About

Panagiotis Apostolellis is an Associate Professor in the Computer Science Department at the University of Virginia. He holds a PhD in Computer Science & Applications from Virginia Tech, obtained in 2017, along with a MSc in Computer Science from Virginia Tech and an MSc in Human-Centered Systems from the University of Sussex. His educational background also includes a Graduate Certificate in Human-Computer Interaction from Virginia Tech. His research focuses on Human-Computer Interaction (HCI), audience interaction, informal learning with technology, 3D user interfaces, user experience design, computer science education, and computational thinking. During his graduate studies at Virginia Tech, he worked at the Center for Human-Computer Interaction under Dr. Doug Bowman, researching the impact of audience interaction using serious games and virtual reality on young student audiences in informal learning spaces. He has extensive teaching experience, including roles as an Adjunct faculty member and a Visiting Assistant Professor at Virginia Tech, where he served as a Teaching Assistant for multiple computer science courses and taught diverse audiences about IT and New Media Technologies. His dissertation received the Outstanding Research award for 2017-2018 from the Virginia Tech CS department. Prior to his academic career, Panagiotis gained significant experience as a Senior Interactive Systems Designer and Developer at a cultural institution in Greece from 2000 to 2011. He emphasizes a playful and engaging approach to learning, believing that fun is essential for effective education.

Research topics

• Computer Science
• Artificial Intelligence
• Psychology
• Political Science
• Mathematics education
• Engineering
• Human–computer interaction
• Medicine
• Medical education
• Pedagogy
• Social psychology
• Risk analysis (engineering)
• Management
• Engineering management
• Software engineering

Selected publications

• Assessing the Impact of Feedback on Student Learning Using e2Logos: A Novel Grading Tool for Online Student Reports

  2023-06-29

  article1st authorCorresponding

  A common instructional approach to many CS and engineering classes involves designing a new software system, by providing real-world, open-ended, client-driven, team-based problems, most known as Model-Eliciting Activities (MEAs). A significant challenge imposed by this approach comes from accurately and consistently assessing student work where more than one solution can be correct. Therefore, timely feedback is pivotal for student success. Such feedback is fundamental in supporting grading consistency and efficiency for graders, but importantly to scaffold student understanding for student teams working on complex, ill-defined, real-world problems. This poster presents the next step in a two-phase evaluation (the first being a usability test) of a new grading and annotation tool for online technical reports, called e2Logos (evaluating electronic logos). We propose a plan for evaluating the educational impact of e2Logos in the context of an upper-level CS elective course on Human-Computer Interaction (HCI). The poster will also include a brief presentation of e2Logos, which aims to fill a gap in assessing and grading the rich type of student work submitted in project-based learning (PBL) courses employing MEAs.

  PublisherDOI

• Creating effective project-based courses: personal relevance and its relations to successful group work

  European Journal of Engineering Education · 2023 · 3 citations

  1st authorCorresponding
  • Political Science
  • Psychology
  • Medical education

  ABSTRACTGroup projects are expected in contemporary engineering curricula, and yet they often pose a challenge to students and instructors alike. Could making projects personally relevant help? The present study created and tested a conceptual framework regarding the impact of personal relevance on groupwork in a project-based learning (PBL) course. We examined how measures of personal relevance (PR), both at the course level (value, interest in specialisation) and specifically regarding projects (interest and investment in the project, and contribution to the project idea) relate to students' expectancy, group connectedness, team dynamics (effectiveness, conflict, satisfaction, interdependence, and cohesiveness), and perceived effort; whether PR differs based on students' gender, academic year, or time of the semester; and whether PR predicts students' project performance. Seventy-one undergraduates in a project-based computer science course at a large public US university completed surveys assessing these constructs at five timepoints during the semester. Our findings suggest PR is related to positive outcomes in PBL courses, with interest and investment predicting an increase in the project grade. Similarly, gender predicted project grade with female students having significantly higher scores overall, above and beyond other measures. We discuss implications for creating project-based courses in higher education engineering courses.KEYWORDS: Personal relevanceproject-based learningmotivationperceived effortgroup connectednessteam dynamics AcknowledgmentsThis research was supported by the Center for Teaching Excellence of the University of Virginia. We thank the students who participated to this research, as well as our colleagues: Lindsay Wheeler for her insightful guidance throughout all stages of this work, Stefen Beeler-Duden for his assistance with data collection, and Xi Wang for her contribution in the literature review of this paper. We also want to acknowledge the significant contribution of Charles Rushton and Stephanie Morton to the preliminary analysis in an earlier version of this work.Disclosure statementNo potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).Additional informationNotes on contributorsPanagiotis ApostolellisPanagiotis Apostolellis is a full-time Assistant Professor in the Computer Science Department at the University of Virginia. He received his PhD in Computer Science & Applications from Virginia Tech in 2017. He also holds a MSc in Computer Science from Virginia Tech (VT) and an MSc in Human-Centered Systems from the University of Sussex (UK). His research is focused on understanding the contributing factors to successful project-based engineering courses and improving computer science education. In the past, he worked as a Senior Interactive Designer and Developer at a cultural institution in his home country, Greece (2000–11), which informed his prior research on audience interaction with serious games and virtual environments in informal learning settings.Jessica TaggartJessica Taggart, PhD, is a postdoctoral research associate in the Center for Teaching Excellence at the University of Virginia. Her current research explores effective teaching, learning, and curriculum development practices in higher education. She is especially interested in better understanding how leveraging active and collaborative learning techniques can improve student outcomes.R. X. SchwartzR. X. Schwartz is a student in the Graduate Cybersecurity Management Certificate at the University of Virginia, and a graduate of the UVA Bachelor's in Systems Engineering. He is a researcher in the areas of digital wellbeing and human–computer interaction.

