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publications
Diplek: an Open Educational Platform that Supports the Composition of Learning, Management and Communication Services
Published in Technological Developments in Education and Automation, 2010
This paper presents Diplek, a Learning Management System (LMS) that addresses the needs of novice users, educators and students. The development of Diplek is based on a service oriented architecture. Among the many services offered by the platform, one can distinguish the innovative Video recording service and the Course creation service that enable instructors to import any type of Learning Object and associate it with metadata. Diplek offers a friendly user interface with dialogs and wizards that help users deal with difficult and time consuming tasks. The platforms architecture (not web-based) enables it to be deployed in both internet and internet-less communities.
Cite this work: Christos Rodosthenous, Achilleas Kameas, Panagiotis Pintelas, "Diplek: an Open Educational Platform that Supports the Composition of Learning, Management and Communication Services." Technological Developments in Education and Automation, 2010.
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Diplek: An Open LMS that Supports Fast Composition of Educational Services
Published in E-Infrastructures and Technologies for Lifelong Learning: Next Generation Environments, 2011
Modern ICT has evolved through the years and is now in position of delivering educational content to specific target groups in remote locations. Advanced e-learning techniques are now used not only for delivering content to high school and university students, but can be used in lifelong training programs. Due to the target group most of these programs have (i.e. professionals with little time to spend, people of a certain age with reduced ICT skills, etc.), it is vital that organizations choose wisely among the many Learning Management Systems currently available. The purpose of this chapter is to describe and examine the features of such a platform. DIPLEK is a platform developed using service oriented architecture to enable easy access to educational content and activities for novice learners and instructors. textcopyright 2011, IGI Global.
Cite this work: Christos Rodosthenous, Achilleas Kameas, Panagiotis Pintelas, "Diplek: An Open LMS that Supports Fast Composition of Educational Services." E-Infrastructures and Technologies for Lifelong Learning: Next Generation Environments, 2011.
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Gathering Background Knowledge for Story Understanding Through Crowdsourcing
Published in Proceedings of the 5th Workshop on Computational Models of Narrative (CMN 2014), 2014
Successfully comprehending stories involves integration of the story information with the reader's own background knowledge. A prerequisite, then, of building automated story understanding systems is the availability of such background knowledge. We take the approach that knowledge appropriate for story understanding can be gathered by sourcing the task to the crowd. Our methodology centers on breaking this task into a sequence of more specific tasks, so that human participants not only identify relevant knowledge, but also convert it into a machine-readable form, generalize it, and evaluate its appropriateness. These individual tasks are presented to human participants as missions in an online game, offering them, in this manner, an incentive for their participation. We report on an initial deployment of the game, and discuss our ongoing work for integrating the knowledge gathering task into a full-fledged story understanding engine
Cite this work: Christos Rodosthenous, Loizos Michael, "Gathering Background Knowledge for Story Understanding Through Crowdsourcing." Proceedings of the 5th Workshop on Computational Models of Narrative (CMN 2014), 2014.
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Deploying New Services in the Open University of Cyprus eLearning Platform – Our Experiences
Published in Proceedings of the 9th International Technology, Education and Development Conference (INTED 2015), 2015
The eClass eLearning Platform (eClass) is the main educational tool of the Open University of Cyprus (OUC), used for facilitating online teaching and learning. Selecting and deploying the best alternative among different candidate services is a major challenge that requires in depth knowledge of the educational process, educators and students needs and all the available solutions. The outcome of this procedure is the introduction of a service that is integrated into eClass. The scope of this paper is to describe and elaborate on the procedure used for the selection and deployment of new services in eClass. Authors provide a description of eClass followed by an analysis of the procedure used to introduce a new service. Next, we report on the deployment phases and challenges faced during each step. Specific project implementations are presented for demonstrating the eClass components. We conclude by presenting the results of a user satisfaction survey of the deployed services.
Cite this work: Petros Christoforou, Christos Rodosthenous, Michalis Epiphaniou, Stathis Mavrotheris, Christopher Christodoulides, "Deploying New Services in the Open University of Cyprus eLearning Platform – Our Experiences." Proceedings of the 9th International Technology, Education and Development Conference (INTED 2015), 2015.
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Engaging Users in Distance Education – The case of the Open University of Cyprus
Published in Proceedings of the 9th International Technology, Education and Development Conference (INTED 2015), 2015
The evolution of technology during the last decades gave a new impetus to education. Distance Education started to grow to something noticeable, but it was the Internet in the mid-1990s that broadened Distance Education’s horizons. Academic institutions transformed their programs to match the demands of the new global economy of lifelong learning for adult learners. The Open University of Cyprus (OUC), established in 2002, is a public University dedicated to Distance Education, offering accredited distance learning degrees at all levels (undergraduate, master and doctoral). In this paper, we focus on the methods and technologies OUC is using for engaging its students and tutors in Distance Education. Authors present their personal experiences, aiming to help other professionals involved in the development and support of Distance Education tools and technologies. First, a short introduction and history of OUC is presented to the reader followed by a description of the educational methodology used. Next, we provide a detailed description of the tools used for synchronous and asynchronous learning, delivery of educational material, lecture capture and student assessment. Then, we present the methodology, the tools and the support we provide to the users for increasing their engagement in Distance Education. We conclude with a case study for asynchronous services deployed at the OUC followed by usage statistics.
