythmic haptic cueing via wearable devices have demonstrated improvements in temporal symmetry, increase in stride length and walking s...

We present an algorithmic composition system designed to be accessible to those with minimal programming skills and little musical training, while at the same time allowing the manipulation of detailed musical structures more rapidly and more fluidly than would normally be possible for such a user group. These requirements led us to devise non-stan...

Inspired by insights from theories of human reasoning and language, we propose additions to the Manchester OWL Syntax to improve comprehensibility. These additions cover: functional and inverse functional properties, negated conjunction, the definition of exceptions, and existential and universal restrictions. By means of an empirical study, we dem...

Algorithmic composition systems allow for the partial or total automation of music composition by formal, computational means. Typical algorithmic composition systems generate nondeterministic music, meaning that multiple musical outcomes can result from the same algorithm - consequently the output is generally different each time the algorithm run...

Nowadays, Question Answering (Q&A) websites are popular source of information for finding answers to all kind of questions. Due to this popularity it is critical to help the identification of best answers to existing questions for simplifying the access to relevant information. Although it is possible to identify relatively accurately best answers...

Social media is a common place for people to post and share digital reflections of their life events, including major events such as getting married, having children, graduating, etc. Although the creation of such posts is straightforward, the identification of events on online media remains a challenge. Much research in recent years focused on ext...

Description Logics are commonly used for the development of ontologies. Yet they are well-known to present difficulties of comprehension, e.g. when confronted with the justification for a particular entailment during the debugging process. This paper describes a study into the problems experienced in understanding and reasoning with Description Log...

The work described in this paper focuses on how to reveal culturally-related data to city tourists to help them in navigating both the physical space through which they are moving (the cityscape) and a conceptual space around points of interest which links them through shared stories of time, place, people and theme (the datascape). The research go...

The value of Question Answering (Q&A) communities is dependent on members of the community finding the questions they are most willing and able to answer. This can be difficult in communities with a high volume of questions. Much previous has work attempted to address this problem by recommending questions similar to those already answered. However...

This paper presents a first step in the development of a methodology to compare the ability of different sonifications to convey the fine temporal detail of the Electroencephalography (EEG) brainwave signal in real time. In EEG neurofeedback a person " s EEG activity is monitored and presented back to them, to help them to learn how to modify their...

Museum staff tell stories to assist visitor interpretation of artworks. Visitors also tell their own stories to articulate their understanding and opinion of artworks. Additional knowledge about the concepts mentioned or tagged in these stories can be found from online data sources. These could be used to assist reader interpretation or author deve...

New social media has led to an explosion in personal digital data that encompasses both those expressions of self chosen by the individual as well as reflections of self provided by other, third parties. The resulting Digital Personhood (DP) data is complex and for many users it is too easy to become lost in the mire of digital data. This paper stu...

Value of online Question Answering (Q&A) communities is driven by the question-answering behaviour of its members. Finding the questions that members are willing to answer is therefore vital to the efficient operation of such communities. In this paper, we aim to identify the parameters that correlate with such behaviours. We train different models...

Stories are used to provide a context for museum objects, for example linking those objects to what they depict or the historical context in which they were created. Many explicit and implicit relationships exist between the people, places and things mentioned in a story and the museum objects with which they are associated. We describe an interfac...

Drawing on 118 responses to a survey of ontology use, this paper describes the experiences of those who create and use ontologies. Responses to questions about language and tool use illustrate the dominant position of OWL and provide information about the OWL profiles and particular Description Logic features used. The paper suggests that further r...

Museum professionals create exhibitions that tell stories about museum objects. The exhibits are usually arranged to reveal the relationships between them and to highlight the story being told. But sometimes objects are in fixed places and cannot be re-positioned. This paper presents a solution to the problem of how to tell conceptually coherent st...

A central challenge for science educators is to enable young people to act as scientists by gathering and assessing evidence, conducting experiments and engaging in informed debate. We report the design of the nQuire toolkit, a system to support scripted personal inquiry learning, and a study of its use with school students aged 11-14. This differs...

This paper presents an analysis of the user interfaces of a range of algorithmic music composition software using the Cognitive Dimensions of Notations as the main analysis tool. Findings include the following: much of the reviewed software exhibits a low viscosity and requires significant user knowledge. The use of metaphor (staff notation, music...

Description Logics have been extensively studied from the viewpoint of decidability and computational tractability. Less attention has been given to their usability and the cognitive difficulties they present, in particular for those who are not specialists in logic. This paper reports on a study into the difficulties associated with the most commo...

Description Logics have been extensively studied from the viewpoint of decidability and computational tractability. Less attention has been given to their usability and the cognitive difficulties they present, in particular for those who are not specialists in logic. This paper reports on a study into the difficulties associated with the most commo...

This paper presents an analysis, using Cognitive Dimensions (Blackwell & Green, 2003), of a representative selection of user interfaces for algorithmic composition software. Cognitive Dimensions are design principles for notations, user interfaces and programming language design, or from another viewpoint 'discussion tools' for designers (Green & B...

Over the past decade a number of systems have been developed that tell museum stories by constructing digital presentations from cultural objects and their metadata. Our novel approach, informed by museum practice, is built around a formalization of stages of museum storytelling that involve: (i) the collection of events, museum objects and their a...

