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171+ Most Recent And Good ICT Research Topics For Students in 2024

In the fast-changing world of technology and communication, choosing good research topics is essential for students wanting to explore this always-changing field. This list of ICT research topics for students and ideas is like a starting point for students to look into the latest advancements, tackle current problems, and contribute to how technology changes our world.

From looking at how computers learn and protect them from online threats to thinking about what’s right or wrong with new technologies, these research topics cover many interesting areas. Students can explore things like using big amounts of information to help make decisions or finding out how blockchain can keep our information safe. There’s also the chance to look at how technology affects society, like who has access to it, and think about what’s fair when using our personal information.

By looking into the best ICT research topics for students , they can learn more about technology and have a say in its development. Each research topic gives a different way to think about and solve problems, helping students get into technology and communication.

Table of Contents

What Is ICT Research Topics?

ICT research topics are basically subjects that researchers study to learn more about computers and communication. It’s a wide area that includes making computers learn and decide independently, protecting them from online problems, and figuring out how to use lots of information to make better choices.

Researchers are also looking into how to keep our information safe using a special kind of technology called blockchain. They explore the fair use of technology and study how it affects different social groups. Plus, they check out the good and bad sides of using technology daily.

By looking into these topics, researchers help us understand technology better and develop new and better ways to use it. Each topic is like a different way of thinking about and solving problems, ensuring technology improves and works well for everyone.

How Can I Find Good ICT Research Topics For Students?

Trying to find good research topics in ICT for students? Here’s a simple guide to help you out:

• Keep Updated: Stay informed about the latest things happening in the tech world. Read magazines, websites, and other sources to learn about new technologies and their challenges.
• Think About What You Like: Consider what you enjoy in the wide tech world. Whether it’s smart machines, online safety, or working with lots of data, choosing a topic you’re passionate about will keep you interested.
• Look at What Others Are Doing: Check out what scientists write about in academic sources. This can help you see what’s missing in what we know and where there’s room for more research.
• Talk to Your Friends and Teachers: Chat with your friends, classmates, and teachers. They might have ideas or opinions that can help you find an interesting question to study.
• Useful Tech Ideas: Find topics that can be useful in the real world. Think about how your research can help solve problems or make tech better.
• Read the Rules: Check if your school has any rules about the topics you can choose. Following these rules will ensure your topic fits your school’s expectations.
• Join Events: Go to tech conferences and workshops. These events often show off the newest research and might suggest what to study.
• Think and Plan: Take some time to think and make a plan. Create a map of your ideas. This can help you see how different things connect.
• Think About What’s Right: Consider what’s the right thing to do. Choose a topic that follows the rules and is considered fair and good.
• Get Advice: Ask your teachers or other trusted adults for advice once you have ideas. They can help you make your idea better.

List of Best ICT Research Topics For Students In 2024

Here are the various Best ICT Research Topics for students it is such as;

Best ICT Research Topics

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Here is the problem of ICT students for Quantitative research titles:

Sample Research Proposal Topics In Information And Communication Technology PDF

Here are the ICT research topics for students Pdf is given below:

What Are The Best Titles In Research That Are Related To Ict?

Here are some examples of titles that represent diverse aspects of ICT research:

Great ICT Research Topics for Students open doors for exploring the world of technology in ways that are interesting and useful. These topics give students chances to learn by doing, helping them understand and solve real-world problems using Information and Communication Technology (ICT). Choosing from a variety of topics allows students to focus on what they enjoy, whether it’s artificial intelligence, keeping things safe online, or looking at how technology affects our lives.

The goal of these Good ICT Research Topics for Students is to encourage creativity and smart thinking. Whether it’s understanding how tech influences society or thinking about what’s right and fair in the digital world, these topics cover a wide range. Students can pick topics that match their interests and skills.

To sum it up, Good ICT Research Topics for Students not only make learning exciting but also give students the chance to be part of shaping the future of technology. Through these research projects, students become valuable contributors to the ongoing discussions about Information and Communication Technology, making a real impact on the ever-changing world of tech.

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Impacts of digital technologies on education and factors influencing schools' digital capacity and transformation: A literature review

• Published: 21 November 2022
• Volume 28 , pages 6695–6726, ( 2023 )

Cite this article

• Stella Timotheou 1 ,
• Ourania Miliou 1 ,
• Yiannis Dimitriadis 2 ,
• Sara Villagrá Sobrino 2 ,
• Nikoleta Giannoutsou 2 ,
• Romina Cachia 3 ,
• Alejandra Martínez Monés 2 &
• Andri Ioannou   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0002-3570-6578 1  

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Digital technologies have brought changes to the nature and scope of education and led education systems worldwide to adopt strategies and policies for ICT integration. The latter brought about issues regarding the quality of teaching and learning with ICTs, especially concerning the understanding, adaptation, and design of the education systems in accordance with current technological trends. These issues were emphasized during the recent COVID-19 pandemic that accelerated the use of digital technologies in education, generating questions regarding digitalization in schools. Specifically, many schools demonstrated a lack of experience and low digital capacity, which resulted in widening gaps, inequalities, and learning losses. Such results have engendered the need for schools to learn and build upon the experience to enhance their digital capacity and preparedness, increase their digitalization levels, and achieve a successful digital transformation. Given that the integration of digital technologies is a complex and continuous process that impacts different actors within the school ecosystem, there is a need to show how these impacts are interconnected and identify the factors that can encourage an effective and efficient change in the school environments. For this purpose, we conducted a non-systematic literature review. The results of the literature review were organized thematically based on the evidence presented about the impact of digital technology on education and the factors that affect the schools’ digital capacity and digital transformation. The findings suggest that ICT integration in schools impacts more than just students’ performance; it affects several other school-related aspects and stakeholders, too. Furthermore, various factors affect the impact of digital technologies on education. These factors are interconnected and play a vital role in the digital transformation process. The study results shed light on how ICTs can positively contribute to the digital transformation of schools and which factors should be considered for schools to achieve effective and efficient change.

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1 Introduction

Digital technologies have brought changes to the nature and scope of education. Versatile and disruptive technological innovations, such as smart devices, the Internet of Things (IoT), artificial intelligence (AI), augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR), blockchain, and software applications have opened up new opportunities for advancing teaching and learning (Gaol & Prasolova-Førland, 2021 ; OECD, 2021 ). Hence, in recent years, education systems worldwide have increased their investment in the integration of information and communication technology (ICT) (Fernández-Gutiérrez et al., 2020 ; Lawrence & Tar, 2018 ) and prioritized their educational agendas to adapt strategies or policies around ICT integration (European Commission, 2019 ). The latter brought about issues regarding the quality of teaching and learning with ICTs (Bates, 2015 ), especially concerning the understanding, adaptation, and design of education systems in accordance with current technological trends (Balyer & Öz, 2018 ). Studies have shown that despite the investment made in the integration of technology in schools, the results have not been promising, and the intended outcomes have not yet been achieved (Delgado et al., 2015 ; Lawrence & Tar, 2018 ). These issues were exacerbated during the COVID-19 pandemic, which forced teaching across education levels to move online (Daniel, 2020 ). Online teaching accelerated the use of digital technologies generating questions regarding the process, the nature, the extent, and the effectiveness of digitalization in schools (Cachia et al., 2021 ; König et al., 2020 ). Specifically, many schools demonstrated a lack of experience and low digital capacity, which resulted in widening gaps, inequalities, and learning losses (Blaskó et al., 2021 ; Di Pietro et al, 2020 ). Such results have engendered the need for schools to learn and build upon the experience in order to enhance their digital capacity (European Commission, 2020 ) and increase their digitalization levels (Costa et al., 2021 ). Digitalization offers possibilities for fundamental improvement in schools (OECD, 2021 ; Rott & Marouane, 2018 ) and touches many aspects of a school’s development (Delcker & Ifenthaler, 2021 ) . However, it is a complex process that requires large-scale transformative changes beyond the technical aspects of technology and infrastructure (Pettersson, 2021 ). Namely, digitalization refers to “ a series of deep and coordinated culture, workforce, and technology shifts and operating models ” (Brooks & McCormack, 2020 , p. 3) that brings cultural, organizational, and operational change through the integration of digital technologies (JISC, 2020 ). A successful digital transformation requires that schools increase their digital capacity levels, establishing the necessary “ culture, policies, infrastructure as well as digital competence of students and staff to support the effective integration of technology in teaching and learning practices ” (Costa et al, 2021 , p.163).

Given that the integration of digital technologies is a complex and continuous process that impacts different actors within the school ecosystem (Eng, 2005 ), there is a need to show how the different elements of the impact are interconnected and to identify the factors that can encourage an effective and efficient change in the school environment. To address the issues outlined above, we formulated the following research questions:

a) What is the impact of digital technologies on education?

b) Which factors might affect a school’s digital capacity and transformation?

In the present investigation, we conducted a non-systematic literature review of publications pertaining to the impact of digital technologies on education and the factors that affect a school’s digital capacity and transformation. The results of the literature review were organized thematically based on the evidence presented about the impact of digital technology on education and the factors which affect the schools’ digital capacity and digital transformation.

2 Methodology

The non-systematic literature review presented herein covers the main theories and research published over the past 17 years on the topic. It is based on meta-analyses and review papers found in scholarly, peer-reviewed content databases and other key studies and reports related to the concepts studied (e.g., digitalization, digital capacity) from professional and international bodies (e.g., the OECD). We searched the Scopus database, which indexes various online journals in the education sector with an international scope, to collect peer-reviewed academic papers. Furthermore, we used an all-inclusive Google Scholar search to include relevant key terms or to include studies found in the reference list of the peer-reviewed papers, and other key studies and reports related to the concepts studied by professional and international bodies. Lastly, we gathered sources from the Publications Office of the European Union ( https://op.europa.eu/en/home ); namely, documents that refer to policies related to digital transformation in education.

Regarding search terms, we first searched resources on the impact of digital technologies on education by performing the following search queries: “impact” OR “effects” AND “digital technologies” AND “education”, “impact” OR “effects” AND “ICT” AND “education”. We further refined our results by adding the terms “meta-analysis” and “review” or by adjusting the search options based on the features of each database to avoid collecting individual studies that would provide limited contributions to a particular domain. We relied on meta-analyses and review studies as these consider the findings of multiple studies to offer a more comprehensive view of the research in a given area (Schuele & Justice, 2006 ). Specifically, meta-analysis studies provided quantitative evidence based on statistically verifiable results regarding the impact of educational interventions that integrate digital technologies in school classrooms (Higgins et al., 2012 ; Tolani-Brown et al., 2011 ).

However, quantitative data does not offer explanations for the challenges or difficulties experienced during ICT integration in learning and teaching (Tolani-Brown et al., 2011 ). To fill this gap, we analyzed literature reviews and gathered in-depth qualitative evidence of the benefits and implications of technology integration in schools. In the analysis presented herein, we also included policy documents and reports from professional and international bodies and governmental reports, which offered useful explanations of the key concepts of this study and provided recent evidence on digital capacity and transformation in education along with policy recommendations. The inclusion and exclusion criteria that were considered in this study are presented in Table 1 .

To ensure a reliable extraction of information from each study and assist the research synthesis we selected the study characteristics of interest (impact) and constructed coding forms. First, an overview of the synthesis was provided by the principal investigator who described the processes of coding, data entry, and data management. The coders followed the same set of instructions but worked independently. To ensure a common understanding of the process between coders, a sample of ten studies was tested. The results were compared, and the discrepancies were identified and resolved. Additionally, to ensure an efficient coding process, all coders participated in group meetings to discuss additions, deletions, and modifications (Stock, 1994 ). Due to the methodological diversity of the studied documents we began to synthesize the literature review findings based on similar study designs. Specifically, most of the meta-analysis studies were grouped in one category due to the quantitative nature of the measured impact. These studies tended to refer to student achievement (Hattie et al., 2014 ). Then, we organized the themes of the qualitative studies in several impact categories. Lastly, we synthesized both review and meta-analysis data across the categories. In order to establish a collective understanding of the concept of impact, we referred to a previous impact study by Balanskat ( 2009 ) which investigated the impact of technology in primary schools. In this context, the impact had a more specific ICT-related meaning and was described as “ a significant influence or effect of ICT on the measured or perceived quality of (parts of) education ” (Balanskat, 2009 , p. 9). In the study presented herein, the main impacts are in relation to learning and learners, teaching, and teachers, as well as other key stakeholders who are directly or indirectly connected to the school unit.

The study’s results identified multiple dimensions of the impact of digital technologies on students’ knowledge, skills, and attitudes; on equality, inclusion, and social integration; on teachers’ professional and teaching practices; and on other school-related aspects and stakeholders. The data analysis indicated various factors that might affect the schools’ digital capacity and transformation, such as digital competencies, the teachers’ personal characteristics and professional development, as well as the school’s leadership and management, administration, infrastructure, etc. The impacts and factors found in the literature review are presented below.

3.1 Impacts of digital technologies on students’ knowledge, skills, attitudes, and emotions

The impact of ICT use on students’ knowledge, skills, and attitudes has been investigated early in the literature. Eng ( 2005 ) found a small positive effect between ICT use and students' learning. Specifically, the author reported that access to computer-assisted instruction (CAI) programs in simulation or tutorial modes—used to supplement rather than substitute instruction – could enhance student learning. The author reported studies showing that teachers acknowledged the benefits of ICT on pupils with special educational needs; however, the impact of ICT on students' attainment was unclear. Balanskat et al. ( 2006 ) found a statistically significant positive association between ICT use and higher student achievement in primary and secondary education. The authors also reported improvements in the performance of low-achieving pupils. The use of ICT resulted in further positive gains for students, namely increased attention, engagement, motivation, communication and process skills, teamwork, and gains related to their behaviour towards learning. Evidence from qualitative studies showed that teachers, students, and parents recognized the positive impact of ICT on students' learning regardless of their competence level (strong/weak students). Punie et al. ( 2006 ) documented studies that showed positive results of ICT-based learning for supporting low-achieving pupils and young people with complex lives outside the education system. Liao et al. ( 2007 ) reported moderate positive effects of computer application instruction (CAI, computer simulations, and web-based learning) over traditional instruction on primary school student's achievement. Similarly, Tamim et al. ( 2011 ) reported small to moderate positive effects between the use of computer technology (CAI, ICT, simulations, computer-based instruction, digital and hypermedia) and student achievement in formal face-to-face classrooms compared to classrooms that did not use technology. Jewitt et al., ( 2011 ) found that the use of learning platforms (LPs) (virtual learning environments, management information systems, communication technologies, and information- and resource-sharing technologies) in schools allowed primary and secondary students to access a wider variety of quality learning resources, engage in independent and personalized learning, and conduct self- and peer-review; LPs also provide opportunities for teacher assessment and feedback. Similar findings were reported by Fu ( 2013 ), who documented a list of benefits and opportunities of ICT use. According to the author, the use of ICTs helps students access digital information and course content effectively and efficiently, supports student-centered and self-directed learning, as well as the development of a creative learning environment where more opportunities for critical thinking skills are offered, and promotes collaborative learning in a distance-learning environment. Higgins et al. ( 2012 ) found consistent but small positive associations between the use of technology and learning outcomes of school-age learners (5–18-year-olds) in studies linking the provision and use of technology with attainment. Additionally, Chauhan ( 2017 ) reported a medium positive effect of technology on the learning effectiveness of primary school students compared to students who followed traditional learning instruction.

