The evaluation of many STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) interventions focuses on planned outcomes. However, the impact of unintended consequences from interventions remains largely unexplored in the literature. This case study presents the design and evaluation of a school-based workshop about an engineering-adjacent career: environmental planning. The authors used a community of inquiry action research approach focusing on knowledge and aspirational outcomes from outreach, particularly around broadening children's knowledge and understanding of careers. The developed evaluation tools allowed identification of intended and unintended consequences from the intervention. Participants were children aged 10-11 years ($\mathrm{n}=83$) from two schools in North East England. Results showed an increase in knowledge of environmental planning. The qualitative data indicate unanticipated consequences due to children's temporal misunderstanding of timescales involved in coastal changes. Findings are discussed in the context of 'lessons learned' and highlight the importance for engineering and technology outreach interventions of incorporating a well-designed evaluation strategy and feedback mechanism to identify and mitigate unintended and unanticipated consequences.

The expansion of essay mills and the recent emerging opportunities presented by generative Artificial Intelligence tools have led to fresh concerns about the authenticity of students' assessed work. These changes mean it is timely to revisit academic integrity within the UK Higher Education computing community. The aim of this research is to explore the current perspectives of senior computing academics on academic integrity and student cheating, particularly given the rapid development of generative AI tools and resources and the growth in essay mills. An exploratory research approach was adopted using a mixed methods approach. A critical literature review was undertaken and this together with the researcher team's expertise was used to underpin the design of the practical research activities. A survey was conducted of UK higher education senior academics (response rate,$\mathrm{n}=16$). The results from this informed a set of in-depth individual semistructured interviews with senior UK computing academics$(\mathrm{n}=5)$. Descriptive statistics were used to analyse the quantitative survey data and exploratory thematic analysis undertaken with the qualitative data from the survey and interviews. Methodological triangulation was used across these data sets to inform the key findings and their interpretation and discussion. The findings demonstrate that senior computing academics are concerned about the levels and types of student cheating on their assessed work. The reasons for this are complex and multifaceted, with no simple solution. Academic misconduct is perceived to adversely affect academic standards. Challenges with the detection and investigation of student cheating and the need to ensure consistency of approach by all staff are highlighted. Action is needed urgently and respondents emphasize that this should focus on prevention rather than detection of academic misconduct. These findings have informed a set of recommendations to promote good academic practice and integrity across the UK Higher Education computing community. The findings also highlight that in order to implement these recommendations, staff, students and their departments/institutions need to come together and draw on each others' expertise and experiences to enable a high-quality ethical learning experience.

There are currently approximately 20.2 million children in Nigeria out of school, exacerbated by ongoing conflicts demonstrating an ongoing need for Emergency Remote Education (ERE). Despite this, Nigeria remains an under-explored context and the specific challenges of providing ERE there are not fully understood. This paper reports on a mixed methods study of teachers experiences of enacting ERE in Nigeria in April 2020 with a questionnaire (n=374), diary study and follow up interviews (n=20) carried out. The contributions of the paper are two-fold; firstly, an in-depth study of ERE in Nigeria, demonstrating that teachers used WhatsApp as a tool of practical necessity, configured it to create a continued sense of place, and continued to enact largely traditional pedagogies. Secondly, through reflection on these findings, we offer initial design considerations for technology use in ERE in low resource settings before outlining continuing design challenges for HCI researchers in this context.