  PublisherDOI

• Designing for Meaningful Interactions and Digital Wellbeing

  2022-06-06 · 5 citations

  articleSenior author

  In the contemporary attention economy, tech companies design the interfaces of their digital platforms by adopting attention-capture dark patterns to drive their behavior and maximize time spent and daily visits. Two popular examples are viral recommendations and content autoplay on social networks. As these patterns exploit people’s psychological vulnerabilities and may contribute to technology overuse and problematic behaviors, there is the need of promoting the design of technology that better align with people’s digital wellbeing. This workshop seeks to advance this timely and urgent need, by inviting researchers and practitioners in interdisciplinary domains to engage in conversation around the design of interfaces that allow people to take advantage of digital platforms in a meaningful and conscious way.

  PublisherDOI

• Reducing Risk in Digital Self-Control Tools: Design Patterns and Prototype

  2021 · 17 citations

  Senior authorCorresponding
  • Computer Science
  • Computer Science
  • Risk analysis (engineering)

  Many users take advantage of digital self-control tools to self-regulate their device usage through interventions such as timers and lockout mechanisms. One of the major challenges faced by these tools is the user reacting against their self-imposed constraints and abandoning the tool. Although lower-risk interventions would reduce the likelihood of abandonment, previous research on digital self-control tools has left this area of study relatively unexplored. In response, this paper contributes two foundational principles relating risk and effectiveness; four widely applicable novel design patterns for reducing risk of abandonment of digital self-control tools (continuously variable interventions, anti-aging design, obligatory bundling of interventions, and intermediary control systems); and a prototype digital self-control tool that implements these four low-risk design patterns.

  PublisherDOI

• Crafting an Effective Portfolio in User Experience Design

  2021-04-30 · 1 citations

  article

  In careers involving user interface/user experience (UI/UX) design, an effective portfolio is key for showcasing one’s skills and knowledge to potential employers and collaborators. In this workshop, participants will gain insights into the fundamentals of UI/UX design, elements of effective portfolio design, and tools available to create a portfolio. This will be a highly interactive session as participants will interact with faculty and graduate students as well as with each other. Participants will be given the opportunity to have their pre-existing portfolio reviewed by the faculty and graduate student presenters in addition to members of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society student chapter at the University of Virginia.

  PublisherDOI

• A Student Engagement Evaluation Methodology Inspired from Usability Engineering for Extracting Course Design Requirements

  2020 ASEE Virtual Annual Conference Content Access Proceedings · 2020 · 2 citations

  Senior authorCorresponding
  • Computer Science
  • Computer Science
  • Software engineering

  Abstract Measuring student engagement inside the classroom and developing techniques for improving it has been traditionally very challenging for educators. This research paper describes a student engagement evaluation model that combined data from three sources: in- class observations using the Behavioral Engagement Related to Instruction (BERI) protocol, one-to-one student interviews, and anonymous online surveys. We tested this model on a higher-level elective Computer Science class with 134 students, focusing on user experience (UX) design. We used the exact same usability engineering process that students employed in the course to design software products on assessing the course's effectiveness, with students acting as users and the class being the system under development. We present our exact methodology of data-driven analysis borrowed from UX design, which combines inductive reasoning (similar to narrative analysis or inductive coding) with deductive reasoning (similar to content analysis of qualitative data) used in social science research. Our paper includes a sample of the extracted requirements, similar to software non-functional requirements, which we used to redesign the course for the next semester. The results of this case study showed that the application of this mixed methods type of analysis informed by user-centered design of software systems was effective as a surrogate model of student-centered instructional design. Concluding, we extrapolate the lessons learned from this process and the significant implications we believe our industry-inspired methodology can have for engineering educators, in terms of evaluating student engagement in college classrooms.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Supporting Social Engagement for Young Audiences with Serious Games and Virtual Environments in Museums

  Springer series on cultural computing · 2018-01-01 · 16 citations

  book-chapter1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• "Pump that press!"