Cite this work: Michalis Epiphaniou, Christos Rodosthenous, Petros Christoforou, Stathis Mavrotheris, Christopher Christodoulides, "Engaging Users in Distance Education – The case of the Open University of Cyprus." Proceedings of the 9th International Technology, Education and Development Conference (INTED 2015), 2015.
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Plagiarism Detection and Prevention – Experiences From the Open University of Cyprus
Published in Proceedings of the 7th International Conference on Education and New Learning Technologies (EDULEARN 2015), 2015
The introduction of eLearning led to a number of advancements in student assessment and evaluation. Conventional methods of assignment submission, evaluation and feedback were substituted by online workflows and were enhanced with plagiarism detection tools to assist tutors in evaluating large numbers of assignments. The increasing number of eLearning students along with the huge amount of freely accessible information on the Internet, require tools and services for tutors, to assist the grading of student assignments and check the originality of their work. In this paper, we present the methodology used for introducing and delivering a plagiarism detection service in the Open University of Cyprus eLearning platform and integrating it with the assignment submission process. Additionally, we describe the challenges faced during and after the implementation and the actions taken to train tutors in using the service in a proper way. We conclude by presenting an evaluation of the service, both for its educational and technical soundness, along with statistics of its usage during the last four years.
Cite this work: Christos Rodosthenous, Petros Christoforou, Michalis Epiphaniou, Georgia Matheou, Stathis Mavrotheris, Christopher Christodoulides, "Plagiarism Detection and Prevention – Experiences From the Open University of Cyprus." Proceedings of the 7th International Conference on Education and New Learning Technologies (EDULEARN 2015), 2015.
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A Hybrid Approach to Commonsense Knowledge Acquisition [Best Presentation Award]
Published in Proceedings of the 8th European Starting AI Researcher Symposium, 2016
This work presents a knowledge acquisition platform and a certain game developed on that platform for endowing machines with common sense, by following a hybrid approach that combines crowdsourcing techniques, knowledge engineering, and automated reasoning. Short narratives are presented to players, who are asked to combine fragments of text into rules that would correctly answer a given question, to evaluate the appropriateness of gathered rules, and to resolve conflicts between them by assigning priorities. The text fragments that are used are a priori translated by a knowledge engineer into a machine-readable predicate form. Players are rewarded based not only on their inter-agreement (as in most games with a purpose) but also based on the objective ability of the rules to answer questions correctly, as determined by an underlying reasoning engine. Beyond discussing the knowledge acquisition platform and the game design, we analyze the common sense that has been gathered during the deployment of the game over a five-month period and we use the acquired knowledge to answer questions on unknown stories.
Cite this work: Christos Rodosthenous, Loizos Michael, "A Hybrid Approach to Commonsense Knowledge Acquisition [Best Presentation Award]." Proceedings of the 8th European Starting AI Researcher Symposium, 2016.
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Building an Infrastructure for Empowering Distance Education in the Open University of Cyprus
Published in Proceedings of the Online, Open and Flexible Higher Education Conference (OOFHEC2016), 2016
Universities worldwide offer distance education courses through a number of channels. There is a plethora of courses offered either as part of official Programs of Study that lead to a degree or even as Vocational Training Programs or as MOOCS. The Open University of Cyprus (OUC) is the only higher education organization in Cyprus dedicated to distance education using an innovative eLearning Platform named eClass. The eClass eLearning Platform is the main educational medium of the Open University of Cyprus that hosts a number of services, courses, educational content and activities. The scope of this paper is to describe the eLearning Platform and the offered services that are integrated under its umbrella, like the Video Lecture and Streaming service, the Synchronous Learning service and the Plagiarism Detection service. Moreover, this paper presents an overview of how this platform is integrated to the University’s infrastructure for user creation and management, student enrolments and library services. We conclude by presenting metrics of the eLearning Platform usage.
Cite this work: Christos Rodosthenous, Petros Christoforou, Michalis Epiphaniou, Georgia Matheou, Stathis Mavrotheris, Christopher Christodoulides, "Building an Infrastructure for Empowering Distance Education in the Open University of Cyprus." Proceedings of the Online, Open and Flexible Higher Education Conference (OOFHEC2016), 2016.
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Developing An Academic Institutional Repository. The Case Of The Open University Of Cyprus
Published in Proceedings of the 8th International Conference on Education and New Learning Technologies (EDULEARN 2016), 2016
The amount of digital content produced nowadays, is enormous. Academic institutions produce and make available a plethora of digital objects like research articles, thesis, dissertations, reports, audiovisual collections and many others. In addition, academic libraries digitize materials to create collections of historical, political or scientific significance and are responsible for keeping, preserving, archiving and publishing the content produced by their students and academic personnel. Aiming in that direction, the Open University of Cyprus, an institution responsible for delivering distance learning at the Republic of Cyprus, designed and deployed “Kypseli” Institutional repository. In this work, the authors depict the methodology and tools used for building an academic Institutional repository using opensource tools at the Open University of Cyprus. Moreover, the procedures used for publishing content and the integration of the repository to the rest of the University’s infrastructure are analyzed, along with the challenges faced during the implementation and deployment phase.In addition, a number of metrics are presented, accompanied by statistics of usage.