The rise of mobile technologies and hardware devices instigated investigations into their impact on teaching and learning. Sung et al. ( 2016 ) reported a moderate effect on students' performance from the use of mobile devices in the classroom compared to the use of desktop computers or the non-use of mobile devices. Schmid et al. ( 2014 ) reported medium–low to low positive effects of technology integration (e.g., CAI, ICTs) in the classroom on students' achievement and attitude compared to not using technology or using technology to varying degrees. Tamim et al. ( 2015 ) found a low statistically significant effect of the use of tablets and other smart devices in educational contexts on students' achievement outcomes. The authors suggested that tablets offered additional advantages to students; namely, they reported improvements in students’ notetaking, organizational and communication skills, and creativity. Zheng et al. ( 2016 ) reported a small positive effect of one-to-one laptop programs on students’ academic achievement across subject areas. Additional reported benefits included student-centered, individualized, and project-based learning enhanced learner engagement and enthusiasm. Additionally, the authors found that students using one-to-one laptop programs tended to use technology more frequently than in non-laptop classrooms, and as a result, they developed a range of skills (e.g., information skills, media skills, technology skills, organizational skills). Haßler et al. ( 2016 ) found that most interventions that included the use of tablets across the curriculum reported positive learning outcomes. However, from 23 studies, five reported no differences, and two reported a negative effect on students' learning outcomes. Similar results were indicated by Kalati and Kim ( 2022 ) who investigated the effect of touchscreen technologies on young students’ learning. Specifically, from 53 studies, 34 advocated positive effects of touchscreen devices on children’s learning, 17 obtained mixed findings and two studies reported negative effects.

More recently, approaches that refer to the impact of gamification with the use of digital technologies on teaching and learning were also explored. A review by Pan et al. ( 2022 ) that examined the role of learning games in fostering mathematics education in K-12 settings, reported that gameplay improved students’ performance. Integration of digital games in teaching was also found as a promising pedagogical practice in STEM education that could lead to increased learning gains (Martinez et al., 2022 ; Wang et al., 2022 ). However, although Talan et al. ( 2020 ) reported a medium effect of the use of educational games (both digital and non-digital) on academic achievement, the effect of non-digital games was higher.

Over the last two years, the effects of more advanced technologies on teaching and learning were also investigated. Garzón and Acevedo ( 2019 ) found that AR applications had a medium effect on students' learning outcomes compared to traditional lectures. Similarly, Garzón et al. ( 2020 ) showed that AR had a medium impact on students' learning gains. VR applications integrated into various subjects were also found to have a moderate effect on students’ learning compared to control conditions (traditional classes, e.g., lectures, textbooks, and multimedia use, e.g., images, videos, animation, CAI) (Chen et al., 2022b ). Villena-Taranilla et al. ( 2022 ) noted the moderate effect of VR technologies on students’ learning when these were applied in STEM disciplines. In the same meta-analysis, Villena-Taranilla et al. ( 2022 ) highlighted the role of immersive VR, since its effect on students’ learning was greater (at a high level) across educational levels (K-6) compared to semi-immersive and non-immersive integrations. In another meta-analysis study, the effect size of the immersive VR was small and significantly differentiated across educational levels (Coban et al., 2022 ). The impact of AI on education was investigated by Su and Yang ( 2022 ) and Su et al. ( 2022 ), who showed that this technology significantly improved students’ understanding of AI computer science and machine learning concepts.

It is worth noting that the vast majority of studies referred to learning gains in specific subjects. Specifically, several studies examined the impact of digital technologies on students’ literacy skills and reported positive effects on language learning (Balanskat et al., 2006 ; Grgurović et al., 2013 ; Friedel et al., 2013 ; Zheng et al., 2016 ; Chen et al., 2022b ; Savva et al., 2022 ). Also, several studies documented positive effects on specific language learning areas, namely foreign language learning (Kao, 2014 ), writing (Higgins et al., 2012 ; Wen & Walters, 2022 ; Zheng et al., 2016 ), as well as reading and comprehension (Cheung & Slavin, 2011 ; Liao et al., 2007 ; Schwabe et al., 2022 ). ICTs were also found to have a positive impact on students' performance in STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) disciplines (Arztmann et al., 2022 ; Bado, 2022 ; Villena-Taranilla et al., 2022 ; Wang et al., 2022 ). Specifically, a number of studies reported positive impacts on students’ achievement in mathematics (Balanskat et al., 2006 ; Hillmayr et al., 2020 ; Li & Ma, 2010 ; Pan et al., 2022 ; Ran et al., 2022 ; Verschaffel et al., 2019 ; Zheng et al., 2016 ). Furthermore, studies documented positive effects of ICTs on science learning (Balanskat et al., 2006 ; Liao et al., 2007 ; Zheng et al., 2016 ; Hillmayr et al., 2020 ; Kalemkuş & Kalemkuş, 2022 ; Lei et al., 2022a ). Çelik ( 2022 ) also noted that computer simulations can help students understand learning concepts related to science. Furthermore, some studies documented that the use of ICTs had a positive impact on students’ achievement in other subjects, such as geography, history, music, and arts (Chauhan, 2017 ; Condie & Munro, 2007 ), and design and technology (Balanskat et al., 2006 ).

More specific positive learning gains were reported in a number of skills, e.g., problem-solving skills and pattern exploration skills (Higgins et al., 2012 ), metacognitive learning outcomes (Verschaffel et al., 2019 ), literacy skills, computational thinking skills, emotion control skills, and collaborative inquiry skills (Lu et al., 2022 ; Su & Yang, 2022 ; Su et al., 2022 ). Additionally, several investigations have reported benefits from the use of ICT on students’ creativity (Fielding & Murcia, 2022 ; Liu et al., 2022 ; Quah & Ng, 2022 ). Lastly, digital technologies were also found to be beneficial for enhancing students’ lifelong learning skills (Haleem et al., 2022 ).

Apart from gaining knowledge and skills, studies also reported improvement in motivation and interest in mathematics (Higgins et. al., 2019 ; Fadda et al., 2022 ) and increased positive achievement emotions towards several subjects during interventions using educational games (Lei et al., 2022a ). Chen et al. ( 2022a ) also reported a small but positive effect of digital health approaches in bullying and cyberbullying interventions with K-12 students, demonstrating that technology-based approaches can help reduce bullying and related consequences by providing emotional support, empowerment, and change of attitude. In their meta-review study, Su et al. ( 2022 ) also documented that AI technologies effectively strengthened students’ attitudes towards learning. In another meta-analysis, Arztmann et al. ( 2022 ) reported positive effects of digital games on motivation and behaviour towards STEM subjects.

3.2 Impacts of digital technologies on equality, inclusion and social integration

Although most of the reviewed studies focused on the impact of ICTs on students’ knowledge, skills, and attitudes, reports were also made on other aspects in the school context, such as equality, inclusion, and social integration. Condie and Munro ( 2007 ) documented research interventions investigating how ICT can support pupils with additional or special educational needs. While those interventions were relatively small scale and mostly based on qualitative data, their findings indicated that the use of ICTs enabled the development of communication, participation, and self-esteem. A recent meta-analysis (Baragash et al., 2022 ) with 119 participants with different disabilities, reported a significant overall effect size of AR on their functional skills acquisition. Koh’s meta-analysis ( 2022 ) also revealed that students with intellectual and developmental disabilities improved their competence and performance when they used digital games in the lessons.

Istenic Starcic and Bagon ( 2014 ) found that the role of ICT in inclusion and the design of pedagogical and technological interventions was not sufficiently explored in educational interventions with people with special needs; however, some benefits of ICT use were found in students’ social integration. The issue of gender and technology use was mentioned in a small number of studies. Zheng et al. ( 2016 ) reported a statistically significant positive interaction between one-to-one laptop programs and gender. Specifically, the results showed that girls and boys alike benefitted from the laptop program, but the effect on girls’ achievement was smaller than that on boys’. Along the same lines, Arztmann et al. ( 2022 ) reported no difference in the impact of game-based learning between boys and girls, arguing that boys and girls equally benefited from game-based interventions in STEM domains. However, results from a systematic review by Cussó-Calabuig et al. ( 2018 ) found limited and low-quality evidence on the effects of intensive use of computers on gender differences in computer anxiety, self-efficacy, and self-confidence. Based on their view, intensive use of computers can reduce gender differences in some areas and not in others, depending on contextual and implementation factors.

3.3 Impacts of digital technologies on teachers’ professional and teaching practices

Various research studies have explored the impact of ICT on teachers’ instructional practices and student assessment. Friedel et al. ( 2013 ) found that the use of mobile devices by students enabled teachers to successfully deliver content (e.g., mobile serious games), provide scaffolding, and facilitate synchronous collaborative learning. The integration of digital games in teaching and learning activities also gave teachers the opportunity to study and apply various pedagogical practices (Bado, 2022 ). Specifically, Bado ( 2022 ) found that teachers who implemented instructional activities in three stages (pre-game, game, and post-game) maximized students’ learning outcomes and engagement. For instance, during the pre-game stage, teachers focused on lectures and gameplay training, at the game stage teachers provided scaffolding on content, addressed technical issues, and managed the classroom activities. During the post-game stage, teachers organized activities for debriefing to ensure that the gameplay had indeed enhanced students’ learning outcomes.

Furthermore, ICT can increase efficiency in lesson planning and preparation by offering possibilities for a more collaborative approach among teachers. The sharing of curriculum plans and the analysis of students’ data led to clearer target settings and improvements in reporting to parents (Balanskat et al., 2006 ).

Additionally, the use and application of digital technologies in teaching and learning were found to enhance teachers’ digital competence. Balanskat et al. ( 2006 ) documented studies that revealed that the use of digital technologies in education had a positive effect on teachers’ basic ICT skills. The greatest impact was found on teachers with enough experience in integrating ICTs in their teaching and/or who had recently participated in development courses for the pedagogical use of technologies in teaching. Punie et al. ( 2006 ) reported that the provision of fully equipped multimedia portable computers and the development of online teacher communities had positive impacts on teachers’ confidence and competence in the use of ICTs.

Moreover, online assessment via ICTs benefits instruction. In particular, online assessments support the digitalization of students’ work and related logistics, allow teachers to gather immediate feedback and readjust to new objectives, and support the improvement of the technical quality of tests by providing more accurate results. Additionally, the capabilities of ICTs (e.g., interactive media, simulations) create new potential methods of testing specific skills, such as problem-solving and problem-processing skills, meta-cognitive skills, creativity and communication skills, and the ability to work productively in groups (Punie et al., 2006 ).

3.4 Impacts of digital technologies on other school-related aspects and stakeholders

There is evidence that the effective use of ICTs and the data transmission offered by broadband connections help improve administration (Balanskat et al., 2006 ). Specifically, ICTs have been found to provide better management systems to schools that have data gathering procedures in place. Condie and Munro ( 2007 ) reported impacts from the use of ICTs in schools in the following areas: attendance monitoring, assessment records, reporting to parents, financial management, creation of repositories for learning resources, and sharing of information amongst staff. Such data can be used strategically for self-evaluation and monitoring purposes which in turn can result in school improvements. Additionally, they reported that online access to other people with similar roles helped to reduce headteachers’ isolation by offering them opportunities to share insights into the use of ICT in learning and teaching and how it could be used to support school improvement. Furthermore, ICTs provided more efficient and successful examination management procedures, namely less time-consuming reporting processes compared to paper-based examinations and smooth communications between schools and examination authorities through electronic data exchange (Punie et al., 2006 ).

Zheng et al. ( 2016 ) reported that the use of ICTs improved home-school relationships. Additionally, Escueta et al. ( 2017 ) reported several ICT programs that had improved the flow of information from the school to parents. Particularly, they documented that the use of ICTs (learning management systems, emails, dedicated websites, mobile phones) allowed for personalized and customized information exchange between schools and parents, such as attendance records, upcoming class assignments, school events, and students’ grades, which generated positive results on students’ learning outcomes and attainment. Such information exchange between schools and families prompted parents to encourage their children to put more effort into their schoolwork.

The above findings suggest that the impact of ICT integration in schools goes beyond students’ performance in school subjects. Specifically, it affects a number of school-related aspects, such as equality and social integration, professional and teaching practices, and diverse stakeholders. In Table 2 , we summarize the different impacts of digital technologies on school stakeholders based on the literature review, while in Table 3 we organized the tools/platforms and practices/policies addressed in the meta-analyses, literature reviews, EU reports, and international bodies included in the manuscript.

Additionally, based on the results of the literature review, there are many types of digital technologies with different affordances (see, for example, studies on VR vs Immersive VR), which evolve over time (e.g. starting from CAIs in 2005 to Augmented and Virtual reality 2020). Furthermore, these technologies are linked to different pedagogies and policy initiatives, which are critical factors in the study of impact. Table 3 summarizes the different tools and practices that have been used to examine the impact of digital technologies on education since 2005 based on the review results.

3.5 Factors that affect the integration of digital technologies

Although the analysis of the literature review demonstrated different impacts of the use of digital technology on education, several authors highlighted the importance of various factors, besides the technology itself, that affect this impact. For example, Liao et al. ( 2007 ) suggested that future studies should carefully investigate which factors contribute to positive outcomes by clarifying the exact relationship between computer applications and learning. Additionally, Haßler et al., ( 2016 ) suggested that the neutral findings regarding the impact of tablets on students learning outcomes in some of the studies included in their review should encourage educators, school leaders, and school officials to further investigate the potential of such devices in teaching and learning. Several other researchers suggested that a number of variables play a significant role in the impact of ICTs on students’ learning that could be attributed to the school context, teaching practices and professional development, the curriculum, and learners’ characteristics (Underwood, 2009 ; Tamim et al., 2011 ; Higgins et al., 2012 ; Archer et al., 2014 ; Sung et al., 2016 ; Haßler et al., 2016 ; Chauhan, 2017 ; Lee et al., 2020 ; Tang et al., 2022 ).

3.5.1 Digital competencies

One of the most common challenges reported in studies that utilized digital tools in the classroom was the lack of students’ skills on how to use them. Fu ( 2013 ) found that students’ lack of technical skills is a barrier to the effective use of ICT in the classroom. Tamim et al. ( 2015 ) reported that students faced challenges when using tablets and smart mobile devices, associated with the technical issues or expertise needed for their use and the distracting nature of the devices and highlighted the need for teachers’ professional development. Higgins et al. ( 2012 ) reported that skills training about the use of digital technologies is essential for learners to fully exploit the benefits of instruction.