Globally the number of students at university has been growing with UNESCO reporting in 2023, that there are now 235 million university students across the world, double the number from 20 years ago. Higher education is now a key area of economic growth for many countries and thus has also become a target for exploitation, evidenced by the growing numbers of essay mills and similar services, and even more recently by some of the generative Artificial Intelligence (AI) tools. The UK has also seen a growth in student numbers, particularly at postgraduate and for international students. In computing for example, UK PGT student numbers have increased rapidly with the UK Higher Education Statistics Agency reporting 25,225 computing PGT students in 2019/2020 rising to 47,410 in 2021/22, with 69% of these students being classed as international. These students can find it challenging to adapt to education in the UK and can have differing levels of abilities including digital literacy. Alongside this growth, the variety/incidence of student academic misconduct (AM) has also been rising. Previous research has tended to focus on plagiarism but there is an increasing need to explore the implications arising from the widespread availability of essay mills and generative AI tools. This study aims to provide a greater understanding of AM from the perspective of the computing PGT student. Adopting a case study approach, computing PGT students (n=358) were surveyed at one UK university in Spring 2023 with a follow up focus group. The study employed two PG students as researchers and this enabled a more trusted and student-centered approach to the survey, focus group and analysis. Thematic analysis of the data from the survey (responses n=26) and focus group (n=7) show students believe AM affects academic standards and understand the reasons behind this. They believe the university is providing clear AM guidance, but have more mixed opinions on whether they think the AM process is appropriate/fair. The analysis demonstrates the need for a holistic and concerted effort between staff and students based around six main areas: assessment; educational provision; staff attitudes/support; student opportunity/motivation; student belonging/engagement; and student-friendly AM guidance/resources. Future work is building on these recommendations to create a framework and set of practical interventions to promote academic integrity, and address the current AM challenges.

This Full Paper presents the findings from a study to identify the attributes STEM professionals believe make them successful in their role. Engineering and other STEM employers indicate that they value transferable skills linked to personal characteristics and attributes, often called soft skills. These attributes of STEM professionals were also compared with a separate set of 16 STEM attributes developed for use in STEM engagement interventions for children and young people. A snowball sample of self-identified STEM employees was gathered (n=217), with the majority of respondents from the North East of England (54%). Using an online survey participants named up to six personal attributes and were asked to rate how well the 16 STEM attributes described them. Thematic analysis identified 19 different themes with soft skills contributing 68% of the terms provided. This research provides a clear indication that soft skills are valued by established employees in their work. It also indicates that there is merit in looking beyond subject knowledge to frame engineering education and engagement activities. The 16 STEM Attributes in the STEM engagement interventions were found to realistically represent the attributes of those working in STEM. An attributes based approach to engagement could help children and young people to identify the skills that they have (or could develop), or support students with employability by enabling them to elucidate the value of their own skills to the employer.

This research full paper presents a study that examines emerging understanding of science careers among very young children (aged 5-7) and seeks to identify the factors that influence their understanding. Knowing that early interest in science is a strong predictor for future engineering pathways, and that children begin eliminating careers as incompatible with their future self at a very young age, the results are interpreted in the context of what this means for engineering education. Grounded theory approaches were applied to qualitative data collected through focus groups and used to sort and categorize data and identify themes. The study finds that despite science being a core subject in elementary schooling in the UK, young children’s awareness of scientists and science careers remains low. Four categories to describe the patterns of children’s understanding were identified: undeveloped, introductory, stereotypical, and diversifying. For most children, their perceptions of scientists remained either under-developed or confined to ideas with clear labels, such as stereotypes. Young children’s understanding of engineers may be even more restricted due to engineering not being a taught subject within elementary education in the UK. The factors identified as influencing young children’s understanding of scientists differ somewhat from those presented in studies with slightly older children. Young children did not commonly relate science learning in school with scientists or to a broader spectrum of science-related jobs. Children within the diversifying group highlight the value of personal experiences with science and STEM professionals. By identifying the potential of careers-related learning to shape young children’s understanding of engineering and engineering careers as distinct from that of science and mathematics, these findings have implications for future engineering education practices.

Globally, the future of work is changing with organisations increasingly reliant on Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) skills and related expertise. In developing countries such as Nigeria, professionals with these skills and expertise are also in high demand. With changes in healthcare, education, economic growth and sustainable development, there is an urgent need to increase the number of young people choosing to study and work in STEM, and particularly digital technologies and engineering. Previous research has identified that the traditional instructivist and theoretical approach to teaching often used in Nigeria and other developing countries can be a major barrier to young people, who can often regard STEM subjects and careers as not for `people like them' and/or have very narrow perspectives of opportunities in the STEM sector. It also means that young people are not equipped to take their place as digital citizens in today's global society. The DIGISTEM programme was commissioned by the Ekiti State Government in Nigeria and sponsored by the World Bank to provide a novel approach to address these challenges. This paper presents its overall vision. Using an action research approach, a set of carefully designed interactions were conducted with young people and their schools and teachers. The initial results from this are presented and demonstrate that there is an urgent need to transform educational practice in this and other similar regions to provide a more authentic and active learning experience that prepares young people to be career-ready global digital citizens.