  2018-06-11 · 4 citations

  article1st authorCorresponding

  Museums have been long recognized as legitimate places for out-of-school learning, offering unique experiences for large student groups. However, the challenges of assessing learning and engagement outcomes using technological interventions for large audiences, often undermine the value of these practices. To address the need for understanding how learning unfolds within the context of a museum visit as an interplay between the people, the interactives, and the mediators, we conducted a design evaluation in a science museum. Our focus was understanding the impact of audience interaction on learning and engagement during collaborative games for large student groups. For the purposes of this case study we also designed a physical board game having the dual purpose of a learning activity and an assessment tool. We present the results of our observations and discourse analysis, and discuss them in the light of our previous study in public schools.

  PublisherDOI

• Evaluating Group Interaction and Engagement using Virtual Environments and Serious Games for Student Audiences in Informal Learning Settings

  VTechWorks (Virginia Tech) · 2017-04-14 · 2 citations

  dissertation1st authorCorresponding

  Museums are rich and complex learning experiences, using a variety of interactive approaches to engage their audiences. However, the largely unstructured nature of free-choice learning calls for alternative approaches that can effectively engage groups of school age students with diverse cultural backgrounds. In these informal learning spaces employing digital content, classroom-size student groups do not get adequate exposure to content and if they do, it is either through individual interactions with digital exhibits or in a passive style instruction offered by a museum docent to the whole group. This research aims to identify which elements of collocated group collaboration, virtual environments, and serious games can be leveraged for an enhanced learning experience for small and large groups of middle school students. We created a conceptual framework based on the Contextual Model of Learning in museums (John H. Falk and Dierking, 2000) and the most effective educational elements of Virtual Environments (VEs) and Serious Games, in order to increase engagement and social presence and facilitate learning. We then developed C-OLiVE (Collaborative Orchestrated Learning in Virtual Environments), an interactive virtual learning environment supporting group collaboration, which we used as a testbed to respond to our research questions. Our overall hypothesis is that synchronous, collocated, group collaboration will afford greater learning and an improved game experience compared to the conventional approaches used in these spaces so far. We ran three experiments and a case study with 790 students in private and public middle schools, summer camps, and museums both in the US and in Greece. Findings partly supported our hypothesis, mainly during our small group interaction experiments, in which simultaneous interaction of students was found to be associated with increased learning. Guidance of a passive experience was effective in facilitating the more cognitively challenged group of students in a Greek museum. Our audience interaction studies revealed increased retention of information two days after the game. Agency was found to significantly predict learning in all our studies. Engagement and social presence were mostly correlated with higher levels of involvement and agency in the game.

  Publisher

• Audience Involvement and Agency in Digital Games

  2016-06-21 · 11 citations

  article1st authorCorresponding

  One of the most popular audiences of museums is classroom-size groups of students, in the context of school field trips. However, students do not get adequate involvement during interactive group experiences, which might affect their impression and learning gained from the visit. In this paper, we present our findings from a recent study in middle schools, where 507 students were engaged with their class in a learning game about olive oil production. We had two players directly control the game and varied the level of involvement of the audience (the rest of the class), using iPads. We found that higher involvement in the game afforded greater retention of information after two days, while there was no difference after one day. Also, students with direct agency in the game revealed greater learning gains than the audience members. Results about the impact of socioeconomic status and social interactions on learning are reported, along with the most important design implications.

  PublisherDOI

Frequent coauthors

• Doug A. Bowman

  13 shared

• Sitong Wang

  Zhejiang University

  9 shared

• Bireswar Laha

  Stanford University

  4 shared

• Τhanasis Daradoumis

  University of the Aegean

  3 shared

• R. X. Schwartz

  3 shared

• Logan D. Clark

  Kansas City National Security Campus

  2 shared

• Luigi De Russis

  Polytechnic University of Turin

  2 shared

• Gregory J. Gerling

  University of Virginia

  2 shared

Education

• Ph.D., Computer Science & Applications

  Virginia Tech

  2017

Awards & honors

• Education Innovation Award, School of Engineering and Applie…
• Education Innovation Award, School of Engineering and Applie…