Delgado et al. ( 2015 ), meanwhile, reported studies that showed a strong positive association between teachers’ computer skills and students’ use of computers. Teachers’ lack of ICT skills and familiarization with technologies can become a constraint to the effective use of technology in the classroom (Balanskat et al., 2006 ; Delgado et al., 2015 ).

It is worth noting that the way teachers are introduced to ICTs affects the impact of digital technologies on education. Previous studies have shown that teachers may avoid using digital technologies due to limited digital skills (Balanskat, 2006 ), or they prefer applying “safe” technologies, namely technologies that their own teachers used and with which they are familiar (Condie & Munro, 2007 ). In this regard, the provision of digital skills training and exposure to new digital tools might encourage teachers to apply various technologies in their lessons (Condie & Munro, 2007 ). Apart from digital competence, technical support in the school setting has also been shown to affect teachers’ use of technology in their classrooms (Delgado et al., 2015 ). Ferrari et al. ( 2011 ) found that while teachers’ use of ICT is high, 75% stated that they needed more institutional support and a shift in the mindset of educational actors to achieve more innovative teaching practices. The provision of support can reduce time and effort as well as cognitive constraints, which could cause limited ICT integration in the school lessons by teachers (Escueta et al., 2017 ).

3.5.2 Teachers’ personal characteristics, training approaches, and professional development

Teachers’ personal characteristics and professional development affect the impact of digital technologies on education. Specifically, Cheok and Wong ( 2015 ) found that teachers’ personal characteristics (e.g., anxiety, self-efficacy) are associated with their satisfaction and engagement with technology. Bingimlas ( 2009 ) reported that lack of confidence, resistance to change, and negative attitudes in using new technologies in teaching are significant determinants of teachers’ levels of engagement in ICT. The same author reported that the provision of technical support, motivation support (e.g., awards, sufficient time for planning), and training on how technologies can benefit teaching and learning can eliminate the above barriers to ICT integration. Archer et al. ( 2014 ) found that comfort levels in using technology are an important predictor of technology integration and argued that it is essential to provide teachers with appropriate training and ongoing support until they are comfortable with using ICTs in the classroom. Hillmayr et al. ( 2020 ) documented that training teachers on ICT had an important effecton students’ learning.

According to Balanskat et al. ( 2006 ), the impact of ICTs on students’ learning is highly dependent on the teachers’ capacity to efficiently exploit their application for pedagogical purposes. Results obtained from the Teaching and Learning International Survey (TALIS) (OECD, 2021 ) revealed that although schools are open to innovative practices and have the capacity to adopt them, only 39% of teachers in the European Union reported that they are well or very well prepared to use digital technologies for teaching. Li and Ma ( 2010 ) and Hardman ( 2019 ) showed that the positive effect of technology on students’ achievement depends on the pedagogical practices used by teachers. Schmid et al. ( 2014 ) reported that learning was best supported when students were engaged in active, meaningful activities with the use of technological tools that provided cognitive support. Tamim et al. ( 2015 ) compared two different pedagogical uses of tablets and found a significant moderate effect when the devices were used in a student-centered context and approach rather than within teacher-led environments. Similarly, Garzón and Acevedo ( 2019 ) and Garzón et al. ( 2020 ) reported that the positive results from the integration of AR applications could be attributed to the existence of different variables which could influence AR interventions (e.g., pedagogical approach, learning environment, and duration of the intervention). Additionally, Garzón et al. ( 2020 ) suggested that the pedagogical resources that teachers used to complement their lectures and the pedagogical approaches they applied were crucial to the effective integration of AR on students’ learning gains. Garzón and Acevedo ( 2019 ) also emphasized that the success of a technology-enhanced intervention is based on both the technology per se and its characteristics and on the pedagogical strategies teachers choose to implement. For instance, their results indicated that the collaborative learning approach had the highest impact on students’ learning gains among other approaches (e.g., inquiry-based learning, situated learning, or project-based learning). Ran et al. ( 2022 ) also found that the use of technology to design collaborative and communicative environments showed the largest moderator effects among the other approaches.

Hattie ( 2008 ) reported that the effective use of computers is associated with training teachers in using computers as a teaching and learning tool. Zheng et al. ( 2016 ) noted that in addition to the strategies teachers adopt in teaching, ongoing professional development is also vital in ensuring the success of technology implementation programs. Sung et al. ( 2016 ) found that research on the use of mobile devices to support learning tends to report that the insufficient preparation of teachers is a major obstacle in implementing effective mobile learning programs in schools. Friedel et al. ( 2013 ) found that providing training and support to teachers increased the positive impact of the interventions on students’ learning gains. Trucano ( 2005 ) argued that positive impacts occur when digital technologies are used to enhance teachers’ existing pedagogical philosophies. Higgins et al. ( 2012 ) found that the types of technologies used and how they are used could also affect students’ learning. The authors suggested that training and professional development of teachers that focuses on the effective pedagogical use of technology to support teaching and learning is an important component of successful instructional approaches (Higgins et al., 2012 ). Archer et al. ( 2014 ) found that studies that reported ICT interventions during which teachers received training and support had moderate positive effects on students’ learning outcomes, which were significantly higher than studies where little or no detail about training and support was mentioned. Fu ( 2013 ) reported that the lack of teachers’ knowledge and skills on the technical and instructional aspects of ICT use in the classroom, in-service training, pedagogy support, technical and financial support, as well as the lack of teachers’ motivation and encouragement to integrate ICT on their teaching were significant barriers to the integration of ICT in education.

3.5.3 School leadership and management

Management and leadership are important cornerstones in the digital transformation process (Pihir et al., 2018 ). Zheng et al. ( 2016 ) documented leadership among the factors positively affecting the successful implementation of technology integration in schools. Strong leadership, strategic planning, and systematic integration of digital technologies are prerequisites for the digital transformation of education systems (Ređep, 2021 ). Management and leadership play a significant role in formulating policies that are translated into practice and ensure that developments in ICT become embedded into the life of the school and in the experiences of staff and pupils (Condie & Munro, 2007 ). Policy support and leadership must include the provision of an overall vision for the use of digital technologies in education, guidance for students and parents, logistical support, as well as teacher training (Conrads et al., 2017 ). Unless there is a commitment throughout the school, with accountability for progress at key points, it is unlikely for ICT integration to be sustained or become part of the culture (Condie & Munro, 2007 ). To achieve this, principals need to adopt and promote a whole-institution strategy and build a strong mutual support system that enables the school’s technological maturity (European Commission, 2019 ). In this context, school culture plays an essential role in shaping the mindsets and beliefs of school actors towards successful technology integration. Condie and Munro ( 2007 ) emphasized the importance of the principal’s enthusiasm and work as a source of inspiration for the school staff and the students to cultivate a culture of innovation and establish sustainable digital change. Specifically, school leaders need to create conditions in which the school staff is empowered to experiment and take risks with technology (Elkordy & Lovinelli, 2020 ).

In order for leaders to achieve the above, it is important to develop capacities for learning and leading, advocating professional learning, and creating support systems and structures (European Commission, 2019 ). Digital technology integration in education systems can be challenging and leadership needs guidance to achieve it. Such guidance can be introduced through the adoption of new methods and techniques in strategic planning for the integration of digital technologies (Ređep, 2021 ). Even though the role of leaders is vital, the relevant training offered to them has so far been inadequate. Specifically, only a third of the education systems in Europe have put in place national strategies that explicitly refer to the training of school principals (European Commission, 2019 , p. 16).

3.5.4 Connectivity, infrastructure, and government and other support

The effective integration of digital technologies across levels of education presupposes the development of infrastructure, the provision of digital content, and the selection of proper resources (Voogt et al., 2013 ). Particularly, a high-quality broadband connection in the school increases the quality and quantity of educational activities. There is evidence that ICT increases and formalizes cooperative planning between teachers and cooperation with managers, which in turn has a positive impact on teaching practices (Balanskat et al., 2006 ). Additionally, ICT resources, including software and hardware, increase the likelihood of teachers integrating technology into the curriculum to enhance their teaching practices (Delgado et al., 2015 ). For example, Zheng et al. ( 2016 ) found that the use of one-on-one laptop programs resulted in positive changes in teaching and learning, which would not have been accomplished without the infrastructure and technical support provided to teachers. Delgado et al. ( 2015 ) reported that limited access to technology (insufficient computers, peripherals, and software) and lack of technical support are important barriers to ICT integration. Access to infrastructure refers not only to the availability of technology in a school but also to the provision of a proper amount and the right types of technology in locations where teachers and students can use them. Effective technical support is a central element of the whole-school strategy for ICT (Underwood, 2009 ). Bingimlas ( 2009 ) reported that lack of technical support in the classroom and whole-school resources (e.g., failing to connect to the Internet, printers not printing, malfunctioning computers, and working on old computers) are significant barriers that discourage the use of ICT by teachers. Moreover, poor quality and inadequate hardware maintenance, and unsuitable educational software may discourage teachers from using ICTs (Balanskat et al., 2006 ; Bingimlas, 2009 ).

Government support can also impact the integration of ICTs in teaching. Specifically, Balanskat et al. ( 2006 ) reported that government interventions and training programs increased teachers’ enthusiasm and positive attitudes towards ICT and led to the routine use of embedded ICT.

Lastly, another important factor affecting digital transformation is the development and quality assurance of digital learning resources. Such resources can be support textbooks and related materials or resources that focus on specific subjects or parts of the curriculum. Policies on the provision of digital learning resources are essential for schools and can be achieved through various actions. For example, some countries are financing web portals that become repositories, enabling teachers to share resources or create their own. Additionally, they may offer e-learning opportunities or other services linked to digital education. In other cases, specific agencies of projects have also been set up to develop digital resources (Eurydice, 2019 ).

3.5.5 Administration and digital data management

The digital transformation of schools involves organizational improvements at the level of internal workflows, communication between the different stakeholders, and potential for collaboration. Vuorikari et al. ( 2020 ) presented evidence that digital technologies supported the automation of administrative practices in schools and reduced the administration’s workload. There is evidence that digital data affects the production of knowledge about schools and has the power to transform how schooling takes place. Specifically, Sellar ( 2015 ) reported that data infrastructure in education is developing due to the demand for “ information about student outcomes, teacher quality, school performance, and adult skills, associated with policy efforts to increase human capital and productivity practices ” (p. 771). In this regard, practices, such as datafication which refers to the “ translation of information about all kinds of things and processes into quantified formats” have become essential for decision-making based on accountability reports about the school’s quality. The data could be turned into deep insights about education or training incorporating ICTs. For example, measuring students’ online engagement with the learning material and drawing meaningful conclusions can allow teachers to improve their educational interventions (Vuorikari et al., 2020 ).

3.5.6 Students’ socioeconomic background and family support

Research show that the active engagement of parents in the school and their support for the school’s work can make a difference to their children’s attitudes towards learning and, as a result, their achievement (Hattie, 2008 ). In recent years, digital technologies have been used for more effective communication between school and family (Escueta et al., 2017 ). The European Commission ( 2020 ) presented data from a Eurostat survey regarding the use of computers by students during the pandemic. The data showed that younger pupils needed additional support and guidance from parents and the challenges were greater for families in which parents had lower levels of education and little to no digital skills.

In this regard, the socio-economic background of the learners and their socio-cultural environment also affect educational achievements (Punie et al., 2006 ). Trucano documented that the use of computers at home positively influenced students’ confidence and resulted in more frequent use at school, compared to students who had no home access (Trucano, 2005 ). In this sense, the socio-economic background affects the access to computers at home (OECD, 2015 ) which in turn influences the experience of ICT, an important factor for school achievement (Punie et al., 2006 ; Underwood, 2009 ). Furthermore, parents from different socio-economic backgrounds may have different abilities and availability to support their children in their learning process (Di Pietro et al., 2020 ).

3.5.7 Schools’ socioeconomic context and emergency situations

The socio-economic context of the school is closely related to a school’s digital transformation. For example, schools in disadvantaged, rural, or deprived areas are likely to lack the digital capacity and infrastructure required to adapt to the use of digital technologies during emergency periods, such as the COVID-19 pandemic (Di Pietro et al., 2020 ). Data collected from school principals confirmed that in several countries, there is a rural/urban divide in connectivity (OECD, 2015 ).

Emergency periods also affect the digitalization of schools. The COVID-19 pandemic led to the closure of schools and forced them to seek appropriate and connective ways to keep working on the curriculum (Di Pietro et al., 2020 ). The sudden large-scale shift to distance and online teaching and learning also presented challenges around quality and equity in education, such as the risk of increased inequalities in learning, digital, and social, as well as teachers facing difficulties coping with this demanding situation (European Commission, 2020 ).

Looking at the findings of the above studies, we can conclude that the impact of digital technologies on education is influenced by various actors and touches many aspects of the school ecosystem. Figure  1 summarizes the factors affecting the digital technologies’ impact on school stakeholders based on the findings from the literature review.

Factors that affect the impact of ICTs on education

4 Discussion

The findings revealed that the use of digital technologies in education affects a variety of actors within a school’s ecosystem. First, we observed that as technologies evolve, so does the interest of the research community to apply them to school settings. Figure  2 summarizes the trends identified in current research around the impact of digital technologies on schools’ digital capacity and transformation as found in the present study. Starting as early as 2005, when computers, simulations, and interactive boards were the most commonly applied tools in school interventions (e.g., Eng, 2005 ; Liao et al., 2007 ; Moran et al., 2008 ; Tamim et al., 2011 ), moving towards the use of learning platforms (Jewitt et al., 2011 ), then to the use of mobile devices and digital games (e.g., Tamim et al., 2015 ; Sung et al., 2016 ; Talan et al., 2020 ), as well as e-books (e.g., Savva et al., 2022 ), to the more recent advanced technologies, such as AR and VR applications (e.g., Garzón & Acevedo, 2019 ; Garzón et al., 2020 ; Kalemkuş & Kalemkuş, 2022 ), or robotics and AI (e.g., Su & Yang, 2022 ; Su et al., 2022 ). As this evolution shows, digital technologies are a concept in flux with different affordances and characteristics. Additionally, from an instructional perspective, there has been a growing interest in different modes and models of content delivery such as online, blended, and hybrid modes (e.g., Cheok & Wong, 2015 ; Kazu & Yalçin, 2022 ; Ulum, 2022 ). This is an indication that the value of technologies to support teaching and learning as well as other school-related practices is increasingly recognized by the research and school community. The impact results from the literature review indicate that ICT integration on students’ learning outcomes has effects that are small (Coban et al., 2022 ; Eng, 2005 ; Higgins et al., 2012 ; Schmid et al., 2014 ; Tamim et al., 2015 ; Zheng et al., 2016 ) to moderate (Garzón & Acevedo, 2019 ; Garzón et al., 2020 ; Liao et al., 2007 ; Sung et al., 2016 ; Talan et al., 2020 ; Wen & Walters, 2022 ). That said, a number of recent studies have reported high effect sizes (e.g., Kazu & Yalçin, 2022 ).