This paper presents findings on participants of a massive open online course named "Educational Robotics for all" developed under Open edX platform. The document describes the organization and structure of the MOOC and some of its preliminary results. As an example, Module 2 about Gender and STEAM is presented and discussed.

This Research-to-Practice Work in Progress paper explores the lifelong learning sector which is an important but often challenging area of education. It can be subject to low and inconsistent levels of funding and can attract students who find certain areas of the curriculum particularly challenging. This can lead to a lack of engagement and disruptive behaviour in the classroom. For over a decade, the UK government have been keen to ensure that all adults have a minimum level of ‘functional skills' including mathematics. In England's Further Education Colleges, this means many students have to study mathematics alongside their main subject programme, even though they may not be motivated to do so. The aim of this research study is to investigate if technology and specifically interactive screen casts can motivate and engage these students in their mathematics classrooms. This research adopts a case study action research approach working with a group of learners and their teachers/classroom assistants in a college in North East England. The preliminary results indicate that these learners struggle with motivation and engagement. The adoption of technology in the form of interactive screencasts could bring benefits to these types of learners by providing a more active and individualized learning experience addressing their motivation and engagement issues and accommodating a range of learning styles.

This research-to-practice full paper examines stereotypes in government recommended textbooks in science, technology and mathematics textbooks in Nigeria. Globally, more men are studying and working in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) fields than women. This imbalance is also the case in Nigeria. One contributor to this imbalance is stereotypical gender representation of scientists, mathematicians, engineers and technologists in popular media and career advertisement. Previous research indicates that stereotypes are also prevalent in educational materials used with young people. Given that the aspirations of young people are formed early in their educational journey, it is particularly pertinent to examine the gender bias in educational materials. As part of the DIGISTEM project, a World Bank-sponsored project in Nigeria, the aim of this study was to explore the level of gender bias in the images and language contained in the most frequently used science, technology, and mathematics textbooks recommended by the Nigerian Education Ministry. This study evaluated a total of 2116 visual and text references from 25 government recommended instructional materials. The analysis shows that males are significantly more represented in these resources than females. This study highlights that there is a stereotypical representation of scientists and engineers in primary school instructional materials as demonstrated by the imbalance portrayed in the examined textbooks. This paper concludes with an exploration of the implications of these findings on the educational sector and the need to provide a more inclusive approach to educational resources to enable young people to realise that STEM careers and subjects can be for people like them. This study took place in Nigeria; however, we recognise similar challenges and opportunities in a number of other jurisdictions which provides a foundation for replicability, portability and extension to this work.

Machines, algorithms and people are coming together in new and exciting ways. This is changing the world of work with new jobs previously unimagined. It is crucial that we prepare our young people for this world, yet many of them do not aspire to, and are not choosing, careers in digital technology or engineering, particularly girls and those from socially-disadvantaged backgrounds. Furthermore, while much of the work in this area has focused on the aspirations of older children there is evidence that children's aspirations are formed at an early age. The aim of this study is to explore the factors that influence younger children's reported aspirations to jobs, and in particular STEM jobs. Data was gathered from children aged 7-11 (n= 622) across areas of deprivation in North East England. Children were asked about their career aspirations and the motivations behind these. Analysis of this data showed that the majority of children were aspirational in their career choices, with many reporting higher aspirations than their parents' current jobs. A gender difference was evident across both aspirations and motivations, with many girls choosing STEM careers that help others. Very few of the children aspired to jobs in the digital and engineering sectors. These results demonstrate the criticality of early education stages are for children's developing aspirations and the urgent need to adapt education so that all children, irrespective of gender or background, can be supported to grasp the opportunities presented by an ever-changing world.

