Learning and Teaching

I have taught a number of different courses over the years, ranging from Software Engineering to Professional Development and Java programming at all levels. I have also supervised undergraduate, graduate as well as Ph.D. students on a variety of topics.

Current Teaching

I am currently teaching two courses:

CC383 Agent Technology: this is an undergraduate 3rd year course which introduces agents and multi-agent systems. Students are introduced to agents, their fundamental characteristics and architectures as well as multi-agent systems. Issues on communication, cooperation and multi-agent planning are also covered. Auction protocols are briefly described under the topic of negotiation. Mobile agents are also discussed.

CE835 Agent Technology for E-commerce: this is a graduate course which describes agents and multi-agent systems but specializes in the applications of agent technology in electronic commerce. The emphasis of the course is mainly on negotiation protocols and strategic behaviour. Mobile agents and their applications in electronic commerce are also explored. The course also covers legal, security and trust issues regarding the use of agents in electronic commerce.

Both courses use my book on Agent Technology for e-Commerce as the supporting text. Both courses involve coursework in which the students are required to develop agents to participate in simulated environments. The software used to this end is e-Game.

PhD Supervision

I am currently supervising 4 PhD students in agents and multi-agent systems who work in the areas of constraint satisfaction, dynamic user profiles and semantic resource and service description and discovery. Five of my students have already obtained their PhDs working in trust and web service composition, semantic matchmaking and agent-oriented software engineering.   

Teaching Agents and Multi-agent Systems and AI in Education

Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Intelligent Agents (IA) have been incorporated into the curriculum of Computer Science degree schemes for a number of years now at both undergraduate and postgraduate levels. Despite the fact that the underlying research areas have developed over the years, teaching artificial intelligence, agents and multi-agent systems presents a number of problems:

• a great diversity in the topics covered as there is a lack of agreement on the core contents of such courses;
• a heavy influence of one’s own research expertise and specialization in deciding the content of such courses;
• a lack of standard methodologies and tools that practitioners can employ for teaching topics in these areas.

I am interested in the teaching aspects of agents and multi-agent systems and in particular innovative approaches to teaching the subject matter. I have been organizing workshops in order to identify, share and promote good practice with other colleagues at a national and international level. I also work closely with the Higher Education Academy Information and Computer Sciences Subject Centre (HEA-ICS) to promote and disseminate good practice and I am a member of its Advisory Board.

Pedagogical Research

I am also very much interested in pedagogical research and in particular game-based learning, interactive learning, collaborative-based learning and the use of technology in general to both support as well as enhance the students' learning experience. I am using simulation games in my courses which enable active learning and can also facilitate collaborative learning. In 2005, I was awarded a prestigious National Teaching Fellowship (Rising Star category) by the Higher Education Academy for my innovative approaches to learning and teaching and supporting the students' learning experience. The award is currently being used to develop an e-learning system for the area of agents and multi-agent systems.

Another issue that I am very interested in is the link between research and teaching, what is known as the research-teaching nexus. Incorporating research into the curriculum can take a number of forms and studies have shown that students benefit from being exposed to research in a number of contexts. However, the link is not automatic, it needs to be explicitly developed, nurtured and sustained at both the individual, departmental as well as the institutional level.

• Globerunners: A 3D graphic novel