Current work and trends in the study of the impact of digital technologies on schools’ digital capacity

Based on these findings, several authors have suggested that the impact of technology on education depends on several variables and not on the technology per se (Tamim et al., 2011 ; Higgins et al., 2012 ; Archer et al., 2014 ; Sung et al., 2016 ; Haßler et al., 2016 ; Chauhan, 2017 ; Lee et al., 2020 ; Lei et al., 2022a ). While the impact of ICTs on student achievement has been thoroughly investigated by researchers, other aspects related to school life that are also affected by ICTs, such as equality, inclusion, and social integration have received less attention. Further analysis of the literature review has revealed a greater investment in ICT interventions to support learning and teaching in the core subjects of literacy and STEM disciplines, especially mathematics, and science. These were the most common subjects studied in the reviewed papers often drawing on national testing results, while studies that investigated other subject areas, such as social studies, were limited (Chauhan, 2017 ; Condie & Munro, 2007 ). As such, research is still lacking impact studies that focus on the effects of ICTs on a range of curriculum subjects.

The qualitative research provided additional information about the impact of digital technologies on education, documenting positive effects and giving more details about implications, recommendations, and future research directions. Specifically, the findings regarding the role of ICTs in supporting learning highlight the importance of teachers’ instructional practice and the learning context in the use of technologies and consequently their impact on instruction (Çelik, 2022 ; Schmid et al., 2014 ; Tamim et al., 2015 ). The review also provided useful insights regarding the various factors that affect the impact of digital technologies on education. These factors are interconnected and play a vital role in the transformation process. Specifically, these factors include a) digital competencies; b) teachers’ personal characteristics and professional development; c) school leadership and management; d) connectivity, infrastructure, and government support; e) administration and data management practices; f) students’ socio-economic background and family support and g) the socioeconomic context of the school and emergency situations. It is worth noting that we observed factors that affect the integration of ICTs in education but may also be affected by it. For example, the frequent use of ICTs and the use of laptops by students for instructional purposes positively affect the development of digital competencies (Zheng et al., 2016 ) and at the same time, the digital competencies affect the use of ICTs (Fu, 2013 ; Higgins et al., 2012 ). As a result, the impact of digital technologies should be explored more as an enabler of desirable and new practices and not merely as a catalyst that improves the output of the education process i.e. namely student attainment.

5 Conclusions

Digital technologies offer immense potential for fundamental improvement in schools. However, investment in ICT infrastructure and professional development to improve school education are yet to provide fruitful results. Digital transformation is a complex process that requires large-scale transformative changes that presuppose digital capacity and preparedness. To achieve such changes, all actors within the school’s ecosystem need to share a common vision regarding the integration of ICTs in education and work towards achieving this goal. Our literature review, which synthesized quantitative and qualitative data from a list of meta-analyses and review studies, provided useful insights into the impact of ICTs on different school stakeholders and showed that the impact of digital technologies touches upon many different aspects of school life, which are often overlooked when the focus is on student achievement as the final output of education. Furthermore, the concept of digital technologies is a concept in flux as technologies are not only different among them calling for different uses in the educational practice but they also change through time. Additionally, we opened a forum for discussion regarding the factors that affect a school’s digital capacity and transformation. We hope that our study will inform policy, practice, and research and result in a paradigm shift towards more holistic approaches in impact and assessment studies.

6 Study limitations and future directions

We presented a review of the study of digital technologies' impact on education and factors influencing schools’ digital capacity and transformation. The study results were based on a non-systematic literature review grounded on the acquisition of documentation in specific databases. Future studies should investigate more databases to corroborate and enhance our results. Moreover, search queries could be enhanced with key terms that could provide additional insights about the integration of ICTs in education, such as “policies and strategies for ICT integration in education”. Also, the study drew information from meta-analyses and literature reviews to acquire evidence about the effects of ICT integration in schools. Such evidence was mostly based on the general conclusions of the studies. It is worth mentioning that, we located individual studies which showed different, such as negative or neutral results. Thus, further insights are needed about the impact of ICTs on education and the factors influencing the impact. Furthermore, the nature of the studies included in meta-analyses and reviews is different as they are based on different research methodologies and data gathering processes. For instance, in a meta-analysis, the impact among the studies investigated is measured in a particular way, depending on policy or research targets (e.g., results from national examinations, pre-/post-tests). Meanwhile, in literature reviews, qualitative studies offer additional insights and detail based on self-reports and research opinions on several different aspects and stakeholders who could affect and be affected by ICT integration. As a result, it was challenging to draw causal relationships between so many interrelating variables.

Despite the challenges mentioned above, this study envisaged examining school units as ecosystems that consist of several actors by bringing together several variables from different research epistemologies to provide an understanding of the integration of ICTs. However, the use of other tools and methodologies and models for evaluation of the impact of digital technologies on education could give more detailed data and more accurate results. For instance, self-reflection tools, like SELFIE—developed on the DigCompOrg framework- (Kampylis et al., 2015 ; Bocconi & Lightfoot, 2021 ) can help capture a school’s digital capacity and better assess the impact of ICTs on education. Furthermore, the development of a theory of change could be a good approach for documenting the impact of digital technologies on education. Specifically, theories of change are models used for the evaluation of interventions and their impact; they are developed to describe how interventions will work and give the desired outcomes (Mayne, 2015 ). Theory of change as a methodological approach has also been used by researchers to develop models for evaluation in the field of education (e.g., Aromatario et al., 2019 ; Chapman & Sammons, 2013 ; De Silva et al., 2014 ).

We also propose that future studies aim at similar investigations by applying more holistic approaches for impact assessment that can provide in-depth data about the impact of digital technologies on education. For instance, future studies could focus on different research questions about the technologies that are used during the interventions or the way the implementation takes place (e.g., What methodologies are used for documenting impact? How are experimental studies implemented? How can teachers be taken into account and trained on the technology and its functions? What are the elements of an appropriate and successful implementation? How is the whole intervention designed? On which learning theories is the technology implementation based?).

Future research could also focus on assessing the impact of digital technologies on various other subjects since there is a scarcity of research related to particular subjects, such as geography, history, arts, music, and design and technology. More research should also be done about the impact of ICTs on skills, emotions, and attitudes, and on equality, inclusion, social interaction, and special needs education. There is also a need for more research about the impact of ICTs on administration, management, digitalization, and home-school relationships. Additionally, although new forms of teaching and learning with the use of ICTs (e.g., blended, hybrid, and online learning) have initiated several investigations in mainstream classrooms, only a few studies have measured their impact on students’ learning. Additionally, our review did not document any study about the impact of flipped classrooms on K-12 education. Regarding teaching and learning approaches, it is worth noting that studies referred to STEM or STEAM did not investigate the impact of STEM/STEAM as an interdisciplinary approach to learning but only investigated the impact of ICTs on learning in each domain as a separate subject (science, technology, engineering, arts, mathematics). Hence, we propose future research to also investigate the impact of the STEM/STEAM approach on education. The impact of emerging technologies on education, such as AR, VR, robotics, and AI has also been investigated recently, but more work needs to be done.

Finally, we propose that future studies could focus on the way in which specific factors, e.g., infrastructure and government support, school leadership and management, students’ and teachers’ digital competencies, approaches teachers utilize in the teaching and learning (e.g., blended, online and hybrid learning, flipped classrooms, STEM/STEAM approach, project-based learning, inquiry-based learning), affect the impact of digital technologies on education. We hope that future studies will give detailed insights into the concept of schools’ digital transformation through further investigation of impacts and factors which influence digital capacity and transformation based on the results and the recommendations of the present study.

Data availability statement

Data sharing not applicable to this article as no datasets were generated or analysed during the current study.

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This project has received funding under Grant Agreement No Ref Ares (2021) 339036 7483039 as well as funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Program under Grant Agreement No 739578 and the Government of the Republic of Cyprus through the Deputy Ministry of Research, Innovation and Digital Policy. The UVa co-authors would like also to acknowledge funding from the European Regional Development Fund and the National Research Agency of the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation, under project grant PID2020-112584RB-C32.

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Timotheou, S., Miliou, O., Dimitriadis, Y. et al. Impacts of digital technologies on education and factors influencing schools' digital capacity and transformation: A literature review. Educ Inf Technol 28 , 6695–6726 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10639-022-11431-8

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The relationship between students’ use of ICT for social communication and their computer and information literacy

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This study investigates the relationship between students’ use of information and communication technology (ICT) for social communication and their computer and information literacy (CIL) scores. It also examines whether gender and socioeconomic background moderates this relationship. We utilized student data from IEA’s International Computer and Information Study (ICILS) to build multivariate regression models for answering the research questions, and accounted for the complex sample structure of the data by using weights for all statistical analyses, employing jackknife repeated replication for variance estimation. Students who frequently use the internet for messaging and participation in social networks (i.e., at least once a week) scored on average 44 points higher than those who use ICT for the same purpose only less than once a week or never. The direction of this effect was the same in all 21 participating educational systems, the difference ranging from 19 to 75 points (always statistically significant). We continued the analysis by testing whether the relationship is moderated by gender; as girls use more often ICT for social communication and have higher CIL scores on average. After controlling for the gender effect the CIL scores between the two examined groups decreased only by 2 points on average. Even after including students’ socio-economic background into the model, the difference in CIL between the two groups of interest declined only little—to 32 points on average across all countries. The difference remained to be statistically significant in all countries but one. The results suggest a strong relationship between students’ CIL proficiency level and the frequency of their use of electronic devices for social communication; hence, respective skills needed at schools and later on at the workplace are reflected in their use outside of school and for socializing.

Purpose, significance of research and theoretical frame work

In the last decades we encountered rapid developments in information and communication technologies. The inclusion of the worldwide web into daily life brought new and important implications also for education. Most of the schools and educational systems started providing extensive computer networks for their students and these are increasingly becoming main components of the teaching and learning environment, but so far little is known about the effectiveness and use of these technologies (Fraillon et al. 2014 ). Conclusions from research carried out in the field are partly contradictory. Many authors who examined computer use and student achievement found they were positively related (e.g., Becker 1994 ; Hativa 1994 ; Kozma 1991 ; Kulik and Kulik 1987 ; Liao 1992 ; Osunade 2003 ; Ryan 1991 ; Van Dusen and Worthren 1994 ; James and Lamb 2000 ; Attewell and Battle 1999 ; Sivin-Kachala 1998 ; Weaver 2000 ; Weller 1996 ; Wenglinsky 1998 ). Wen et al. ( 2002 ) suggest that there is a positive relationship between the number of computers available at school and students’ science achievement. Alspaugh ( 1999 ) reports that computer use has no effect on students’ achievement in reading, mathematics, science or social studies. There is also a number of studies that identified negative relationships between computer use and student achievement (Ravitz et al. 2002 ; Papanastasiou 2002 , 2003 ). Papanastasiou ( 2002 ) who analysed the results of TIMSS, found a negative relationship between computer use and achievement in a number of countries such as Cyprus, Hong Kong and United States of America. According to this study, students who use computers most frequently in the classroom were lowest achievers in TIMSS in 1995. Papanastasiou ( 2003 ) and Papanastasiou et al. ( 2005 ) found that computer use does not have a positive nor negative effect on students’ science achievement based on PISA results, but the way of computer use affects science achievement.

Most of the international studies focused so far on the relation of ICT use and students’ competencies in reading, science and mathematics. The amount of research dedicated on computer and information literacy is very limited and most studies examine mainly internet access and online use (Olafsson et al. 2014 ). In the computer and information literacy (CIL) area, the first cross-national study is ICILS (Fraillon et al. 2014 ). It assesses the extent to which students know about, understand, and are able to use information and communication technology (ICT). The main purpose of ICILS is to determine how well students are prepared for study, work and life in the digital age. With the information age the term “digital natives” was coined for the generation born in the early 1980s, also referred to as the first members of the millennial generation (Prensky 2001 ). In his article, Prensky claimed that “the arrival and rapid dissemination of digital technology in the last decade of the twentieth century” had changed the way students think and process information, making it difficult for them to excel academically being exposed to outdated teaching methods. However, according to the ICILS results, although students have had an increased amount of exposure to technology, it does not necessarily imply that they are digital natives. In all the participating countries, on average 17 % of the students did not even achieve the lowest level of CIL determined by the study. On average, only 2 % of the students achieved the highest level with a maximum of 5 % in Korea (Fraillon et al. 2014 ). Footnote 1

This finding raises the question how so called digital natives use twenty first century technology in daily life. It is known from the literature that age plays a significant role in the usage of computers and internet. As shown in Fig.  1 (Zichuhr and Madden 2012 ), and Fig.  2 (TurkStat 2014 ) below, there was a steady increase in internet use across all age groups in Turkey and the US. In the beginning of the current century, however, the younger age groups use internet more often compared to the older age groups in both countries.

(Source: Zichuhr and Madden 2012 )

Internet use by age group in America, 2000–2012

(Source: TurkStat 2014 )

Internet use by age group in Turkey, 2004–2014

In most European countries, as shown in Fig.  3 , more than 80 % of young people (aged 16–29) used a computer on a daily basis. In all countries, percentages of the daily use of computers among young people is higher than for the whole population (Eurostat 2014 ).

Source: Eurostat ( 2014 )

Proportion of people who used a computer on a daily basis, 2014 (%).

Further, literature suggests that many children engage in a wide range of online activities. ICT use by students has expanded to Internet, e-mail, chat, programming, graphics, spreadsheet, online shopping, online searching for literature and other educational materials. The students mostly use ICT for general purposes, i.e., communication, word processing, entertainment, etc. rather than for educational means (Mahmood 2009 ). According to Olafsson et al. ( 2014 ), the most common online activities of 9–16 years olds in Europe are: using internet for school work (85 %), playing games (83 %), watching video clips (76 %) and instant messaging (62 %). Communication via the internet is ubiquitous; often schoolwork is accompanied by chatting and texting. A study published by Gokcearslan and Seferoglu ( 2005 ) showed that—at that time—Turkish students’ main focus is on playing games instead on learning activities.

The internet use has high rates among young people when it is compared to the whole population in the EU-28 for basic skills such as using a search engine (94 %) or sending an e-mail with attachments (87 %), while more than two-thirds of young people posted messages online (72 %), just over half used the internet for calling people (53 %) and around one-third (32 %) used peer-to-peer file sharing services. The proportion of young people of posting messages online was 34 percentage points higher than the average for the whole population (Eurostat 2014 ; Fig.  4 ).

