Thomas Hughes-RobertsUniversity of Derby · Department of Technology
Thomas Hughes-Roberts
About
25
Publications
2,960
Reads
How we measure 'reads'
A 'read' is counted each time someone views a publication summary (such as the title, abstract, and list of authors), clicks on a figure, or views or downloads the full-text. Learn more
139
Citations
Introduction
Skills and Expertise
Publications
Publications (25)
Virtual Reality has often been described as providing a means to “walk a mile in another’s shoes” offering powerful interventions for experiential learning. Such experiences can, for example, provide a safe and controlled means of engaging with often difficult, unsafe or emotionally charged situations. Crucial to this experience is the sense of pre...
Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) is a growing concern worldwide. To date there are no drugs that can treat ASD, hence the treatments that can be administered are mainly supportive in nature and aim to reduce, as much as possible, the symptoms induced by the disorder. However, diagnosis and related treatments in terms of improving communication, socia...
Learners with Autism Spectrum Condition (ASC) are often characterized as having deficits in core social competencies affecting ability to communicate and interact with other people across multiple contexts. However, such deficit views of ASC lead to narrow interventions that cannot be generalized to wider learning contexts nor the real world. Takin...
Visual programming tools allow users to create interactive media projects such as games and animations using visual representations of programming concepts. Although these tools have been shown to have huge potential for teaching children, research has shown that they may not be accessible for children with cognitive impairments, including those wi...
Digital game making is becoming an increasingly common means of learning in schools due to the appeal of delivering curriculum-based learning objectives while tapping into the popularity of videogames. Indeed, research suggests that digital game making may improve cognitive and behavioral skills in learners and this may have significant impact on l...
Visual Programming Tools (VPTs) allow users to create interactive media projects such as games and animations using visual representations of programming concepts. Although VPTs have been shown to have huge potential for teaching children with cognitive impairments including those with Autism Spectrum Condition (ASC), research has shown that existi...
Purpose
Personae are simple tools for describing users, their characteristics and their goals. They are valuable tools when designing for a specific group of users, such as children with autism spectrum condition (ASC). The purpose of this paper is to propose, validate and revise a methodology for creating accurate, data grounded personae for chil...
Arabic is a highly inflected language with a complex morphological structure compared to English, which makes the development of stemming mechanisms difficult. Stemming is even more challenging for dialectal Arabic, as it does not follow standard Arabic grammar rules for term conflation and attaching affixes to words. In this paper, we propose a ne...
Research suggests that robotics can provide an engaging learning experience for learners with special educational needs. However, further work is required to explore the impact of robots within the classroom, particularly for learners with intellectual disabilities (ID). This paper seeks to further explore the potential effects of robots on such le...
Designing and developing accessible educative and entertaining technologies for children with Autism Spectrum Condition is no easy task due to their diverse needs and capabilities. In theory, accessibility can be achieved by personalising technologies based on the unique capabilities and needs of each individual. However, that requires knowledge of...
Research on the use of interactive media as learning tools for children with cognitive impairments has focused mainly on employing predesigned content, rather than constructing new content. Visual programming tools could potentially provide cognitively impaired children with a platform that can enable them to create their own interactive media. How...
This paper will present initial findings from the second phase of a Horizon 2020 funded project, Managing Affective-learning Through Intelligent Atoms and Smart Interactions (MaTHiSiS). The project focusses on the use of different multi-modalities used as part of the project in classrooms across Europe. The MaTHiSiS learning vision is to develop an...
There has been an enormous increase in the volume of Arabic posts on many social networks, providing a rich source of opinions on a variety of topics. Opinion mining has attracted much research interest in the last decade, but has mostly been conducted using the English language. Opinion mining from Arabic social media is lagging behind, primarily...
Computer games as part of education is a well-established topic for research, suggesting that creating games is linked to a range of cognitive and behavioural outcomes. Creating games in all subject disciplines is becoming increasingly possible due to the increasingly higher status of computing in schools across Europe and the prevalence of visual...
Purpose
– The purpose of this paper is to report on results of an investigation into the impact of adding privacy salient information (defined through the theory of planned behaviour) into the user interface (UI) of a faux social network.
Design/methodology/approach
– Participants were asked to create their profiles on a new social network specifi...
Research suggests that robots can provide an engaging learning experience, particularly for students with special education needs (SEN). However, few studies have sought to examine how such technology could be implemented within current teaching practices and curriculum. This paper seeks to explore how SEN teachers currently approach their teaching...
The use of smartphones and tablet devices has grown rapidly over recent years and the widespread availability of software, often from unknown developers, has led to security and privacy concerns. In order to prevent security compromises, these devices use access control as a means by which a user is able to specify an application’s ability to inter...
Privacy is a well-documented issued for users of social networks were observable behaviour does not appear to match stated levels of concern. Given that the User Interface (UI) is the environment with which users react to, it would appear to be ideally placed to address the potential causes of poor privacy. This paper looks at the use of the Theory...
Post-incident analysis of a security event is a complex task due to the volume of data that must be assessed, often within tight temporal constraints. System software, such as operating systems and applications, provide a range of opportunities to record data in log files about interactions with the computer that may provide evidence during an inve...
The problem of privacy in social networks is well documented within literature; users have privacy
concerns however, they consistently disclose their sensitive information and leave it open to
unintended third parties. While numerous causes of poor behaviour have been suggested by research
the role of the User Interface (UI) and the system itself i...
End-user privacy is a well-defined problem in Social Networks such as Facebook. Users have stated concern for their privacy yet display behaviour to the contrary within the system, a phenomenon known as the privacy paradox. There is an assumption that high levels of concern for one's privacy should lead to a reluctance to disclose information and t...
Projects
Project (1)
The ‘No One Left Behind” project, co-funded by the EU Horizon 2020 Framework Programme, will allow children to use a non-leisure gaming ‘tool-kit’ to develop digital games on mobile devices – with the aim of enhancing their abilities across all academic subjects, as well as their logical reasoning, creativity and social skills.
This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 645215
