Sonsoles López-Pernas

University of Eastern Finland | UEF · School of Computing

In addition to being a well-liked form of recreation, escape rooms have drawn the attention of educators due to their ability to foster teamwork, leadership, creative thinking and communication in a way that is engaging for students. As a consequence, educational escape rooms are emerging as a new type of learning activity under the promise of enha...

A pesar de los esfuerzos realizados, aún existe una alarmante diferencia entre la competencia digital que tienen los profesores y la que deberían tener para desarrollar la competencia digital en sus alumnos. De especial preocupación es la carencia de formación del profesorado en uso seguro y responsable de las TIC. Los cursos en línea con formato M...

In recent years, educational escape rooms have started to gain momentum in the academic community. Prior research has reported on the use of educational escape rooms in several fields. However, earlier works have failed to assess the impact of this sort of activities for teaching programming in terms of learning effectiveness. This work fills the e...

Educational escape rooms are emerging as a new type of learning activity with the potential to enhance students’ learning through highly engaging experiences. However, conducting educational escape rooms effectively is very complex and there are no software tools available for this purpose. This lack of support is hindering the widespread use and a...

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...

Learning strategies are important catalysts of students' learning. Research has shown that students with effective learning strategies are more likely to have better academic achievement. This study aimed to investigate students' adoption of learning strategies in different course implementations, the transfer of learning strategies between courses...

Previous research on player profiles or types is based on players' in-game behaviors and their motivations to play games. However, there are many other activities related to digital games beyond playing the games properly. Using learning analytics methods, the study investigates the prevalence and interconnections between these different metagame a...

Heterogeneity has been a hot topic in recent educational literature. Several calls have been voiced to adopt methods that capture different patterns or subgroups within students behavior or functioning. Assuming that there is an average pattern that represents the entirety of student populations requires the measured construct to have the same caus...

Understanding how students progress in their learning is an important step towards achieving the success of the educational process. One way of understanding student progress is by using learning analytics methods on different student data. The ILEDA project aims to improve online and blended learning by using educational data analytics. For this p...

This preface discusses the potential of virtual labs (VLs) as a flexible and immersive alternative to traditional physical labs in light of Technology-Enhanced Learning in Laboratories workshop (TELL 2023), which features seven papers showing various methodologies and perspectives on using VLs. The papers cover topics such as VLs in biomedicine, st...

Teamwork skills are important to practice during higher educational studies to prepare students for the future working life. Since online learning has established itself as a relevant part of higher education, we present here an approach to online team-based learning and show the performance of students during the teamwork, proven by learning analy...

Online and blended learning are teaching modalities that have become very popular and widespread all over the world. Applying these modalities requires specific knowledge as well as an appropriate technological infrastructure. The COVID-19 pandemic caused an important online migration in most educational institutions. In this regard, existing liter...

Research in learning analytics needs longitudinal studies that explore the learner’s behaviour, disposition, and learning practices across time, a gap this article aims to bridge. We present VaSSTra: an innovative method for the longitudinal analysis of educational data that can be applied at different time scales (e.g., days, weeks, or courses), a...

The roots of LA research lay in the traditions of educational data mining, where complex statisticalmethods and algorithms are used to make massive amounts of student data comprehensible and usefulfor learning support. By virtue of these traditions, LA research can also be seen as having strong rootsin the field of computer science, while the role...

The aim of this study is to analyze which factors from students' admission data can predict dropout in initial vocational education and training (VET) in Finland. The sample included 15,523 students in different fields of VET that started an initial VET between 2014 and 2021 in a large-size vocational school in Finland. The results of fitting a log...

The relation between learning strategies and academic achievement has been proven to be strong in multiple studies. Still, the connection between micro-level SRL processes and the academic achievement of business students in learning project management remains unstudied. The current study aims to find how sequence mining can identify students using...

The field of learning analytics emerged in the last decade to take advantage of the increasing availability of data about learners that digital systems generate. Existing research in learning analytics has focused on higher education, as this context often relies heavily on digital platforms such as online learning management systems, making data c...