(data from 2013; source: Eurostat 2014 )

Proportion of people who used selected internet skills, EU-28

Already in 2003 Prensky reported that young Americans talk more than 10.000 h on the phone and send more than 200.000 e-mails and text messages until the age of 21. A study conducted in the US found that 80 % of online teens use social network sites, Facebook being the most popular, with 93 % of those teens reporting its use (Lenhart 2012 ). In 2014, according to number of active users, Facebook is the most popular social media platform with 1184 billion users (Digital/Ajanslar 2014 ). In 2015, Facebook is still most popular social media platform among young people and 71 % of all teens from 13 to 17 use Facebook, 52 % of them use Instagram and 41 % use Snapchat. (Pew Research Center 2015 )

“The use of social networks among children research report” focused on the use of social media among 9–16 year olds in Turkey showed that 85 % of students have computers at home, 70 % of all students get online at least once a day and 66 % use social media at least once a day, spending 72 min on average. This shows that most of the time spent on internet is dedicated to social media. The same study shows that 99 % of the children who have a social media account use Facebook. 60 % of the children reported that they don’t study enough because of spending too much time on Facebook, 25 % of them said that they spend less time with their parents and friends (TIB 2011 ).

The most common online social activities for young people in the EU-28 in 2014 included sending and receiving e-mails (86 %) and participating on social networking sites (82 %)—for example, Facebook or Twitter, by creating a user profile, posting messages or making other contributions—while close to half (47 %) of all young people in the EU-28 uploaded self-created content, such as photos, videos or text to the internet (Eurostat 2014 ).

Summarizing the literature, the high importance of students’ use of ICT for social communication in their daily life is evident. But does this type of ICT use enhance students’ CIL skills? Or, does it even rather have a negative effect, because less time remains for “worthwhile” computer usage, such as learning activities? This study examines the relationship between students’ use of ICT for social communication and their computer and information literacy and attempts to contribute to a deeper understanding of this relationship.

Methods and data sources

Students’ data of ICILS was used to explore the hypotheses. ICILS gathered data from almost 60,000 Grade 8 (or equivalent) students and 35,000 teachers in more than 3300 schools from 21 countries or education systems within countries. These data were augmented by contextual data collected from school ICT-coordinators, school principals, and the ICILS national research centres.

Students completed a computer-based test of CIL that consisted of questions and tasks presented in four 30-min modules. Each student completed two modules randomly allocated from the set of four so that the total assessment time for each student was 1 h.

After completing the two test modules, students answered (again on computer) a 30-min questionnaire. It included questions relating to students’ background characteristics, their experience and use of computers and ICT to complete a range of different tasks in school and out of school, and their attitudes toward using computers and ICT (Fraillon et al. 2014 ).

IEA’s IDB Analyzer was utilized for all statistical analyses, including the estimation of percentages, means and regression models. The IDB analyzer takes the complex data structure of ICILS data into account by applying sampling weights and employing jackknife repeated replication for variance estimation. Comparisons between dependent samples were conducted using regression models in order to account for the covariance between the comparative groups.

Analysis results

We first analysed the relationship between students’ CIL score and their use of ICT for social communication. In the ICILS study, the student questionnaire included three questions that require students to rate the frequencies of their use of ICT applications. From these questions four scales were derived. One of them was “Students’ use of ICT for Social Communication” (S_USECOM). The students were asked to identify the frequency with which they were using the internet for various communication and information exchange activities outside of school. The response categories were “never”, “less than once a month”, “at least once a week but not every day” and “every day”. S_USECOM had an average reliability of 0.74 (Fraillon et al. 2015 ).

The index variable (“S_USECOM”) consists of the following items:

How often do you use the Internet outside of school for each of the following activities?

Posting comments to online profiles or blogs.

Uploading images or videos to an [online profile] or [online community] (for example. Facebook or YouTube).

Using voice chat (for example Skype) to chat with friends or family online.

Communicating with others using messaging or social networks [for example instant messaging or (status updates)].

We could identify indeed a relationship between students’ CIL score and their use of ICT for social communication: in all educational systems participating in ICILS (further for simplicity referred to as “countries”), the CIL score increased along with an increase of students’ scale score in “Use of ICT for social communication”. This relationship was statistically significant in 16 out of 21 countries. However, the relation was weak; the explained variance of the CIL score was less than 10 % in most countries. We continued the analysis by investigating further the relationship between CIL and each of the four variables constructing the scale score for “Use of ICT for social communication”.

Posting comments to online profiles or blogs

There were no consistent patterns for relations between the reported frequencies for this variable in most countries except for Chile, Thailand and Turkey—the countries with relatively low CIL average scores. In these three countries, the CIL score increased along with an increasing frequency of postings.

Uploading images or videos to an [online profile] or [online community] (for example. facebook or youtube)

Interestingly, students with a medium frequency of ICT use for uploading images or videos had an average CIL score of 20 more points than those who reported to either never do that or do it every day. This pattern could be observed in all countries and was statistically significant in all countries but three (Republic of Korea, Turkey, Canada—Newfoundland and Labrador).

Using voice chat (for example Skype) to chat with friends or family online

No clear patterns could be identified for relationships between the CIL scores and frequencies of ICT usage for voice chats.

Communicating with others using messaging or social networks [for example instant messaging or (status updates)]

Apparently this variable had the closest relationship with CIL among the variables constructing the index variable (“S_USECOM”): as shown in Fig.  5 , the more frequent students use ICT for communication using messaging or social networks the higher was their CIL score, a finding that generally holds in all countries. Looking at the cross-country average, mean CIL scores of students who never use the internet for communication are as low as 463 points while are as high as 522 points for students who do that on a daily basis (see Table  1 ).

Average CIL scores by ICT use for communicating with others using messaging or social networks

For further in-depth analysis we decided to simplify the data by collapsing categories, resulting in a dichotomous variable. The split was taken between the response categories where the difference in CIL scores was the greatest. Referring to the patterns visible in Fig.  5 , CIL scores of students reporting to use ICT for communication at least once a week or even every day were rather close to each other; also, no large differences in CIL scores occurred for students using ICT for communication less than once a week (or never). Therefore we collapsed the respective categories accordingly. This procedure split the countries’ target populations into two groups of varying proportions, as can be seen in Fig.  6 . On average, three-fourth of the students use the Internet for communication more than once a week. This proportion is less in Thailand and Turkey.

Proportion of students by use of ICT for communicating with others using messaging or social networks

Comparing the resulting two groups of students, we found an average difference in CIL scores of 44 points on favor of students using ICT for social communication more frequently. The direction of the effect was the same in all countries and ranged from 19 points difference in Switzerland to as much as 75 points in the Slovak Republic (refer to Table  2 , Model 1, coefficients of E-communication). In all countries, the difference was found to be statistically significant. Since these results were rather striking, we wondered if this effect was moderated by other variables. Consequently we set up various multivariate regression models in order to control for such effects.

Gender as moderating variable

It is known from the literature that girls spend on average more time on social network sites and use them more actively than boys (Duggan and Brenner 2013 ). Lenhart ( 2012 ) reported that some 95 % of teenagers use the internet in the US. 42 % of girls who use the internet report to video-chat, while only about a third of boys engage in that activity. Girls are also more active in their texting and mobile communication behaviours (Lenhart et al. 2010 ). Our own study confirms this finding for all ICILS countries as can be seen in Fig.  7 — except for Turkey. Interestingly, in Turkey (highlighted by the black arrow in Fig.  7 ) boys report to use the Internet for social communication more often than girls. The differences of the gender group percentages are statistically significant in all countries.

Percentages of students using ICT for communicating at least once a week by gender

Although gender is a major determinant in CIL scores of ICILS, it did hardly moderate the difference in CIL scores between the two groups presented in Fig.  5 . The group differences remained significant in all countries (see Model 2 in Table  2 , coefficients of E-communication.

Socio-economic background as moderating variable

In a next step we included the national index of students’ socio-economic background (variable “S_NISB”) into the model, reasoning that the availability of internet access and communication devices may depend on the socio-economic status (SES) of the students.

The “digital divide”—referring to the gap between those who do and those who do not have access to ICT’s (Warschauer 2003 )—generally affects individuals who are unemployed or in low-skilled occupations, and who have a low income and/or a low level of education. Students from families with a lower SES tend to be less confident and capable in navigating the Web to find credible information (Adler 2014 ). Also Adegoke and Osoyoko ( 2015 ) support the theory that SES influences students’ access (exposure) to ICT and internet. The findings of Hargittai ( 2010 ) suggest that even when controlling for basic Internet access, among a group of young adults, SES is an important predictor of how people are incorporating the Web into their everyday lives. Bozionelos ( 2004 ) showed that SES had a direct positive relationship with computer experience and an indirect negative relationship with computer anxiety. The findings are supportive of the digital divide and they imply that information technology may in fact be increasing inequalities among social strata in their access to employment opportunities.

After controlling for both, gender and SES, the difference in CIL between our two groups of interest declined to 32 points on average across all countries. However, the difference remained to be statistically significant in all countries but one (Denmark).

Table  2 presents regression coefficients of all three discussed models; Fig.  8 presents the differences in CIL scores of students using ICT for social communication more vs. less than once a week for all three considered models (coefficient of “E-communication” in Table  2 ). Evidently, this difference is hardly moderated in any country by gender, while the socio-economic status plays a larger role. In twelve out of twenty countries, after controlling for gender and SES, the examined difference in the CIL score decreases by more than 10 points. Only in Switzerland neither SES nor gender seemed to be associated with the difference in CIL scores between the two groups of interest, i.e., the coefficient of E-communication remains constant across the three models.

Differences in CIL scores of students using ICT for social communication more vs. less than once a week by model

Further variables with potential moderating effects

We also investigated the effect of further variables that may have moderated the found relationship and thereby could have affected the presented relationship in significant ways. We identified such variables based on evidence from the literature, evidence from ICILS (Fraillon et al. 2014 ) or simply by applying common sense. It would exceed the purpose of this paper to present all details of these analyses; however, the following paragraphs give some major findings.

While girls use ICT more often for social communication, boys use it more often for playing games (Rideout and Foehr 2010 ). This is also evident from ICILS data and is presented as cross-country average in Fig.  9 . The patterns are similar for all participating countries. However, there was no general relation between using ICT for playing games and CIL except for Turkey and Thailand, where an increased frequency of gaming was related with increasing CIL scores.

Using a computer for playing games (outside of school) by gender (estimated percentages across all participating countries)

Further, one may argue that the overall use of computers could have a moderating effect on the studied relationship. However, including the respective variable into the regression model proofed to not change much the effect of ICT use for social communication on CIL and also did not enhance the explained variance of the CIL score significantly.

Discussion and conclusions

The arrival and rapid dissemination of digital technology in the last decade of the twentieth century raises the question how so called digital natives use technology in daily life and what relevant skills they need to develop in order to participate effectively in the digital age. From the literature, the high importance of students’ use of ICT for social communication in their daily life is evident. In this paper we tried to answer the question if this type of ICT use enhances students’ CIL skills or if it—on the opposite—perhaps even rather has a negative effect, because less time remains for “worthwhile” computer usage, such as learning activities.

We first analyzed the relationship between students’ CIL score and their use of ICT for social communication. The CIL score increased along with an increase of students’ scale score in “Use of ICT for social communication” in all educational systems participating in ICILS. This relationship was statistically significant in 16 out of 21 countries. However, the relation was weak. We continued the analysis by investigating further the relationship between CIL and each of the four variables constructing the index “Use of ICT for social communication”. We found out that the variable which has the closest relationship with CIL was “Communicating with others using messaging or social networks [for example instant messaging or (status updates)]”, while other variables comprising the index showed different or no patterns related with CIL.

For accommodating further analysis on this variable, we decided to split students’ data into two groups. We collapsed the five original categories of the variable into two categories, reflecting the use of messaging or social networks “at least once a week or even every day” versus “less than once a week (or never)”.

Comparing the resulting two groups of students, we found a large average difference in CIL scores (44 points) favoring students using ICT for social communication more frequently. The direction of the effect was the same in all countries; the difference ranged from 19 points in Switzerland to as much as 75 points in the Slovak Republic. Since these results were rather striking, we examined whether this effect was moderated by other variables such as SES and Gender. We found however that the moderating effect of these variables on the observed relationship was weak or even negligible in all participating countries. In other words, the relation between the use of ICT for communicating with others using messaging or social networks and CIL scores was still high and consistent across countries when controlling for SES and Gender.

This positive and cross-nationally observed relationship was rather unexpected, especially because the relationship between the communication index created by ICILS and the CIL scores was weak. Trying to understand this phenomenon, we considered the nature of messaging and participation in social networks. We see that it actually includes posting comments, uploading and downloading images and videos—hence, these features are no different than the separate items creating the social communication index. In fact the single item basically contains the other index items. Possibly the written communication portion included makes the difference, or the actual widespread of activities involved in messaging/electronic social networking explains the indistinct positive relationship with CIL. In future cycles of ICILS it may be worthwhile to review the index items accordingly.

To explore this phenomenon further, we also should focus on the CIL construct. As Fraillon et al. ( 2014 ) pointed out in the ICILS international report, the CIL construct was conceptualized in terms of two strands:

Strand 1; collecting and managing information , focuses on the receptive and organizational elements of information processing and management,

Strand 2; producing and exchanging information , focuses on using computers as productive tools for thinking, creating, and communicating.

When we consider the interactive nature of social media, it can be assumed that they provide students with a medium for collecting and managing information as anticipated in Strand 1 and also for producing and exchanging information as conceptualized in Strand 2. Hence, this item seems truly be related with both strands of the CIL construct, which may be one reason for the close relationship. Lacking of an experimental design, this study cannot make causal inferences on the relation between CIL and e-communication. Therefore we cannot conclude if frequent use of ICT for communication enhances CIL skills, or if in turn students with high CIL use more frequently ICT for social communication.

Future studies should also monitor the use of social networks in education further. Students should not be expected to accomplish high skills in using information and computer technology and at the same time expect them to keep this aspect of their personality outside of their social life. Rather, it is worth to explore the additional learning opportunities arising from electronic tools and media out- but also and especially inside schools. According to findings from Fraillon et al. ( 2014 ), there is a need in many countries to equip teachers with the respective knowledge to use ICT (including social communication tools) in their teaching. Utilizing social media for teaching may hold the potential to increase CIL for all students independently from their gender and SES backgrounds; and thereby avoid that students with low CIL or limited access to ICT may increasingly lack opportunities to actively participate in the modern society.

As a matter of fact, nowadays messaging and Facebook or other social networks became a part of students’ daily life. As parents, teachers and educators, our responsibility is to help our children to benefit from social networks educationally.

See Fraillon et al. 2014 for detailed explanations of the determined CIL levels.

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MA developed the research questions, conducted the literature research and drafted significant parts of the manuscript. SM developed the research design, conducted data compilation, the statistical analysis and interpretation of results and drafted significant parts of the manuscript. Both authors have given final approval of the manuscript version to be published and agree to be accountable for all aspects of the work in ensuring that questions related to the accuracy or integrity of any part of the work are appropriately investigated and resolved. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.