Cite this work: Christos Rodosthenous, Panagiotis Themistocleous, Stathis Mavrotheris, Christopher Christodoulides, "Developing An Academic Institutional Repository. The Case Of The Open University Of Cyprus." Proceedings of the 8th International Conference on Education and New Learning Technologies (EDULEARN 2016), 2016.
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Library's Knowledge Resources for Students and Teaching Staff in Digital Universities from EADTU
Published in Proceedings of the Online, Open and Flexible Higher Education Conference (OOFHEC 2016), 2016
Arising from work on a Vision and Strategy Appraisal of the UKOU Library Services, and with facilitation from EADTU, a comparative study was done of four distance teaching university library services functions in terms of support to students and teaching staff: FernUniversität; Open Universiteit Nederland (library services supplied by Maastricht University); Universitat Oberta de Catalunya; and Athabasca University. All participants agreed to share conclusions with each other, with the UK Open University, and with other members of EADTU. The workshop presented at OOFHEC 2016 will begin with brief presentations on the comparative study process and overall conclusions. Other members of the Working Group who took part will give brief highlights of their institutional summary reports. The majority of time at the workshop will be used for small-group working. Precise topics will depend on delegate types and numbers but the following are likely to be of interest: 1. Extending the comparative study to other institutions active in distance and blended learning, 2. Integrating such studies with existing national/international review, schemes for libraries, and how to update such schemes to cater for “digital libraries”, 3. How to ensure that that the library contributes to good results in benchmarking/review schemes at institution level, in particular E-xcellence and OpenUpEd.
Cite this work: Gema Santos-hermosa, Paul Basich, Christos Rodosthenous, Evagelia Lappa, Marlies Bitter-Rijpkema, Fred Truyen, "Library's Knowledge Resources for Students and Teaching Staff in Digital Universities from EADTU." Proceedings of the Online, Open and Flexible Higher Education Conference (OOFHEC 2016), 2016.
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Inferring the Geographic Focus of Stories Using Crowdsourced Knowledge Bases
Published in Cognition and Artificial Intelligence for Human-Centred Design (CAID2017), 2017
We consider the problem of identifying the geographic focus of a story and more specifically a news story. Most of the times, we do not expect the story to explicitly mention the target region, making our problem one of inference or prediction, rather than one of identification. Further, we seek to tackle the problem without appealing to specialized geographic information resources like gazetteers or atlases, but employ only general-purpose crowdsourced knowledge bases and ontologies like ConceptNet and YAGO and techniques that are cognitively compatible with human reasoning. In particular, we propose certain natural strategies towards addressing the problem, and show that the GeoMantis system that implements these strategies outperforms an existing state-of-the-art system, when compared on stories whose target region (country, in particular) is not explicitly mentioned or is obscured. Our results give evidence that using general-purpose crowdsourced knowledge bases and ontologies can, in certain cases, outperform even specialized tools.
Cite this work: Christos Rodosthenous, Loizos Michael, "Inferring the Geographic Focus of Stories Using Crowdsourced Knowledge Bases." Cognition and Artificial Intelligence for Human-Centred Design (CAID2017), 2017.
The 7 Steps to Support Teaching, Learning and Research From Digital Libraries
Published in The Envisioning Report for Empowering Universities, 2017
Libraries are well-positioned in order to work in cross-disciplinary teams in teaching and learning as well as in research landscape. The new trends and significant challenges in education and the important developments in technology are drivers for developing and changing libraries. For instance, among others, the economic and political pressures, the evolving nature of the scholarly record and the research data management are examples of areas that are affected by this change. The seven steps described in the following pages were selected by the authors after a thorough bibliography review, the application of previous professional knowledge and experience within the field of libraries and further discussion of the topic. These steps are intended to be a roadmap to accelerate the transformation of digital libraries aiming to support teaching, learning and research.
Cite this work: Gema Santos-hermosa, Christos Rodosthenous, "The 7 Steps to Support Teaching, Learning and Research From Digital Libraries." The Envisioning Report for Empowering Universities, 2017.
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Web-STAR : Towards a Visual Web-Based IDE for a Story Comprehension System
Published in 2nd International Workshop on User-Oriented Logic Paradigms (IULP2017), 2017
In this work, we present Web-STAR, an online platform for story understanding built on top of the STAR (STory comprehension through ARgumentation) reasoning engine. This platform includes a web-based IDE, integration with the STAR system and a web service infrastructure to support integration with other systems that rely on story understanding functionality to complete their tasks. The platform also delivers a number of "social" features like public story sharing with a built-in commenting system, a public repository for sharing stories with the community and collaboration tools that can be used from both project team members for development and educators for teaching. Moreover, we discuss the ongoing work on adding new features and functionality to this platform.
Cite this work: Christos Rodosthenous, Loizos Michael, "Web-STAR : Towards a Visual Web-Based IDE for a Story Comprehension System." 2nd International Workshop on User-Oriented Logic Paradigms (IULP2017), 2017.