This paper presents the results of a study on the adoption and integration of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) in the classroom in Nigeria from the teachers' perspective. Although the Internet and digital devices are becoming increasingly accessible by many more people in Nigeria, the literature shows that their adoption and integration in the classroom is still low. This research adopts the case study method to examine the barriers as well as the solutions from the perspective of the teachers. Twenty science teachers from different schools in Ekiti State, Nigeria participated in this study. A combination of focus groups and questionnaires was used to collect data. The results show that the main barriers against the adoption and integration of ICT in the classroom include a lack of adequate and well-trained personnel, poor internet service, as well as high cost of access. The identified solutions include changes to the curriculum to support digital literacy, funding and material support from both regional and national government, and digital literacy training for the teachers. These findings provide practical insights for school leaders and policy makers on strategies and recommendations to improve the adoption and integration of ICT in schools in Nigeria.

This research to practice paper uses a Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) to explore the factors that affect teachers' intentions to use digital educational games in the classroom. Research shows that using computers and other digital technologies like digital games is one way to influence young people's career aspirations and improve their digital literacy. This is particularly important as the world of work is changing and emerging jobs becoming more intensive in their use of digital technologies. In the developing world and in particular Nigeria, there have been calls to improve the digital literacy skills of young people to help them make informed career choices, and fully participate effectively and equally in the digital world. However, many of the computing and digital technology education initiatives have not produced the positive results intended. The lack of awareness, readiness and buy-in of the relevant stakeholders are some of the factors that has been identified as a barrier here. For example, for computing and digital technology-based projects in schools, the success largely depends on the support and attitude of teachers. As one of the major stakeholders in the classroom, teachers need to be consulted in decisions that affect the way they deliver their lessons; especially when novel ideas and approaches that challenge tradition are introduced. It is therefore important to consider their acceptance or otherwise of digital games in the classroom. A Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) was modified to include constructs previously identified by teachers that potentially influence their intention to use digital games in the classroom. The extended TAM was developed into a questionnaire and tested with 220 teachers in Nigeria. Analyses of the results show that syllabus connectedness, perceived usefulness and self-efficacy are significant predictors of the intention of teachers to adopt digital game-based learning in the classroom. Furthermore, the teachers' demographics including experience of teaching, age and gender all mediated the intention of the teachers to use digital game-based learning. The results and findings present recommendations for school leaders and developers of digital educational games. The practical insights from this are also important here and helpful for guiding the deployment of such games particularly in areas where such technological interventions have not been used before.

This research to practice full paper presents the results from using a games design intervention to encourage diversity in the uptake of computer science by young people, explore stereotypes with them and increase their awareness of careers in the sector. The intervention is based on an integrated pedagogical framework appropriate for use with primary age school children (age 7 - 11 years). Despite the increasing use of technology, the percentage of young people taking up a computer science education-career path remains stubbornly low in the UK and across a number of other countries, particularly for females and those from lower socio-economic backgrounds. Previous research suggests that games can be used to generate interest and engage young people with computer science. Other studies advocate targeting young people at an earlier age (7 years or below) and sustaining engagement throughout their education to widen participation in a particular sector. In this intervention, young people designed and developed individual games through a three stage process: design and story development; game building; testing and evaluation. This research adopts elements from two pedagogical learning theories Direct Instruction and Cognitive Constructivism to create an integrated pedagogical framework to support the game creation process and enable effective learning. This provides an approach that can cater for a range of participants' abilities along the novice-expert spectrum and provide an engaging and age appropriate educational experience.The intervention was completed in two cycles: cycle 1 consisted of a series of workshop sessions with 20 young people aged 9-10 years over a period of 5 weeks; and cycle 2 was a single session with 19 young people aged 7-11 years. A quasi-experimental approach was adopted for evaluating the intervention using the following instruments; pre and post questionnaires, planning sheets, the games created by the participants and a set of already developed engagement factors. Results show an increase from 5% to 25% in participants' aspiration towards a computer science career. 45% of the young people also knew more careers in the game industry post-intervention. Girls chose a variety of diversity in their lead characters while boys chose mainly male human lead characters in the games that they designed. Participants' evaluation of each other's games using the engagement factors showed girls were more interested in receiving feedback than boys. This paper highlights the effectiveness of combining different learning approaches to provide an age appropriate intervention. It also presents evidence on the positive effect of using games in the classroom to explore stereotypes, and learn about, and encourage career choices in computer science.