Educational escape rooms are team-based learning activities in which students solve puzzles related to a certain subject to accomplish a final goal (usually escaping from a room) [1]. These activities have proven capable of increasing students' knowledge in a variety of subjects and contexts while improving motivation and engagement. A key characte...

This case study explored the applicability of sequence mining and process mining methods on qualitative video data of a group-based problem-solving situation. For the case study, audio and video data were collected from a pilot experience of an educational escape room, which was designed to practice the application of computational thinking (CT) sk...

Self-efficacy, self-directedness, self-regulation, autonomy, and self-control-inter alia-have all been around for decades. While such concepts may differ, they share a quintessential element which is the "self" component. As we currently stand, we are not short of theories around the importance of the "self" or the student who has become the center...

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...

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...

One of the most researched domains of computing education research (CER) that attracts attention is computing education in schools, starting from pre-primary level up to upper secondary level (K-12). A high number of initiatives and related research contributions have appeared over half a century of computing history in schools. This chapter presen...

There is a paucity of longitudinal studies in online learning across courses or throughout programs. Our study intends to add to this emerging body of research by analyzing the longitudinal trajectories of interaction between student engagement and achievement over a full four-year program. We use learning analytics and life-course methods to study...

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...

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...

Computing Education Research (CER), like any other discipline of science, is fundamentally driven by people and their networks of collaboration. Previous research has analysed authorship patterns and collaboration in distinct well known dissemination outlets of CER. In this chapter, we add to that approach by analysing a comprehensive set of metada...

Scientometric analyses of publication data from all major computing education research (CER) outlets show that many countries and whole continents are greatly underrepresented on the global map of contributions to CER. For example, only a minor portion of CER has originated from countries in the Global South (GS) or has addressed challenges of comp...

Despite being a small country, Finland has been highly visible in international Computing Education Research (CER). This is demonstrated by the presence of several important research groups, dozens of graduated PhD students in CER during the last 20 years, and the success of the Koli Calling International Conference of CER, which has been running f...

A fundamental part of science is dissemination. Previous research has analysed dissemination practices in few of the central publication outlets. In this chapter, we add into that research by analysing dissemination practices of CER in a range of 1523 journals and conference series that are (a) exclusively dedicated to CER, and (b) in outlets that...

This chapter is an introduction to the book “Past, Present and Future of Computing Education Research: A Global Perspective.” This book uses a mixture of scientometrics, meta-research and case studies to offer a new view about the evolution and current state of computing education research (CER) as a field of science. In its 21 chapters, this book...

A combined body of reviews, meta-research and other analyses demonstrates the evolution of computing education research (CER) through the decades with experience reports evolving to empirical research, increased attention paid to educational research, methods and reporting rigor. Previous analyses of CER publications show the sustained focus of CER...

ACM’s Special Interest Group on Computer Science Education’s (SIGCSE) Technical Symposium is considered by many to be ACM’s flagship conference for computing educators. SIGCSE Technical Symposium has been held annually since 1970 as an in-person conference, with the exception of 2020, when it was cancelled (with some papers presented in 2021). The...

Training software professionals is essential to meet the high demands of today's job market. MOOCs constitute a promising way to scale up such training, as they enable the participation of a massive number of learners. However, a major challenge that software engineering MOOCs face is the provision of formative assessment through continuous feedbac...

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...

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...

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...

Educational Data Virtual Lab is an open-source platform for data exploration and analysis that combines the power of a coding environment, the convenience of an interactive visualization engine and the infrastructure needed to handle the complete data lifecycle. Based on the building blocks of the FIWARE European platform and Apache Zeppelin, this...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

Escape rooms have recently made their way into education, as they offer an engaging method to learn collaboration and problem-solving skills and practice creative thinking in a gameful way. One of escape rooms’ key characteristics is that they are time-constrained. As such, it is of crucial importance that learners use their time wisely, so they ca...

In recent years, many proposals of context-aware systems applied to IoT-based smart environments have been presented in the literature. Most previous works provide a generic high-level structure of how a context-aware system can be operationalized, but do not offer clues on how to implement it. On the other hand, there are many implementations of c...