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GeoMantis: Inferring the Geographic Focus of Text using Knowledge Bases
Published in Proceedings of the 10th International Conference on Agents and Artificial Intelligence (ICAART 2018), 2018
We consider the problem of identifying the geographic focus of a document. Unlike some previous work on this problem, we do not expect the document to explicitly mention the target region, making our problem one of inference or prediction, rather than one of identification. Further, we seek to tackle the problem without appealing to specialized geographic information resources like gazetteers or atlases, but employ general-purpose knowledge bases and ontologies like ConceptNet and YAGO. We propose certain natural strategies towards addressing the problem, and show that the GeoMantis system that implements these strategies outperforms an existing state-of-the-art system, when compared on documents whose target region (country, in particular) is not explicitly mentioned or is obscured. Our results give evidence that using general-purpose knowledge bases and ontologies can, in certain cases, outperform even specialized tools.
Cite this work: Christos Rodosthenous, Loizos Michael, "GeoMantis: Inferring the Geographic Focus of Text using Knowledge Bases." Proceedings of the 10th International Conference on Agents and Artificial Intelligence (ICAART 2018), 2018.
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SUSTAIN-ALL Language Learning
Published in Proceedings of the 12th Israel Association for Information Systems (ILAIS) Conference, 2018
Cite this work: Rina Zviel-Girshin, Christos Rodosthenous, Nathan Rosenberg, "SUSTAIN-ALL Language Learning." Proceedings of the 12th Israel Association for Information Systems (ILAIS) Conference, 2018.
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A Platform for Commonsense Knowledge Acquisition Using Crowdsourcing
Published in Proceedings of the enetCollect WG3 & WG5 Meeting 2018, 2019
In this article, we present our work on developing and using a crowdsourcing platform for acquiring commonsense knowledge aiming to create machines that are able to understand stories. More specifically, we present a platform that has been used in the development of a crowdsourcing application and two Games With A Purpose. The platform’s specifications and features are presented along with examples of applying them in developing the aforementioned applications. The article concludes with pointers on how the crowdsourcing platform can be utilized for language learning, referencing relevant work on developing a prototype application for a vocabulary trainer.
Cite this work: Christos Rodosthenous, Loizos Michael, "A Platform for Commonsense Knowledge Acquisition Using Crowdsourcing." Proceedings of the enetCollect WG3 & WG5 Meeting 2018, 2019.
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Designing a Prototype Architecture for Crowdsourcing Language Resources
Published in Proceedings of the Poster Session of the 2nd Conference on Language, Data and Knowledge (LDK 2019), 2019
We present an architecture for crowdsourcing language resources from language learners and a prototype implementation of it as a vocabulary trainer. The vocabulary trainer relies on lexical resources from the ConceptNet semantic network to generate exercises while using the learners' answers to improve the resources used for the exercise generation.
Cite this work: Christos Rodosthenous, Verena Lyding, Alexander {König}, Jolita Horbacauskiene, Anisia Katinskaia, Umair Hassan, Nicos Isaak, Federico Sangati, Lionel Nicolas, "Designing a Prototype Architecture for Crowdsourcing Language Resources." Proceedings of the Poster Session of the 2nd Conference on Language, Data and Knowledge (LDK 2019), 2019.
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Using Generic Ontologies to Infer the Geographic Focus of Text
Published in Agents and Artificial Intelligence, 2019
Certain documents are naturally associated with a country as their geographic focus. Some past work has sought to develop systems that identify this focus, under the assumption that the target country is explicitly mentioned in the document. When this assumption is not met, the task becomes one of inferring the focus based on the available context provided by the document. Although some existing work has considered this variant of the task, that work typically relies on the use of specialized geographic resources. In this work we seek to demonstrate that this inference task can be tackled by using generic ontologies, like ConceptNet and YAGO, that have been developed independently of the particular task. We describe GeoMantis, our developed system for inferring the geographic focus of a document, and we undertake a comparative evaluation against two freely-available open-source systems. Our results show that GeoMantis performs better than these two systems when the comparison is made on news stories whose target country is either not explicitly mentioned, or has been artificially obscured, in the story text.
Cite this work: Christos Rodosthenous, Loizos Michael, "Using Generic Ontologies to Infer the Geographic Focus of Text." Agents and Artificial Intelligence, 2019.
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Web-STAR: A Visual Web-Based IDE for a Story Comprehension System
Published in Theory and Practice of Logic Programming, 2019
We present Web-STAR, an online platform for story understanding built on top of the STAR reasoning engine for STory comprehension through ARgumentation. The platform includes a web-based IDE, integration with the STAR system, and a web service infrastructure to support integration with other systems that rely on story understanding functionality to complete their tasks. The platform also delivers a number of "social" features, including a community repository for public story sharing with a built-in commenting system, and tools for collaborative story editing that can be used for team development projects and for educational purposes.
Cite this work: Christos Rodosthenous, Loizos Michael, "Web-STAR: A Visual Web-Based IDE for a Story Comprehension System." Theory and Practice of Logic Programming, 2019.