Photovoltaic (PV) systems use the sunlight and convert it to electrical power. It is predicted that by 2023, 371,000 PV installations will be embedded in power networks in the UK. This may increase the risk of voltage rise which has adverse impacts on the power network. The balance maintenance is important for high security of the physical electrical systems and the operation economy. Therefore, the prediction of the output of PV systems is of great importance. The output of a PV system highly depends on local environmental conditions. These include sun radiation, temperature, and humidity. In this research, the importance of various weather factors are studied. The weather attributes are subsequently employed for the prediction of the solar panel power generation from a time-series database. Long-Short Term Memory networks are employed for obtaining the dependencies between various elements of the weather conditions and the PV energy metrics. Evaluation results indicate the efficiency of the deep networks for energy generation prediction.

This paper performs a preliminary analysis of the first MOOC of the IEEE Education Society, an IEEE Free Online Course on Open Education and Open Educational Resources (OER) Repositories. The MOOC "Foundations to Open Education and OERs repositories" is based on providing a comprehensive understanding both of Open Education and OERs, as well as the way they are changing the educational environment. The selection of participants' features from the MOOCKnowledge data collection mainly focuses on socio-demographic issues, previous experiences with MOOCs, usefulness of the MOOC to the participants' professional, personal and academic spheres, and types of student interaction. The preliminary results show that additional efforts are needed in order to boost the enrolment of both females and people with low level of completed studies, as well as increasing the level of awareness regarding certification. The results also reveal a positive impact of the course on the participants' professional and personal spheres. Finally, the most relevant interaction for them is the learner-content interaction. On the basis of these results it can be concluded that this MOOC offers an opportunity for practitioners to take advantage of the Open Education philosophy and its subsequent application to their everyday educational environment.

A key issue for the digital sector is how to attract more young people, particularly those from under-represented groups, to study computer science and digital technologies at higher education and beyond. The main aim of this study was to evaluate if a gaming environment can be used to generate interest and engagement among young people. Two further aims were to see if this approach could also be used to create a greater awareness of professional career roles in the sector and to explore diversity and stereotypes. Using an action research approach, a workshop was designed for use with young people where they were asked to design and develop a game. Embedded within this were activities to introduce career roles and challenge stereotypes, with a specific focus on gender and ethnicity. The results show that young people have a limited understanding of the roles involved in the game industry. Male children created male game characters while female children created both male and female characters for their games. Females aspired to jobs in the health sciences while males aspired to a wider range of Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) careers. The workshop is currently being extended and developed to create a more in-depth intervention, building on the results from the research to date.

The STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) field in general, and Engineering, suffer from a lack of diversity. Yet there is growing evidence that more diverse organizations are more successful and effective. There is also a global shortage of STEM and engineering skills that can be tackled by addressing the lack of diversity in the field. One obvious way to view this problem is by looking at gender. Women make up 50% of the population, but in Engineering the number of female students and professionals is clearly less than this, often around 10–25% in many parts of the world. This underrepresentation of women leads us to think about other groups that are underrepresented in Engineering; these include Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic (BAME) and those from socially deprived backgrounds. This paper examines a number of approaches to support diversity and inclusion to encourage a greater uptake of engineering by underrepresented groups and to retain people in the sector.

There is still a large gender gap across the technology, engineering and physical sciences disciplines despite a number of efforts over the past three decades to address this. Creating a more diverse workforce including a better gender balance is important in order to meet the skills need of the future. There is also increasing evidence that organizations with a more diverse workforce are more creative and innovative and ultimately perform better and are more successful. The aim of this paper is to explore how to address the gender gap by exploring our own notions of trust and unconscious bias. The paper draws on the perspectives of four women at different stages of their career and their lived experiences of being female in the engineering sector. Together they provide an insight into this important issue, and how we can work together as a collective community across the sector to address it and provide environments that are welcoming and value each and every one of us.