Despite the large number and variety of tools and services available today for exploring scholarly data, current support is still very limited in the context of sensemaking tasks, which go beyond standard search and ranking of authors and publications, and focus instead on i) understanding the dynamics of research areas, ii) relating authors 'seman...

Most Knowledge Representation (KR) research follows a topdown approach: i) formalisms are designed on the basis of modelling needs and computational considerations, and ii) tools and applications based on these formalisms are realized and tested on application domains. As a result, there has traditionally been little attention in the KR research co...

The media curation craze has spawned a multitude of new sites that help users to collect and share web content. Some market themselves as spaces to explore a common interest through different types of related media. Others are promoted as a means for creating and sharing stories, or producing personalized newspapers. Still others target the educati...

Museum narratives, like other forms of narrative, are developed from an underlying conceptualization of events that can be referred to as the story. Storyscope is a web-based environment for constructing and exploring museum narratives and their underlying concepts. Storyscope aligns with a formal model of story and narrative specialized for a muse...

The paper describes the Eurogene portal for sharing and reusing multilingual multimedia educational resources in human genetics. The content is annotated using concepts of two ontologies and a topic hierarchy. The ontology annotation is used to guide search and for calculating semantically similar content. Educational resources can be aggregated in...

We introduce, review and analyse recent research in Music and Human-Computer Interaction (HCI), also known as Music Interaction. After a general overview of the discipline, we analyse the themes and issues raised by the other 15 chapters of this book, each of which presents recent research in this field. The bulk of this chapter is organised as an...

“Music Interaction” is the term for interaction design within the domain of music. In areas such as music, the ability to engage effectively in certain activities tends to be restricted to those who have acquired detailed knowledge of domain-specific theories, terminologies, concepts or processes. It can be challenging to design or enhance user int...

This agenda-setting book presents state of the art research in Music and Human-Computer Interaction (also known as ‘Music Interaction’). Music Interaction research is at an exciting and formative stage. Topics discussed include interactive music systems, digital and virtual musical instruments, theories, methodologies and technologies for Music Int...

In a curated exhibition of a museum or art gallery, a selection of heritage objects and associated information is presented to a visitor for the purpose of telling a story about them. The same underlying story can be presented in a number of different ways. This paper describes techniques for creating multiple alternative narrative structures from...

This paper describes an approach for supporting inquiry learning from source materials, realised and tested through a tool-kit. The approach is optimised for tasks that require a student to make interpretations across sets of resources, where opinions and justifications may be hard to articulate. We adopt a dialogue-based approach to learning where...

This paper proposes curation as an inquiry method for young learners who are learning history using web-based heritage resources and other online content. It introduces the QrAte tool, similar to many online social curation tools, but with added functionality for creating and supporting historical inquiry tasks. QrAte assists a learner in identifyi...

The process of emplotment refers to the selection of significant events in a story and the identification of pertinent relations between them, in order to produce a plot providing an interpretation of those events. We are investigating how models of emplotment can be applied to develop web-based tools for creating and interpreting narratives. In pa...

Existing metadata schemes and content management systems used by museums focus on describing the heritage objects that the museum holds in its collection. These are used to manage and describe individual heritage objects according to properties such as artist, date and preservation requirements. Curatorial narratives, such as physical or online exh...

This paper describes the development of nQuire, a software application to guide personal inquiry learning. nQuire provides teacher support for authoring, orchestrating, and monitoring inquiries as well as student support for carrying out, configuring, and reviewing inquiries. nQuire allows inquiries to be scripted and configured in various ways, so...

The complex and multidimensional nature of musical timbre is a problem for the design of intuitive interfaces for sound synthesis. A useful approach to the manipulation of timbre involves the creation and subsequent navigation or search of n-dimensional coordinate spaces or timbre spaces. A novel timbre space search strategy is proposed, based on w...

Observational studies in the literature have highlighted low levels of user satisfaction in relation to the support for ontology visualization and exploration provided by current ontology engineering tools. These issues are particularly problematic for non-expert users, who rely on effective tool support to abstract from representational details an...

Student engagement in the design and implementation of inquiries is an effective way for them to learn about the inquiry process and the domain being studied. However, inquiry learning in geography can be challenging for teachers and students due to the complexity of scientific inquiry and the diversity of pupils' and teachers' knowledge and abilit...

This paper presents the design and results of a task-based user study, based on Information Foraging Theory, on a novel user interaction framework - uInteract - for content-based image retrieval (CBIR). The framework includes a four-factor user interaction model and an interactive interface. The user study involves three focused evaluations, 12 sim...

We describe nQuire, a constraint-based learning toolkit to support a continuity of inquiry based learning between classroom and non-formal settings. The paper proposes design requirements for personal inquiry learning environments that support learning of personally meaningful science topics with development of metacognitive understanding and self-...

The Personal Inquiry project is an investigation into the role that technologies can play in enabling effective inquiry. While it is generally agreed that inquiry-based learning has potential for student learning, especially in science, three main challenges remain. The first is to provide effective support for inquiry learning, for both students a...

Whole Body Interaction appears to be a good fit of interaction style for some categories of application domain, such as the motion capture of gestures for computer games and virtual physical sports. However, the suitability of whole body interaction for more abstract application domains is less apparent, and the creation of appropriate whole body i...