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v-trel: Vocabulary Trainer for Tracing Word Relations - An Implicit Crowdsourcing Approach
Published in Proceedings of the International Conference Recent Advances in Natural Language Processing (RANLP 2019), 2019
In this paper, we present our work on developing a vocabulary trainer that uses exercises generated from language resources such as ConceptNet and crowdsources the responses of the learners to enrich the language resource. We performed an empirical evaluation of our approach with 60 non-native speakers over two days, which shows that new entries to expand ConceptNet can efficiently be gathered through vocabulary exercises on word relations. We also report on the feedback gathered from the users and an expert from language teaching, and discuss the potential of the vocabulary trainer application from the user and language learner perspective. The feedback suggests that v-trel has educational potential, while in its current state some shortcomings could be identified.
Cite this work: Verena Lyding, Christos Rodosthenous, Federico Sangati, Umair Hassan, Lionel Nicolas, Alexander König, Jolita Horbacauskiene, Anisia Katinskaia, "v-trel: Vocabulary Trainer for Tracing Word Relations - An Implicit Crowdsourcing Approach." Proceedings of the International Conference Recent Advances in Natural Language Processing (RANLP 2019), 2019.
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Creating Expert Knowledge by Relying on Language Learners: a Generic Approach for Mass-Producing Language Resources by Combining Implicit Crowdsourcing and Language Learning
Published in Proceedings of The 12th Language Resources and Evaluation Conference, 2020
We introduce in this paper a generic approach to combine implicit crowdsourcing and language learning in order to mass-produce language resources (LRs) for any language for which a crowd of language learners can be involved. We present the approach by explaining its core paradigm that consists in pairing specific types of LRs with specific exercises, by detailing both its strengths and challenges, and by discussing how much these challenges have been addressed at present. Accordingly, we also report on on-going proof-of-concept efforts aiming at developing the first prototypical implementation of the approach in order to correct and extend an LR called ConceptNet based on the input crowdsourced from language learners. We then present an international network called the European Network for Combining Language Learning with Crowdsourcing Techniques (enetCollect) that provides the context to accelerate the implementation of this generic approach. Finally, we exemplify how it can be used in several language learning scenarios to produce a multitude of NLP resources and how it can therefore alleviate the long-standing NLP issue of the lack of LRs.
Cite this work: Lionel Nicolas, Verena Lyding, Claudia Borg, Corina Forascu, Karën Fort, Katerina Zdravkova, Iztok Kosem, Jaka Čibej, Špela Holdt, Alice Millour, Alexander König, Christos Rodosthenous, Federico Sangati, Umair Hassan, Anisia Katinskaia, Anabela Barreiro, Lavinia Aparaschivei, Yaakov HaCohen-Kerner, "Creating Expert Knowledge by Relying on Language Learners: a Generic Approach for Mass-Producing Language Resources by Combining Implicit Crowdsourcing and Language Learning." Proceedings of The 12th Language Resources and Evaluation Conference, 2020.
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Language Teachers and Crowdsourcing: Insights from a Cross-European Survey.
Published in Rasprave, 2020
The paper presents a cross-European survey on teachers and crowdsourcing. The survey examines how familiar language teachers are with the concept of crowdsourcing and addresses their attitude towards including crowdsourcing into language teaching activities. The survey was administrated via an online questionnaire and collected volunteers’ data on: (a) teachers’ experience with organizing crowdsourcing activities for students/pupils, (b) the development of crowdsourced resources and materials as well as (c) teachers’ motivation for participating in or employing crowdsourcing activities. The questionnaire was disseminated in over 30 European countries. The final sample comprises 1129 language teachers aged 20 to 65, mostly working at institutions of tertiary education. The data indicates that many participants are not familiar with the concept of crowdsourcing resulting in a low rate of crowdsourcing activities in the classroom. However, a high percentage of responding teachers is potentially willing to crowdsource teaching materials for the language(s) they teach. They are particularly willing to collaborate with other teachers in the creation of interactive digital learning materials, and to select, edit, and share language examples for exercises or tests. Since the inclusion of crowdsourcing activities in language teaching is still in its initial stage, steps for further research are highlighted.
Cite this work: Špela Holdt, Rina Zviel-Girshin, Elżbieta Gajek, Isabel Durán-Muñoz, Petra Bago, Karën Fort, Ciler Hatipoğlu, Ramunė Kasperavičienė, Svetla Koeva, Ivana Konjik, Lina Miloshevska, Antonia Ordulj, Christos Rodosthenous, Elena Volodina, Tassja Weber, Lorenzo Zanasi, "Language Teachers and Crowdsourcing: Insights from a Cross-European Survey.." Rasprave, 2020.
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Substituto - A Synchronous Educational Language Game for Simultaneous Teaching and Crowdsourcing
Published in Proceedings of the 9th Workshop on Natural Language Processing for Computer Assisted Language Learning (NLP4CALL 2020), 2020
This paper investigates a general framework for synchronous educational language games that simultaneously allows researchers to crowdsource learner answers in a controlled environment. Our prototype Substituto allows teachers and students to interact in real-time while undergoing language learning exercises; ensuring that the learner’s progress is not hurt by the introduction of crowdsourcing elements. We evaluate Substituto with a small-scale user study that focuses on training the use of English verb-particle constructions (VPCs), such as break down or take over, and test their use with second language learners of English of different proficiency levels over five pilot sessions. With the study we aim to ensure that our prototypical implementation behaves as expected and to identify any major design flaws that should be addressed. The preliminary results we achieved in order to evaluate the educational value, the user experience and the crowdsourcing capacity of XYZ-Bot confirm that it has the potential to become a valuable asset for language learning, a pleasant learning instrument and a crowdsourcing tool for collecting linguistic knowledge.