This paper shows the design, approach and first collection of data of the MOOC "Foundations to Open Education and OERs repositories". This is the first MOOC of the IEEE Education Society, and it has been delivered freely and open available through IEEEx, a channel of edX.

Digital educational games development is an emerging area receiving attention from educators and researchers. Several studies have looked at their educational value, and some have established their usefulness as an effective pedagogical tool. However, few studies have examined the design process for digital educational games and how they can provide engagement experiences comparable to those found in entertainment games. Even fewer studies have specifically investigated how concepts of inclusivity and diversity can be built into games. This study explored gender diversity in digital educational games. The authors have worked with young people to create a digital game engagement framework, which identifies the most important factors that attract and engage young people in a digital game. The factors are: challenge, rewards, clarity of goal, feedback, visual appeal, social interaction, thematic appeal, creativity and immersion. Using a mixed methods approach and a ‘Diamond 9’ tool, young people were asked to rank the nine factors. The results indicate that while rewards ranked highly independent of gender, the importance of other factors (feedback, social interaction and clarity of goal) differed by gender. This study provides implications for designing inclusive digital educational games and calls for further research into diversity and inclusiveness in digital games.

The use of digital games in education is growing. Digital games with their elements of `play' and `challenge' are increasingly viewed as a successful medium for engaging and motivating students, in situations where students may be uninterested or distant. One such situation is mathematics education in Nigeria where young people in schools can be unenthusiastic about the subject. The introduction of digital educational games is being trialed to see if it can address this issue. A key element for ensuring the success of the introduction of new technologies is that the users are prepared and ready to accept the technology. This also applies to the introduction of digital educational games in the classroom. Technology Acceptance Models (TAMs) have been widely employed to explore users' attitudes to technology and to highlight their main concerns and issues. The aim of this study is to investigate if a modified TAM can be successfully developed and deployed to explore teachers' attitudes to the introduction of digital educational games in their classroom. The study employs a mixed methods approach and combines the outcomes from previous research studies with data gathered from interviews with teachers to develop the modified TAM. This approach of combining the results from previous studies together with interviews from the targeted group enabled the key variables/constructs to be identified. Independent evaluation by a group of experts gave further confidence in the model. The results have shown that this modified TAM is a useful instrument for exploring the attitude of teachers to using digital games for learning and teaching, and highlighting the key areas which require support and input to ensure teachers are ready to accept and use this technology in their classroom practice.

Digital games have become part of childhood and adolescence. The debate has moved from should teenagers play digital games to how to gain benefits from this gameplay. Researchers predict that technology-enhanced learning will increase with educational computer games (serious games) playing an important role. Although serious games are often built on established educational theories, they can also appear boring and struggle to engage the learner. Analyses of serious games demonstrate that many do not offer an entertainment experience comparable to or even recognizable as relatives of the entertainment games familiar to many players. However, a high level of engagement by the learner is viewed as necessary to provide a strong learning environment. The long-term aim of this study is to explore how digital games can support a more engaging and effective mathematics learning experience. This first stage has taken a qualitative grounded theory approach to explore the engagement factors of digital games among young people (aged 7 - 16 years). Analyses of data gathered through a combination of surveys and interviews have led to a framework of engagement factors. This provides a basis for designing serious games that are effective by being both engaging and educational.

Considerable effort has been spent on interventions to increase the numbers/diversity of young people studying Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) and/or entering STEM related careers with little evidence of their effectiveness. In the UK, less than 10% of professional engineers are female. Science capital is a recent concept for capturing those elements that influence children's choice of a science-related career. Children with higher science capital are more likely to choose a STEM career than those with lower science capital and therefore interventions to increase science capital are needed. Initially studies evaluating science capital have focused on secondary age children (aged 11 - 18 years). Here a research approach for evaluating science capital among primary age children (aged 7 - 11 years) is presented using a mixed methods approach. Results indicate that children share similar perceptions of scientists as `hardworking', `clever' and `creative' independent of gender, age and science capital. However, children's self-identify differed by gender, age and science capital, illustrating significant gaps for some children between their self-identity and that of a scientist. Interventions focusing on narrowing this gap should increase the likelihood of them considering a science-related career.