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Alkan, M., Meinck, S. The relationship between students’ use of ICT for social communication and their computer and information literacy. Large-scale Assess Educ 4 , 15 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1186/s40536-016-0029-z

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Enhancing the roles of information and communication technologies in doctoral research processes

• Sarah J. Stein   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0003-0024-1675 1 &
• Kwong Nui Sim 2  

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While information and communication technologies (ICT) are prominent in educational practices at most levels of formal learning, there is relatively little known about the skills and understandings that underlie their effective and efficient use in research higher degree settings. This project aimed to identify doctoral supervisors’ and students’ perceptions of their roles in using ICT. Data were gathered through participative drawing and individual discussion sessions. Participants included 11 students and two supervisors from two New Zealand universities. Focus of the thematic analysis was on the views expressed by students about their ideas, practices and beliefs, in relation to their drawings. The major finding was that individuals hold assumptions and expectations about ICT and their use; they make judgements and take action based on those expectations and assumptions. Knowing about ICT and knowing about research processes separately form only part of the work of doctoral study. Just as supervision cannot be considered independently of the research project and the student involved, ICT skills and the use of ICT cannot be considered in the absence of the people and the project. What is more important in terms of facilitating the doctoral research process is students getting their “flow” right. This indicates a need to provide explicit support to enable students to embed ICT within their own research processes.

Background/context

Information and communication technologies (ICT) can bring either joy or challenge to well-versed academic practices, and either create barriers to learning and development or be the answer to needs. While some grasp and pursue opportunities to make use of various ICT for study, research and teaching, others struggle. Despite documented and anecdotal positive urges to adopt ICT to increase and improve efficiency and effectiveness, staff and students struggle experience ICT as needless and difficult-to-use interruptions. There is often little need seen to change practices by introducing ICT into ways of working. Exploring these views and experiences was the focus of this project. Being empathetic to views such as those expressed by Castañeda and Selwyn ( 2018 ), we did not approach this investigation from a position that assumes that ICT are natural and needed solutions to problems related to improving and facilitating effective learning, teaching and research. Rather, we took a more neutral stance, wishing to explore the experiences of those involved, namely, students and staff, through discussion with them about their ICT practices and views, and with a specific focus on doctoral study and supervision.

Doctoral supervision and the role, place and nature of the doctorate are receiving increasing attention in higher education research literature. A wide range of topics have been covered from, for example, the importance and types of support for students throughout candidature (e.g., Zhou & Okahana, 2019 ); to the teaching and supervision aspects of doctoral supervision (e.g., Åkerlind & McAlpine, 2017 ; Cotterall, 2011 ; Lee, 2008 ).

With advancements in, accessibility to, and development of, ICT within education settings has come a plethora of research into online and blended learning. These studies often highlight the capacity of ICT for facilitating teaching, learning and administrative activity within educational institutions and systems (e.g., Marshall & Shepherd, 2016 ). They cover numerous areas of importance from theoretical, practical, and philosophical angles and include the perspectives and needs of learners, educators and institutions (e.g., Nichols, Anderson, Campbell, & Thompson, 2014 ).

There are also studies on student use of ICT, though not necessarily doctoral students, and these cover a wide range of topics including specific ICT skills (e.g., Stensaker, Maassen, Borgan, Oftebro, & Karseth, 2007 ). Where postgraduate research students are concerned, some studies on ICT skill development and support provide some insights about students (e.g., Dowling & Wilson, 2017 ), and institutional ICT systems (Aghaee et al., 2016 ).

Notable about the many of these studies cited above is the use of self-reporting tools as mechanisms for gathering data about student use and views about ICT. While self-reports are valuable ways to collect such data about self-efficacy, they do have limits. In online learning environments, the role of self-efficacy, for example, is still being contested. It has been argued that learners from a variety of disciplines and learning settings will tend to overestimate claims about their performance and/or knowledge and skills (e.g., Mahmood, 2016 ).

All these studies help to ‘map the territory’ of ICT, their use at individual and institutional levels and related practices. Much advice and guidance can be gleaned from the literature as well, although relatively little for the specific integration of ICT within the doctoral research and supervision environment. Based on the literature that is available though, all indications are that (doctoral) students adopt educational practices incorporating limited ICT use, even though the use of ICT has grown enormously in the last 10 to 20 years. With the current interest in ensuring success of students and completion of doctoral degrees being closely related to high quality supervision, there is a need to improve supervision practices and within that, advance understandings about how to support students in their use of ICT for their doctoral research.

This project

This project aimed to explore doctoral student and supervisor views and use of ICT within the doctoral process. The intention was to bring to light perceptions that could give clues as to how to make practical modifications to the content and scope of professional development support for supervisors and students, in order to help them to make best use of ICT. In addition, consideration was given to the way data would be collected to ensure that more than just the self-reported perspectives of the participants were included.

An interpretivist research approach (Erickson, 2012 ) framed this study to support a focus on understanding the world from the perspectives of those who live it. Thus, the approach was well-suited to exploring perceptions about the use of ICT in our context.

Thus, this study did not commence with any hypotheses related to the influence of ICT in doctoral research in mind. Instead, as the interpretive frame of the research implies, this study investigated ways in which participants expressed their experiences of engaging and integrating ICT in support of their doctoral research processes. The data tapped into the participants’ (PhD students and doctoral supervisors) perspectives, as they expressed them. The research approach thus defined and shaped all aspects of the data gathering, analyses and presentation. In this way, alignment was ensured among the ontological, epistemological and practical implementation of the research project.

The study took place in two New Zealand universities where participants were either employees or students. Both universities are research-intensive, with histories of producing high-level research across many disciplines. Both institutions have clear and well-formulated policies and practices governing doctoral study - PhD and professional doctorate - and these include supporting that study through supervision. A specialised unit in each institution manages the administration of the doctoral degree. Couching “supervision” as essentially a (specialised) teaching activity, each unit also provides or coordinates professional development for staff in the art of supervision, and for students in the skills and processes of undertaking doctoral degree study.

Participants

Participants included doctoral students and supervisors from the two universities. As a result of an invitation to all students and supervisors, in total, 11 students and two supervisors responded. The students were PhD students at varying levels of completion. There was a mix of part time and full-time students from a variety of discipline backgrounds including health sciences, sciences, commerce and humanities. The supervisors were experienced and were from humanities and sciences.

Data sources

Data were collected using a 3-tier participative drawing process (Wetton & McWhirter, 1998 ). This strategy involved a series of two or three interview/discussions, along with participant-made drawings, which formed the focus of the interview/discussions.

This strategy generated two sources of data - interview transcripts and participant drawings – and involved the following (3-tier) phases:

Initial semi-structured interview/discussion to ascertain information about participants’ backgrounds and other details they saw relevant to share. In addition, they were asked about their use of ICT generally as well as within the doctoral process. It was a chance for the researchers to gain some understanding of participants’ views and practices in relation to ICT and their doctoral/supervision journeys.

Participant drawing . The participants were asked to make a drawing in their own time and before the second interview/discussion. Guidelines for the drawing suggested that they think of a way to illustrate their research process first, then to add onto the drawing any ICT (such as devices, websites, programmes, applications) that they make use of in the process.

Follow-up interview/discussion . During this phase, each participant was asked to explain the drawing’s features and how it made sense in terms of the project he or she was undertaking. This included discussion about how their supervision was working, how they worked with supervisors, and how the ICT they had included in the drawing worked within the process. They were also asked about elements that were not in the drawing, for example, certain ICT or activities that might have appeared in a typical account of a doctoral research process but were not included.

All interview/discussions were audio recorded and transcriptions of the recordings were returned to the participants for checking. The drawings were scanned and stored electronically.

In line with the interpretive approach that framed and governed our study, the data were analysed shortly after being gathered. Analysis of the data contributed to the development of ideas about participants’ perceptions, and these were refined progressively across the instances that researchers met with participants. Perceptions were thus checked, rechecked and refined against each data set.

This iterative and inductive approach (Thomas, 2006 ) involved thematic analysis (Silverman, 2001 ) and the capture of major and common ideas (Mayring, 2000 ) expressed by participants about how ICT are perceived and used in doctoral research processes. This approach helped to operationalise a process of co-construction between researchers and participants. Through checking, rechecking, refining and confirming, the researchers were able to articulate their understanding of participant perceptions that matched participants’ expressed thoughts.

The outcome of the analysis process was four assertions concerning ways the students perceived and understood ICT within doctoral study. Because there were only two supervisor participants, the data from the supervisors served to support the assertions we were more confidently able to make about student perceptions.

Research approach, quality assurance conditions and context

Despite the (what might be argued, small) number of volunteer participants who showed interest in, and committed themselves to, this study (i.e., no drop-outs or selection being made from a pool), it is worth noting that the researchers worked with each participant over an extended period of time (prolonged engagement), focused on investigating and gathering identifiable, as well as documentable, aspects of the participants’ ICT understandings and practices (persistent observation), and employed analysis techniques that incorporated peer debriefing, member checking, and fair presentation of assertions (Guba & Lincoln, 1989 ).

The aim was to unlock and identify views of reality held by the participants. The empirical evidence was used to help develop commentary and critique of the phenomenon which was the focus of the study (i.e., ICT use), including what the phenomenon is and how it occurs/is enacted/revealed in a particular context (viz., in doctoral research). This was, therefore, a different kind of study from one that might commence with a hypothesis, which would be concerned more with objectivity, explanation and testable propositions. In short, the methods employed in the current study fitted the intention to solve a “puzzle” about a phenomenon in relation to a particular context.

As this study involved human participants, ethical approval was gained through the institutional processes. This approval (University of Otago Human Ethics Committee reference number D17/414 and Victoria University of Wellington, Ethics Committee reference number 0000023415) enabled data collection methods described in the previous section to be carried out for any doctoral students and supervisors who volunteered to participate in this study. Ethical consent, use and care of the data as well as the ethical treatment of students and staff as participants were integral to the research design, planning and implementation of the whole study.

Findings and discussion

The four assertions are now presented. Each assertion is described and quotations from the interview/discussions along with examples of drawings from the student participants are used to illustrate aspects of each assertion.

Assertion 1: ICT are impartial tools; it does not matter how ICT are used, because the endpoint, that is, thesis completion, is the justification. ICT and people are separate and separated entities.

Students talked about how they worked on their thesis document and on the process of the study they were undertaking. Comments focused on various ICT being used and often on skills needed in order to use them. Some students expressed the view that ICT were tools, separate from the project and the person involved, to be used to achieve an endpoint. For example,

So long as it's formatted – it shouldn't matter - that's their [editors’] responsibility, not mine.

There’s probably a bit more about Zoom [web conferencing application] I could learn but again for me unless it’s a problem, I’m not going to go looking for it… not just for the sake of it at the moment.

Motivation to achieve an outcome was a focus of comments that support this assertion. For many participants, the aim to complete the study and write a thesis was, naturally, a large driver for how they were managing their study. Time was precious, and they would do what they had to do to reach their goal. To be motivated to learn about a new ICT, there needed to be a purpose that sharply focussed on achieving that end.

If the technologies are suddenly not available] I’m happy to sit down with a typewriter and learn it… If I’m not driven, I won’t bother.

This focus is illustrated in Fig.  1 . The drawing shows clearly identified components that make up major elements within the stages of producing the research for the thesis. ICT are listed in relation to those components.

ICT and people are separate and separated entities

Supervisors too, tended to focus on thesis production rather than on the process of producing a thesis that includes the use of ICT (i.e., as opposed to their very clear and explicit focus on the research process). An example illustrating this is:

Generally, people think the standard of the people getting or earning a PhD is that this person should be an independent researcher. [But no] After all, we only examine a particular thesis [and] there are lots of inputs from supports and supervision from supervisors.

In summary, this assertion focusses strongly on the experience of doctoral study being about getting the project done within a research journey that gives minimal regard to the affordances of ICT. ICT are framed as necessary but also fraught, especially due to the effort and time that draw attention away from the primary goal.

Assertion 2: ICT are tools or mechanisms that prompt active thought on practices with respect to planning and managing thesis writing and project execution. ICT and individuals work alongside each other.

Views that expressed notions of there being a close interactive relationship between students and ICT came through in several of the discussions with the participants. The focus on achieving goals and endpoints was strong, but the expression of how to achieve those goals, capitalising upon the affordances that ICT present, was different from the way views were expressed in relation to Assertion 1.

On a simple level, this student describes the checking he did when weighing up the merits of a piece of software to meet his needs.

I normally do a trial version… have a play with it. And if I think they are useful then I might try it on a project. And if then I feel it’s definitely worth investing… then I’ll go buy it.

Others simply liked to explore, to see whether there was potential in any ICT they encountered, as in,

Sometimes I just like playing with stuff to see what they can do and then if they tick my boxes then I keep them and if they don't, I move on. So it's more kind of ‘search and discover’ than kind of looking for something, you know.

Describing a deeper level of activity, a degree of critique and active reflection were indicated by another student when he said,

…we tried an electronic version of putting together a programme for a New Zealand conference and I was surprised how long it took us. Whereas in the past I’ve worked with [colleagues] and we’ve just moved pieces of paper around on the floor for abstracts and we were done really quickly.

These sentiments are well-captured in Fig.  2 . Here, the focus is on experimenting with ICT rather than the research process. The process of working things out to suit the individual is foregrounded.

ICT and individuals work alongside each other

Whereas Assertion 1-type expressions presented effort in a generally negative light, Assertion 2-type expressions couched effort as an assumed part of learning something new. There was a sense expressed in comments that there will be a way to manage the “problem” to be solved, which then generated the necessary motivation to engage effort. For example,

You just know what you know when you start off; when you're unsure about what you need to do. There's a bit of a barrier in front of you. It feels a bit intimidating and overwhelming, and then you get into it and it just works. And you just kind of put all the pieces together and get something out at the end.

There was a sense that supervisors’ perspectives of ICT might support this assertion too. For instance,

[ICT are] integral to everything now – there's no such thing as doing it without [them] anymore – these are the tools with which we do all the things we do.

In summary, this assertion captures the views of students who engage actively in making decisions about which, how and why they incorporate ICT into doctoral research practices.

Assertion 3: Knowing about ICT is only part of the thinking; what is more important is getting the “flow” right. ICT and the individual are in a complementary partnership.

Perhaps prompted by the nature of the drawing task, which was to illustrate how ICT fitted within the whole process of doctoral study, several students described the challenges to bringing everything together into one process made up of many parts, sections and subsections. One participant focussed on her “workflow” in order to manage the multiple documents, tasks and schedule involved in her doctoral research journey.

What systems do I use, what's my workflow? So, I actually spent some weeks looking at … ideas from other PhD students about their workflows and how they manage it.

Similar to Assertion 2-type comments, ‘getting one’s flow right’ involved exploration and an amount of reflective decision-making. For example,

So I did a play around with that [ICT] and found it was quite useful … So I’m trying to be quite disciplined about when I’ve got a document, entering it at the time, reading an article, throw in heaps of tags rather than not …And I simply keep a note, cross referencing to the actual articles. I like to have the articles and for some key ones I like to make a note. So, if it’s a seminal paper that I know I’ll be referring back to.

Thus, students talked about how hard they worked to set up routines and processes to enable them to manage time and their research projects. As in the above excerpts, they referred to categorising documents, searching for resources, undertaking analysis, managing data, and producing the thesis itself.