Cite this work: Marianne Araneta, Gülsen Eryigit, Alexander König, Ji-Ung Lee, Ana Luís, Verena Lyding, Lionel Nicolas, Christos Rodosthenous, Federico Sangati, "Substituto - A Synchronous Educational Language Game for Simultaneous Teaching and Crowdsourcing." Proceedings of the 9th Workshop on Natural Language Processing for Computer Assisted Language Learning (NLP4CALL 2020), 2020.
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Understanding Stories Using Crowdsourced Commonsense Knowledge
Published in Online Handbook of Argumentation for AI, 2020
This paper presents work on automated story understanding by using commonsense knowledge acquired from human contributors. A description of the methodology followed for acquiring this knowledge is depicted, followed by a presentation on how argumentation is used for representing commonsense knowledge. Furthermore this work includes a presentation of tools that are designed and developed to acquire and apply knowledge for the purpose of understanding stories.
Cite this work: Christos Rodosthenous, "Understanding Stories Using Crowdsourced Commonsense Knowledge." Online Handbook of Argumentation for AI, 2020.
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A Crowdsourcing Methodology for Improved Geographic Focus Identification of News-Stories
Published in Proceedings of the 13th International Conference on Agents and Artificial Intelligence (ICAART 2021), 2021
Past work on the task of identifying the geographic focus of news-stories has established that state-of-the-art performance can be achieved by using existing crowdsourced knowledge-bases. In this work we demonstrate that a further refinement of those knowledge-bases through an additional round of crowdsourcing can lead to improved performance on the aforementioned task. Our proposed methodology views existing knowledge-bases as collections of arguments in support of particular inferences in terms of the geographic focus of a given news-story. The refinement that we propose is to associate these arguments with weights — computed through crowdsourcing — in terms of how strongly they support their inference. The empirical results that we present establish the superior performance of this approach compared to the one using the original knowledge-base.
Cite this work: Christos Rodosthenous, Loizos Michael, "A Crowdsourcing Methodology for Improved Geographic Focus Identification of News-Stories." Proceedings of the 13th International Conference on Agents and Artificial Intelligence (ICAART 2021), 2021.
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An Experiment on Implicitly Crowdsourcing Expert Knowledge about Romanian Synonyms from Language Learners
Published in Proceedings of the 10th Workshop on Natural Language Processing for Computer Assisted Language Learning (NLP4CALL 2021), 2021
In this paper, we present an experiment performed with the aim of evaluating if linguistic knowledge of expert quality about Romanian synonyms could be crowdsourced from L1 language learners, learning Romanian as their mother tongue, by collecting and aggregating their answers to two types of questions that are automatically generated from a dataset, encoding semantic relations between words. Such an evaluation aimed at confirming the viability of a fully learner-fueled crowdsourcing workflow for improving such type of dataset. For this experiment, we reused an existing open-source crowdsourcing vocabulary trainer that we designed for this very purpose and which crowdsourcing potential needed further evaluation, especially with regards to lesser-resourced languages such as Romanian. Our results confirmed that producing expert knowledge regarding Romanian synonyms could be achieved in such a fashion. Additionally, we took the occasion to further evaluate the learning impact of the trainer on the participants and gather their feedback regarding several aspects.
Cite this work: Lionel Nicolas, Lavinia Aparaschivei, Verena Lyding, Christos Rodosthenous, Federico Sangati, Alexander {König}, Corina Forascu, "An Experiment on Implicitly Crowdsourcing Expert Knowledge about Romanian Synonyms from Language Learners." Proceedings of the 10th Workshop on Natural Language Processing for Computer Assisted Language Learning (NLP4CALL 2021), 2021.
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Applying Gamification Mechanics in an Environmental Education SPOC
Published in Proceedings of the 14th Annual International Conference on Education and New Learning Technologies (EDULEARN 2022), 2022
In this paper we present our work for applying gamification mechanics for an environmental Education Small Private Online Course (SPOC) in the framework of the Erasmus+ project titled “Teaching Environmental Awareness with Smart IoT Planters in Learning Spaces”. The TEASPILS project focuses on creating environmental awareness towards plants and greenery, educating young people and their teachers towards ecological learning spaces. The project’s actions will promote and foster awareness of environmental issues in an educational context. The project team designed a SPOC for 30 learners to introduce the project goals and strengthen environmental awareness, build responsibility among students, show connections in the natural sciences, and improve the social and indoor climate through plants in classrooms. The SPOC is delivered in 5 online sessions of 2 hours each and a final session in physical presence. These sessions cover a range of topics such as Planters, the connection of plants with Humans and society in general actions research, and sensors and visualization technology. The SPOC is delivered using the Moodle Learning Management System and includes multimodal content and activities. In particular, the course includes content in the form of video presentations, reading material, links to relevant websites, discussion forums for learners to introduce themselves and promote collaboration on topics related to the project. Moreover, the course introduces a self-evaluation quiz for each session and activities, such as to prepare a learning scenario for a plant education course. A practice that finds increasing usage in the educational domain is Gamification, which refers to the application of game design elements in non-game contexts (e.g., classroom, training, marketing, fitness apps). Gamification is used to engage and motivate users, provide the element of fun, challenge, competition, and provide meaningful feedback to learners. To increase participation and engagement for the SPOC, we proposed certain gamification mechanics, including badges, leaderboards, a level up system and certificates which were implemented and fully integrated in the LMS and applied in the specific group of learners. We present these gamification elements and how these are applied in the aforementioned SPOC. A badge system is incorporated in the course and connected to the self-evaluation quizzes and collaboration activities. In addition, a number of badges are designed in that context and manually assigned to learners when they complete a certain task. Since the group of learners is diverse, we also proposed other gamification mechanics to accommodate the needs of different types of learners, such as leaderboards which are more suitable for learners who are antagonistic. Our work also includes statistics on how the learners interacted with the course and a mapping of our learners with the corresponding player type, based on Marczewki’s user type hexad, which is used to identify proper gamification mechanics for each user type. To conclude, we also provide pointers to our future work for designing a gamification approach for the different activities and components of the TEASPILS project.
