Open-source hardware and software platforms have played an important role in democratizing access to technology and education in computer science and engineering. Recent advancements in tools, such as KiCad, MicroPython, and Thonny, integrated development environment potentially accelerate low-budget educational applications, providing a smooth…

Artificial intelligence is already all around us, and its usage will only increase. Knowing its capabilities is critical. A facial recognition system (FRS) is a tool for law enforcement during suspect searches and when presenting photos to eyewitnesses for identification. However, there are no comparisons between eyewitness and FRS accuracy using…

Modeling reading comprehension processes is a critical task for Learning Analytics, as accurate models of the reading process can be used to match students to texts, identify appropriate interventions, and predict learning outcomes. This paper introduces an improved version of the Automated Model of Comprehension, namely version 4.0. AMoC has its…

Caregivers (i.e., parents and members of a child's caring community) are underappreciated stakeholders in learning analytics. Although caregiver involvement can enhance student academic outcomes, many obstacles hinder involvement, most notably knowledge gaps with respect to modern school curricula. An emerging topic of interest in learning…

Manually scoring and revising student essays has long been a time-consuming task for educators. With the rise of natural language processing techniques, automated essay scoring (AES) and automated essay revising (AER) have emerged to alleviate this burden. However, current AES and AER models require large amounts of training data and lack…

This dissertation introduces a comprehensive framework aimed at reshaping applied cybersecurity education to significantly ease the learning curve, at scale, through three synergistic innovations. These methods address the daunting educational barriers in cybersecurity, enabling learners at all levels to understand complex security concepts more…

ChatGPT has garnered unprecedented popularity since its release in November 2022. This artificial intelligence (AI) large language model (LLM) is designed to generate human-like text based on patterns found in massive amounts of data scraped from the internet. ChatGPT is significantly different from previous versions of GPT by its quality of…