In working out one’s system or flow, this student highlighted the need to know about the affordances of ICT and how others had made use of them.

…you do need to know a bit about each of the individual … capabilities of the different systems to know what's even possible… but alongside that you're kind of reading other people's ideas of how they did it, and you think that bit might work for me oh, but that bit won't… so then you can kind of mix and match a bit.

The drawing in Fig.  3 highlights the “flow”. Absent of all words, this illustration draws attention to the movement of ideas, thoughts, processes and actions, from a number of different points but all ultimately converging or contributing to the one path.

ICT and the individual are in a complementary partnership

There was a hint that at least one of the supervisors saw the need for a workflow in this same vein: “So long as [the students are] happy with what they’re using – they should use ‘a’ system,”

In summary, this assertion highlights that what is important with respect to ICT and the doctoral process is how it all comes together within one’s flow. That flow incorporates active effort on the part of the individual in finding ICT and practices that suit the individual’s approaches as well as their project demands.

Assertion 4: ICT are not neutral; there is a two-way interaction between technologies as artefacts and the use of them to achieve ends. ICT and the person are intricately linked through multiple active, practical, goal-oriented connections.

This assertion draws attention to the nature of technology as a phenomenon; that technology is not an impartial tool that has no influence on the way humans act and react. This assertion presents ICT as an artefact of technological design activity; as a source of improving efforts to achieve an endpoint; but also as an influencer and even determiner of the thinking and practices of the person interacting with the ICT (e.g., Baird, 2002 ).

On what could be argued a superficial level, this student noted some active connection between the person and the software application, beyond simple use, when he commented:

I think it goes both ways, the product has to be intuitive and you’ve got to have a little bit of inclination to try out different things.

Others went beyond the superficial to describe more in-depth relationships between themselves and the ICT they were using. When discussing her use of software to help her manage her project and her time, this student talked about how the ICT she was using supported and enhanced her thinking.

Using the application] really changed the way I started to think about [my research]. I started to be less worried about the big overwhelming long term stuff that was out there and just think, okay, this week, what am I going to do this week, how am I going to be really efficient and targeted, and I think that really helped me.

Following is another example of how ICT helped solve a problem while simultaneously having an influence on behaviour; in this instance with organising notes, ideas and documents.

“… and it's the same with my note-taking because [the programme] that I use has a similar sort of functionality that it can search text that you've written but also search notes and PDF docs and those kind of things, so it means that when you've had a random thought and put it somewhere you can find it again. Which is huge for me, so I guess that … the power of the search engine is probably the thing that drove me to become paperless, so it helps me to organize myself much better. … filing paper is a skill that I have not mastered whereas filing digital stuff is not as important because you can always just find it again.

Figure  4 illustrates this intricately intertwined interactivity among person, purpose, project, ICT and outcomes.

ICT and the person are intricately linked through multiple active, practical, goal-oriented connections

While we did not find strong evidence for supervisors’ thoughts about this integrated and embedded notion of ICT, one supervisor did note “I could probably build them into my system, but I just never have”.

In summary, Assertion 4 highlights the integral role that ICT can be perceived to play in doctoral research processes. This is more than the working-alongside connection illustrated by Assertion 2 and the complementary partnership characterised by Assertion 3.

Assertions 1 and 2 highlight that individuals hold assumptions about, and have expectations of, ICT use; and those expectations and assumptions influence and determine their judgements about ICT and their use of ICT. The assertions point to connections between perceptions and practices. Assertion 1 describes a perception that ICT are separate from the person and the task-at-hand, while Assertion 2 presents a perception in which the person and the ICT are working alongside each other in harmony or at least in a loose partnership. Both assertions focus on endpoints, but the endpoints vary according to the perception of where ICT fit into the journey towards their achievement. For Assertion 1-type expressions, there is one major endpoint. For Assertion 2-type expressions, there are multiple, shorter-term endpoints that build towards achieving the major goal of completing the thesis.

Building on Assertions 1 and 2 are Assertions 3 and 4, which highlight what may be argued as more complex levels of perceiving and working with ICT. Both assertions give some focus to inter-connections, where people and ICT partner or collaborate. Assertion 3 depICT a perception that is about complementarity; where ICT affordances are seen as worthwhile when they support and enhance the work of the individual in ways that make sense to that individual. Assertion 4 builds on Assertion 3 by bringing to light the relationship in which the person alters and changes thinking or practices because of the influence that ICT affordances can have. No evidence was found to support a possible additional claim that as well as ICT causing individuals to alter and modify thinking and behaviours due to their existence, ICT, in turn, are perceived to be able to alter their ways of responding to the people who use them. This is not out of the realms of possibility of course, with ICT increasingly being designed and built to be able to respond to users’ needs.

It is also worth mentioning that the ‘types’ of ICT and the extent of their use by the participants was not the focus of this study. However, the findings suggested that the participants’ ICT use, regardless of their PhD phase and broad discipline background, might have reflected their inability to realise the advantages of learning how to use current ICT-related devices, tools, and applications to enhance the process of undertaking their doctoral research. The evidence that emerged in this study indicated that participants’ perspectives of ICT determined their adoption practices in general (i.e., as illustrated through the four assertions). The boarder higher education context including the specific institution and supervisors, might have neglected the explicit support of PhD students’ ICT capability development in this process.

In addition, while there is no similar study being found thus far, the insights gained from this study are actually similar to the findings in the research studies into the role of ICT in undergraduate education (Butson & Sim, 2013 ; Sim & Butson, 2013 , 2014 ). Results in those studies, demonstrated students’ low levels of ICT use, may be an indication that digital devices and digital tools do not play a significant role in daily study practices. Researchers such as Esposito, Sangrà & Maina ( 2013 ) also show that the PhD students’ learning to become researchers in the digital age is much more complex than is often suggested (e.g., the skills of Prenksy ( 2001 ) “digital natives”). Becoming a researcher involves developing a complex set of knowledge, intellectual abilities, techniques and professional standards. The Researcher Development Framework (Careers Research and Advisory Centre (CRAC), 2010 ) illustrates one useful attempt at mapping out that complexity. It could be that both students’ and supervisors’ adoption of ICT for academic purposes has been overshadowed or taken for granted as a consequence of their advanced academic level.

Implications

The four assertions can be used to provide some guidance to those supporting and participating in doctoral research processes. Students and supervisors do possess a vast array of skills, knowledge and abilities. They have a variety of experiences as well as varying reasons and levels of motivation. Their skills and capacity to make use of ICT to support their roles in the research process vary as well. The assertions that have emerged from this study will inform the planning for support activities to enhance supervisors’ and students’ professional development, whatever their background and needs.

Depending on the perceptions held about ICT and the relationship between ICT and the person in the context of the task and its goals (i.e., the doctoral study) within the doctoral research process as depicted in the four assertions, ICT tend to be seen as a challenge, a change or an opportunity. In the context of ICT use, doctoral students and supervisors may:

assume that if they do not already know how to use something it is not worth learning or exploring as that learning brings with it risk to quality, efficiency and effectiveness of the doctoral research process; and/or.

assume that students will work out the place that ICT play within the research process for themselves.

The findings of this study suggest the need to.

challenge existing ICT knowledge and skill, and to support acceptance of the need to change practices;

teach technological thinking, to enable choice and decision making about ICT;

embed ICT into practices in meaningful ways to suit individual and project needs;

highlight (explicit) responsibilities about thinking and planning skills with respect to making the best use of ICT, to ensure efficiency and effectiveness;

realise that the research process is as much about how it happens as what happens;

recast assumptions about the doctoral research process to embed ICT within it;

reflect on the meaning of effectiveness and efficiency in the context of doctoral research; and the effects of ICT in supporting and facilitating them;

understand that there is a link among ICT thinking and practice: using ICT can enhance or raise ideas that were never thought of before.

This study explored perceptions of doctoral supervisors and students of the role and place of ICT in supervision and study. It generated four assertions characterising those perceptions the relationships among people, ICT and the task-at-hand, that is, the supervised research process. As Castañeda and Selwyn ( 2018 ) argue, it is important that we have an active commitment to ‘think otherwise’ about how ICT might be better implemented across higher education settings” (p. 8). We should not assume that ICT are not important enough to let them fade into the background as they become normalised, without questioning the interrelationships that are happening between the person and the ICT. In the doctoral research setting, as one example of a higher education context, ICT do have a role to play. They cannot and should not be ignored. But seeing ICT in relationship to the person and to the setting is essential.

This project has provided insights into the doctoral students and supervisors’ perceptions of the roles played by ICT during doctoral research process. There are complex human factors, including assumptions, attitudes and conceptions about academic practices, influencing and determining perspectives as well as how ICT are incorporated into doctoral research process, behaviours and practices. Just as Kandiko and Kinchin ( 2012 ) argue that supervision cannot be looked at in the absence of the research work in which it occurs, we argue that doctoral students’ understanding and use of ICT cannot be considered independently of their research work; and that work includes relationships with their project, their supervisors, within the context of the institution, and with the ICT they do and could engage with.

Directly associated with the outcomes of this study, future studies and further exploration could focus on:

ICT use by larger and more diverse groups of doctoral students from a range of fields within discipline areas at institutions outside New Zealand;

building on the findings in order to determine how intensity of ICT use might change for students across the course of their candidature, and in relation to the nature of their research projects;

the role of supervisors, academic departments, and institutions in supporting and enhancing students’ practices and beliefs about ICT in research processes;

the ways in which supervisors engage ICT in their daily academic practices, with a view to exploring how, or if, their ICT use is an influence on PhD students’ beliefs and behaviours in using ICT.

Studying ICT in these directions could offer fresh perspectives and opportunities to think differently and reveal an active way of understanding the role of ICT in doctoral education.

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These are not available for open access as their access is bound by the ethical agreement approved by the two institutions and made with the participants in the study.

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Acknowledgements

We thank the students and supervisors who shared their reflections and willingly engaged with us in this project.

We acknowledge the support of Ako Aotearoa, The National Centre for Tertiary Teaching Excellence, New Zealand through its Regional Hub Project Fund (RHPF), and the support of our institutions, University of Otago and Victoria University of Wellington.

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Distance Learning, University of Otago, Dunedin, New Zealand

Sarah J. Stein

Centre for Academic Development, Victoria University of Wellington, Wellington, New Zealand

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Stein, S.J., Sim, K.N. Enhancing the roles of information and communication technologies in doctoral research processes. Int J Educ Technol High Educ 17 , 34 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1186/s41239-020-00212-3

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Received : 02 February 2020

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Published : 10 September 2020

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1186/s41239-020-00212-3

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• Doctoral research and supervision
• Information and communication technologies
• Participative drawing

• Our Promise
• Our Achievements
• Our Mission
• Proposal Writing
• System Development
• Paper Writing
• Paper Publish
• Synopsis Writing
• Thesis Writing
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• Survey Paper
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• Research Title Ideas for ICT Students

In current years, various ideas have emerged in the field of Information and Communication Technology (ICT). The compilation of ICT research proposal subjects provided below serves as a useful guide to initiate your research endeavors. While certain topics are straightforward, others present a more intricate nature. Additionally, the challenging topics are accompanied by brief descriptions to facilitate a quick assessment of their appeal to you. On the basis of different fields within ICT, we suggest numerous research title ideas together with an explicit description and that deal with latest technological possibilities and limitations:

• The Impact of Remote Work on Network Infrastructure and Security
• Description: For detecting issues and suggesting strategies, explore how the industrial network safety and architecture are impacted by the transition to remote work. In terms of the constant impacts of COVID-19 pandemic on job practices, this research topic is more important.
• Utilizing Blockchain Technology for Secure E-Voting Systems
• Description: The major goal of this study is to investigate how the reliability, morality, and safety of electronic voting frameworks can be improved by the mechanism of blockchain. This topic is considered as effective as well as significant due to the emerging issues based on election safety across the world.
• Developing a Machine Learning Model to Predict Cybersecurity Threats
• Description: To find possible cybersecurity hazards in advance, aim to develop predictive frameworks through the utilization of machine learning. As the cybersecurity hazards are turning into more complex, and the requirement for effective safety policies become high, this study is determined as most significant.
• IoT-Based Smart Agriculture Solutions for Sustainable Farming
• Description: With the aim of improving farming practices, minimizing ecological effects, and reinforcing crop productions, this research concentrates on the creation and implementation of Internet of Things (IoT) mechanisms. In farming, the major problem based on sustainability can be solved by this topic effectively.
• Augmented Reality in Education: Enhancing Learning Experiences
• Description: For enhancing academic results through offering communicative and engaging learning practices, the effectiveness of augmented reality (AR) has to be studied. The evolving educational technology domain could be advanced by this study in an efficient manner.
• Enhancing Accessibility in Digital Platforms Through User-Centered Design
• Description: To create online settings for the disabled persons in a user-friendly and convenient way, how the standards of user-centered design can be implemented is explored in this study. The relevance of accessibility in the advancement of technology is highlighted in this study topic.
• Next-Generation Wireless Networks: 5G Technology and Its Applications
• Description: This research topic is examined as the advancement of telecommunications study. It investigates the 5G wireless mechanism in the context of its issues, possible applications, abilities, its influence on smart cities, IoT, and over that.
• The Role of ICT in Mitigating Climate Change: Opportunities and Challenges
• Description: By considering energy-effectiveness, smart mechanisms, and facilitating remote work and education, in what way ICT can advance climate change reduction endeavors has to be analyzed. For interpreting the ecological effect of ICT, this study is critical.
• Assessing the Effectiveness of AI-Powered Chatbots in Customer Service
• Description: For the industries that are intending to enhance consumer service processes, this study is highly crucial. By comparing with human consumer service members, the consumer contentment and efficiency of AI-driven chatbots have to be assessed.  
• Privacy-Preserving Data Mining Techniques in the Age of Big Data
• Description: To retrieve essential details from a wide range of datasets without compromising personal confidentiality, explore techniques and methods. Due to the emergence of problems in terms of data confidentiality together with the increase of big data, this exploration is considered as more relevant.

What is an example of ICT title?