Cite this work: Christos Rodosthenous, Stathis Mavrotheris, "Applying Gamification Mechanics in an Environmental Education SPOC." Proceedings of the 14th Annual International Conference on Education and New Learning Technologies (EDULEARN 2022), 2022.
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Creating Environmental Awareness in Education through IoT and Gamification [Best Paper Award]
Published in Proceedings of the 25th International Conference on Interactive Collaborative Learning (ICL 2022), 2022
In this paper, we present our efforts and plans for creating environmental awareness towards plants and greenery, while educating children and their teachers in ecological learning spaces. Our approach aims to stimulate knowledge and appreciation of plants and the effects of plants in classrooms, offices, homes and open learning spaces, which have hitherto been undervalued. By promoting plant appreciation at young ages and the use of plants for learning, we aim to lay the foundations for wider environmental awareness and positive attitudes towards nature. In parallel, we enhance the learning experience with advanced sensor and Internet of Things (IoT) technologies, stimulating interactive learning via gamification. Utilising this technology-enhanced approach with gamified data sets, pupils will not only learn basic facts about plants, but also learn about the needed care and responsibilities towards them, in order to establish a wide-ranging plant supported school climate. Towards that goal, we describe a number of gamification elements in the context of smart IoT planters and an accompanying visualisation dashboard.
Cite this work: Christos Rodosthenous, Efstathios Mavrotheris, Wolfgang Greller, Bernardo Tabuenca, "Creating Environmental Awareness in Education through IoT and Gamification [Best Paper Award]." Proceedings of the 25th International Conference on Interactive Collaborative Learning (ICL 2022), 2022.
Enabling Publishing and Reuse of Government Data Through the Republic of Cyprus OpenData Portal
Published in Proceedings of the 15th International Conference on Metadata and Semantics Research (MTSR 2021), 2022
In this work, we present the Republic of Cyprus Open Data Portal for promoting the publishing and reuse of government data. In particular, we present the design and implementation options for the portal and how this is used to enable access and reuse of government data. A brief overview of the state-of-affairs of open data in Cyprus is presented and how the deployment of the revamped national portal facilitated the reuse of government data, followed by a presentation of the design requirements of the portal and the steps followed to deploy it. We also present the current state of the portal in terms of datasets and usage statistics, as well as some of the innovative features now available to the users, such as visualizations and conversion of tabular data to application programming interfaces. The paper concludes with a brief presentation of the key findings of a user satisfaction survey that recorded the perceptions of expert users (programmers) after using the new version of the open data portal.
Cite this work: Christos Rodosthenous, Dimitris Michail, "Enabling Publishing and Reuse of Government Data Through the Republic of Cyprus OpenData Portal." Proceedings of the 15th International Conference on Metadata and Semantics Research (MTSR 2021), 2022.
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High School Teachers' Reflections on the Design and Implementation of STEAM Education Scenarios in Their Classrooms
Published in The European Conference on Education 2023: Official Conference Proceedings, 2023
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Cite this work: Efstathios Mavrotheris, Ioanna Vekiri, Maria Meletiou-Mavrotheris, Leoni Hadjithoma, Angelos Lazoudis, Christos Rodosthenous, "High School Teachers' Reflections on the Design and Implementation of STEAM Education Scenarios in Their Classrooms." The European Conference on Education 2023: Official Conference Proceedings, 2023.
Unlocking the Potential of IoT for Interactive and Collaborative Learning: Case Studies in Higher Education
Published in Towards a Hybrid, Flexible and Socially Engaged Higher Education (ICL 2023), 2024
This paper presents two case studies that explore the integration of environmental awareness and IoT technology in interactive and collaborative learning environments. In the first case study, a comprehensive assessment was conducted to measure the digital data competence of university students in relation to their understanding of standards and regulations for healthy and energy efficient learning spaces. The assessment encompassed their knowledge of relevant variables for classroom health, such as temperature, humidity, CO2 levels, and lighting, as well as their familiarity with recommended energy-saving thresholds. The results highlighted gaps in digital data competence among the participants, indicating a need for targeted interventions to enhance their understanding and awareness of these standards. The results of the second case study demonstrated the effectiveness of the serious game in promoting student engagement and facilitating their understanding of the importance of adhering to recommended thresholds. By integrating digital data competence, and IoT technology, universities can empower students to become active participants in creating healthy and energy-efficient classrooms. Furthermore, by utilizing data from IoT systems, students can enhance their skills in data management, machine learning, artificial intelligence, and other data processing techniques. This integration provides them with valuable hands-on experience in working with real-world data, analyzing patterns, and making data-driven decisions.
Cite this work: Bernardo Tabuenca, Alejandro Leo-Ramirez, Manuel Uche-Soria, Edmundo Tovar, Wolfgang Greller, Christos Rodosthenous, Efstathios Mavrotheris, "Unlocking the Potential of IoT for Interactive and Collaborative Learning: Case Studies in Higher Education." Towards a Hybrid, Flexible and Socially Engaged Higher Education (ICL 2023), 2024.
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Applications of Large Language Models in Human Resource Management Recruitment and Selection: A Systematic Literature Review
Published in International Journal of Selection and Assessment (Under Review), 2026
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Cite this work: Christos Rodosthenous, Evangelia Siachou, "Applications of Large Language Models in Human Resource Management Recruitment and Selection: A Systematic Literature Review." International Journal of Selection and Assessment (Under Review), 2026.
Digital Readiness in Higher Education: A Multi-Institutional Evidence Study and AI-Assisted Approach
Published in Proceedings of EUNIS 2026 annual congress in Timisoara (Under Review), 2026
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Cite this work: Zisis Manouskos, Nikolaos Avouris, Sophia Daskalaki, Christos Rodosthenous, Vasos Papageorgiou, Dimitris Daskopoulos, Eftychios Protopapadakis, Nikolaos Samaras, Pantelis Balaouras, Konstantinos Tsibanis, "Digital Readiness in Higher Education: A Multi-Institutional Evidence Study and AI-Assisted Approach." Proceedings of EUNIS 2026 annual congress in Timisoara (Under Review), 2026.
talks
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teaching
Natural Language Processing (COS524)
Postgraduate Course, Open University of cyprus, Cognitive systems, 2018
We will take Natural Language Processing in a wide sense to cover computer manipulation of natural language. At one extreme, it could be as simple as counting word frequencies to compare different writing styles. At the other extreme, NLP involves “understanding” complete human utterances, at least to the extent of being able to give useful responses to them. The course has also a practical sense of introduction to natural language processing. Students will learn to use and formulate methods and systems that analyze text, write real programs, and grasp the value of being able to test an idea through implementation. The course strikes a balance between theory and application, identifying the connections and the tensions. The course aims to be also pleasurable, including applications and examples that are interesting and entertaining, and sometimes whimsical.
Web Engineering and Internet Technologies (CEI 326)
Undergraduate course, Cyprus University of Technology, Department of Electrical Engineering,Computer Engineering and Informatics, 2021
This course introduces the students to the Web technologies, which are now becoming the main software application platforms. We will cover a wide range of frameworks for the development of web application, which are currently used in critical large scale business applications, such as in Online Social Networks, Banking, Online Stores, Online Video Services etc. We will describe the basic principles of Internet application design, including protocols, standards, data management, multi-tier architectures and security. We will study how we can implement reliable, user-friendly, scalable, flexible and maintainable applications. We will also study how we can convert common web applications to mobile applications. The core of the course comprises a series of software laboratory exercises, which provide the student with the knowledge and infrastructure for the creation of a complex Web application and an Android app.
Programming Principles I (MEM 111)
Undergraduate course, Cyprus University of Technology, Department of Mechanical Engineering and Materials Science and Engineering, 2021
The course aims at introducing students to the programming principles that are essential for the solution of numerical problems. By making use of the FORTRAN 77/90/95 programming language and suitable operating environments (e.g. Force 2.0, Linux etc) the following topics are covered: Algorithms and programs. Pseudocode and flowcharts. High level languages and the compilation process. Introduction to FORTRAN (basic program structure, compiling and error handling). Arithmetic (numerical operators, order of execution, accuracy of calculations and types of variables). Input and output statements. The format statement. Internal and external functions. Control statements and loops .Arrays for Vectors and Matrices. Multidimensional arrays. Input and output of arrays. Arithmetic statement functions. Function Subprograms and subroutine subprograms. File handling. Double precision numbers. Complex numbers. Character and logical data .The course is accompanied by laboratory sessions where programming is practised through applications on simple engineering problems.
Software and Problem Solving (CIS108)
Undergraduate course, Cyprus University of Technology, Department of Communication and Internet Studies, 2021
Course Purpose and Objectives:
- The Software and Problem Solving course aims to provide students with an in-depth analysis of the software development process and an introduction to problem solving techniques.
Programming Principles II (MEM 114)
Undergraduate course, Cyprus University of Technology, Department of Mechanical Engineering and Materials Science and Engineering, 2021
This course is an introduction to object-oriented programming using C++. The course teaches C++ starting from basic concepts such as classes, objects, inheritance, input/output stream classes, references to C++ types, pointers, structs, etc. It also covers the concepts of complexity and operator overloading.