Information and Communication Technology (ICT) is an interesting area of study and presents novel approaches in several researches. Below, we list out ten effective instances of ICT-based research titles along with explanation based on technological issues and various research areas:

• The Role of Artificial Intelligence in Enhancing E-Commerce Personalization and Customer Experience
• For enhancing involvement and contentment, how e-commerce practices can be altered by the mechanisms of AI based on each user’s priorities has to be investigated.
• Cybersecurity in the IoT Era: Challenges and Solutions for Protecting Connected Devices
• The novel security risks that are caused by the Internet of Things (IoT) must be explored. To secure from cyber hazards, suggest more powerful solutions.
• Blockchain Technology in Healthcare: A Pathway to Secure and Efficient Patient Data Management
• By considering confidentiality, interoperability, and safety, aim to analyze the effectiveness of blockchain technology, especially for transforming healthcare data handling.
• Evaluating the Impact of Virtual Reality on Educational Outcomes in STEM Fields
• In various fields like science, technology, engineering, and mathematical education, how learning and understanding can be improved by virtual reality (VR) tools has to be evaluated.
• 5G Networks and Beyond: Analyzing the Future of Wireless Communication Technology
• Investigate the 5G mechanism based on its developments, social impacts, and limitations. Its possible advancements into 6G technology and over that must also be studied.
• Machine Learning Techniques for Predictive Maintenance in Manufacturing Industries
• For minimizing expenses and break, how the methods of machine learning can forecast equipment faults and improve maintenance planning should be explored.
• Digital Divide and Access to Information: Strategies for Bridging the Gap in Rural Communities
• By concentrating on enhancing information technology availability in unprivileged rural regions, this research intends to tackle the digital divide issue by investigating strategies.
• Augmented Reality as a Tool for Cultural Heritage Preservation and Education
• To improve the maintenance and depiction of cultural heritage artworks and places, how augmented reality (AR) will be useful has to be analyzed.
• The Ethics of Artificial Intelligence: Navigating Privacy, Bias, and Decision-Making
• Aim to solve any moral concerns based on AI technology. It is also important to focus on various problems in terms of algorithmic unfairness, the independence of decision-making frameworks, and confidentiality.
• Smart Cities and Urban Sustainability: Integrating ICT Solutions for Greener Urban Living
• Consider in what way technology can advance ecological preservation and sustainable urban strategies. This idea is specifically for exploring the ICT contribution in the smart city creation.

ICT Implementation Writing Services

phdservices.org encompass a wide range of services such as programming languages, software development, data analysis, simulations, and more. We employ highly skilled developers specializing in all ICT fields relevant to your area of study. So get our ICT Implementation Writing Services to score high grade.

• Abnormal objective recognition in video based on data mining of finance industry
• An Integrated Observing Technic for Collaborative Learning: The Multimodal Learning Analytics Based on the Video Coding and EEG Data Mining
• Controlling the visualization: evaluating spatial data mining patterns while exploring a familiar geographic environment
• Analysis of Multi Index Association of Power Grid Work Order based on Data Mining
• An Approach to Protect the Privacy of Cloud Data from Data Mining Based Attacks
• Survey into predictive key performance indicator analysis from data mining perspective
• Semi Supervised Prediction Model in Educational Data Mining
• Data mining-based fault detection and prediction methods for in-orbit satellite
• Fuzzy data mining based on the compressed fuzzy FP-trees
• A new method for automatically constructing concept maps based on data mining techniques
• Operation and Maintenance Management and Decision Analysis in Distribution Network Based on Big Data Mining
• The Fault Data Mining of Supervision Equipment of Urban Rail Transit Based on Clustering
• Digital Archiving and Data Mining of Historic Document
• Using divide-and-conquer GA strategy in fuzzy data mining
• PASCMP: A novel cache framework for data mining application
• Improving expression data mining through cluster validation
• Power quality data mining using soft computing and wavelet transform
• A data mining approach for spatial modeling in small area load forecast
• Finding peculiar students from student database using outlier analysis: Data mining approach
• The ontology construction and data mining research of PDM system
• Preliminary description of NACK-based ad-hoc On-demand Distance Vector routing protocol for MANETs
• Energy Efficient Cooperative Communication in Multi-Radio Multi-Channel Large Scale MANETs
• Comparing Performance of Group Communications Protocols Over SCB versus Routed MANET Networks
• A Protocol for End-to-End Key Establishment During Route Discovery in MANETs
• Intrusion detection system on MAC layer for attack prevention in MANET
• Authentication and dynamic key management protocol based on certified tokens for manets
• An architecture for secure interoperability between coalition tactical MANETs
• Adaptive fuzzy inference system for detection and prevention of cooperative black hole attack in MANETs
• A Survey of Selfish Nodes Detection in MANET: Solutions and Opportunities of Research
• Performance analysis for diverse simulation scenarios for DSDV, DSR and AODV MANET routing protocols
• A new tuning maximum congestion window for improving TCP performance in MANET
• REDMAN: a decentralized middleware solution for cooperative replication in dense MANETs
• Density and mobility impact on MANET routing protocols in a maritime environment
• A novel routing method for improving message delivery delay in hybrid DTN-MANET networks
• Large Scale Distributed Disaster Information System based on MANET and Overlay Network
• Performance of agro-sensors: Assessment of optimality in routing protocols of MANET in wireless sensor networks
• A novel communication mode selection technique for DTN over MANET architecture
• MAPNaS: a lightweight, locality-aware peer-to-peer based name service for MANETs
• A Congestion Window Control Mechanism Based on Fuzzy Logic to Improve TCP Performance in MANETs
• Deploying Lightweight Queue Management for improving performance of Mobile Ad-hoc Networks (MANETs)
• Simulation of Evacuation Route Guidance Considering Evacuation Situation Changes in MANET-Based Building Evacuation System
• Performance Analysis of Bellman Ford, AODV, DSR, ZRP and DYMO Routing Protocol in MANET using EXATA
• Experimental results for low overhead frequency offset estimation in MANETs with concurrent transmission
• A new technique for AODV based secure routing with detection black hole in MANET
• Adaptive hierarchical resource management for satellite channel in hybrid MANET-satellite-Internet network
• EPPN: Extended Prime Product Number based wormhole DETECTION scheme for MANETs
• Effect of Adapter Promiscuous Mode Operation on DSR Performance in MANETs
• ReverseRoute: An Application-Layer Scheme for Detecting Blackholes in MANET Using Mobile Agents
• A Two-Dimensional Logical Coordinate System for Hexagonal Grids in MANETs
• A fuzzy-timestamp based adaptive gateway discovery protocol in integrated Internet-MANET

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Home > Griffith Sciences > School of Information and Communication Technology > Research > Current ICT Research Projects

Current ICT Research Projects

School of Information and Communication Technology

• Learning and teaching

Be at the forefront of the latest technological advancements with a research degree at Griffith.

Explore the range of research projects available with the School of ICT in areas of computer vision and signal processing, software engineering and software quality, cyber security and network security, autonomous systems, machine learning, data analytics and big data.

For more information about the project, please contact the listed supervisor.

Computer Vision and Signal Processing

Extraction and Modelling of Power Line Corridor

Supervisors:  Dr. Mohammad Awrangjeb and Professor Bela Stantic

Description: The speedy development in electricity infrastructure due to urge in domestic and business usage as well as its importance in national economy requires a safe and secure maintenance of power line corridors (PLC) to ensure the efficient and uninterrupted power supply of electricity to consumers. The monitoring of PLC primarily includes two of the following aspects: electrical components such as power lines and pylons and surrounding objects, such as vegetation. For reliable transmission, the stability of power lines and pylons and monitoring of vegetation near PLC is important.

As power lines are comprised of very thin conductors, thus detailed information is required for accurate mapping. Airborne light detection and ranging (LiDAR) has been proven a powerful tool to overcome these challenges to enable more efficient inspection in recent years. Active airborne LiDAR systems directly capture the 3D information of power infrastructure and surrounding objects. Nevertheless,

PLCs are built with multi-loop, multi-phase structures (bundle conductors) and exists in intricate environments (e.g., mountains and forests), thus raises challenges to process airborne point cloud data for extraction and modelling of individual PLC objects.

This study aims to overcome these challenges by providing an automated and more robust solutions for PLC mapping. This research incorporates three main objectives; (i) power lines extraction, pylons and vegetation extraction, (ii) reconstruction of power lines and pylons using for 3D modelling, (iii) vegetation monitoring from airborne LiDAR data.

Related publications

ISPRS Ann. Photogramm. Remote Sens. Spatial Inf. Sci. (Google Scholar Metrics (GSM) -Rank: 10 in Remote Sensing, GSM makes only 20 top cited in each area combining both conference and journal articles.)

DICTA 2019 (Australian in Core 2018)

Building Extraction from LiDAR point cloud data

Description: Building extraction with individual roof parts and other components such as chimneys and dormers is important for building reconstruction and 3D modelling. Using Light Detection and Ranging (LiDAR) point-cloud data the task is more complex and difficult because of the unknown semantic characteristics and inharmonious behaviour of the LiDAR input data. Most of the existing state-of-the-art methods fail to detect small true roof planes with exact boundaries due to outliers, occlusions, complex building structures, and other inconsistent nature of LiDAR data thus, accurate building detection, reconstruction, and 3D modelling a challenging and complex task. Studies have been conducted over the last two decades on individual building extraction and reconstruction using LiDAR data. The main objective of this PhD thesis is to extract buildings and individual roof parts effectively using LiDAR data for the purpose of 3D reconstruction and modelling of buildings.

Dey, E. K., Awrangjeb, M., & Stantic, B. (2019, July). An Unsupervised Outlier Detection Method For 3D Point Cloud Data. In IGARSS 2019-2019 IEEE International Geoscience and Remote Sensing Symposium (pp. 2495-2498). IEEE.

Dey, E. K., Awrangjeb, M., & Stantic, B. (2020). Outlier detection and robust plane fitting for building roof extraction from LiDAR data. International Journal of Remote Sensing, 41(16), 6325-6354.

Dey, E. K. and Awrangjeb, M., "A Robust Performance Evaluation Metric for Extracted Building Boundaries From Remote Sensing Data," in IEEE Journal of Selected Topics in Applied Earth Observations and Remote Sensing, vol. 13, pp. 4030-4043, 2020, doi: 10.1109/JSTARS.2020.3006258.

Continual Learning on Dynamic Data Stream

Supervisors:  A/Prof. Alan Wee-Chung Liew

Description: Continual learning (CL) or lifelong learning is the ability of a model to learn continually from a stream of data. The idea of CL is to mimic human’s ability to continually acquire, fine-tune, and transfer knowledge and skills throughout their lifespan. With CL, we want to use the data that is coming to update the model autonomously based on the new activity. Data are typically discarded after use, and there is no opportunity to re-use the data for model retraining. Continual learning is a challenge for deep neural network models since the continual acquisition of incrementally available information from non-stationary data distributions generally leads to catastrophic forgetting or interference. Other challenges in CL includes adapting to emerging and disappearing concepts, adapting to concept drift, adapting to nonstationary noise, dealing with highly imbalance classes, etc. This project aims to develop novel (supervised and unsupervised) machine learning algorithms that overcome these challenges.

T.T. Nguyen, M.T. Dang, V.A. Luong, A.W.C. Liew, T.C. Liang, J. McCall, “Multi-Label Classification via Incremental Clustering on Evolving Data Stream”, Pattern Recognition, Vol. 95: 96-113, 2019.

T.T. Nguyen, T.T.T. Nguyen, V.A. Luong, N.Q.V. Hung, A.W.C. Liew, B, Stantic, “Multi-label classification via labels correlation and first order feature dependence on data stream”, Pattern Recognition, Vol. 90: 35-51, 2019.

T.T.T. Nguyen, T.T. Nguyen, A.W.C. Liew, S.L. Wang, “Variational Inference based Bayes Online Classifiers with Concept Drift Adaptation”, Pattern Recognition, Vol. 81: 280-293, 2018.

Efficient object detection for low-powered devices

Supervisors:  Dr. Gervase Tuxworth

Description: Recognising objects in images is an important task for many applications including security, autonomous navigation and image tagging and markup. Recently the field has been dominated by convolutional neural networks, with some networks reaching sizes of over 100 million parameters. These networks are typically run on specialised hardware that consumes a high amount of power, but when considering applications running on light-weight low-cost hardware, these solutions may not be suitable. This project seeks to find solutions to allow for accurate object detection on low powered devices.

Shaikh D, Manoonpong P, Tuxworth G, Bodenhagen L. Multi-sensory guidance of goal-oriented behaviour of legged robots. Proceedings of the 20th International Conference on Climbing and Walking Robots and the Support Technologies for Mobile Machines, CLAWAR 2017.

Fine-grained image classification

Description: Fine-grained image classification is a challenge in computer vision, which aims at identifying the correct object in a dataset where there is both low between-class variance (different objects appear visually similar) and high intra-class variance (objects of the same class appear different). This work looks at implementing new models and techniques within convolutional neural networks to improve performance in these challenging datasets.

Park YJ, Tuxworth G, Zhou J. Insect Classification Using Squeeze-and-Excitation and Attention Modules - a Benchmark Study. IEEE International Conference on Image Processing, 2019.

Spectral-spatial-temporal processing of hyperspectral videos

Supervisors: A/Prof. Jun Zhou

Description: Hyperspectral videos contains rich spectral, spatial, and temporal information. Traditional methods treat these domains separately to undertake video analysis tasks, ignoring the intrinsic relationship embedded in the cross-modal data space. In this project, we propose to develop joint spectral-spatial-temporal processing methods to fully explore the abundant information embedded in hyperspectral videos. Fundamental theories and methods will be developed based on physics and statistical models and will be powered by the latest deep learning approaches. A number of applications in environment, agriculture, and medicine will be used to showcase the usefulness of the methods.

Fengchao Xiong, Jun Zhou, and Yuntao Qian. Material based object tracking in hyperspectral videos, IEEE Transactions on Image Processing, Vol 29, No. 1, pages 3719-3733, 2020.

Suhad Lateef Al-khafaji, Jun Zhou, Ali Zia and Alan Wee-Chung Liew. Spectral-spatial scale invariant feature transform for hyperspectral images. IEEE Transactions on Image Processing, Vol. 27, No. 2, pages 837-850, 2018.

Microscopic hyperspectral imaging

Description: Object detection and recognition is a fundamental task for microscopic imaging. It’s applications range from disease detection, cell recognition to microplastic classification. Traditional detection and recognition techniques are based on images captured in the visible light wavelength, limits the discrimination capability of systems deployed for complex microscopic imaging environment. Hyperspectral images contain light wavelength indexed reflectance from objects, therefore, enable the capability of material detection that is essential for many real-world tasks. This project provides unique opportunities to work with cross-disciplinary researchers in medical and environmental areas. The goal is to develop innovative technologies that can revolutionise the current microscopic imaging practice.

Chee Meng Ho, Qi Sun, Adrian Teo; David Wibowo, Yongsheng Gao, Jun Zhou, Yanyi Huang, Say Hwa Tan, and Chun-Xia Zhao. Development of a microfluidic droplet-based microbioreactor for microbial cultivation. ACS Biomaterials Science & Engineering, Vol. 6, No. 6, pages 3630-3637, 2020.

Yanyang Gu, Zongyuan Ge, Paul Bonnington, and Jun Zhou. Progressive transfer learning and adversarial domain adaptation for cross-domain skin disease classification. IEEE Journal of Biomedical and Health Informatics, Vol. 24, No. 5, pages 1379-1393, 2020.

Jie Liang, Jun Zhou, Lei Tong, Xiao Bai and Bin Wang. Material based salient object detection from hyperspectral images. Pattern Recognition, Vol. 76, Pages 476-490, 2018.

Software Engineering and Software Quality

Software correctness for Safe-Critical Systems

Supervisors: Professor Vladimir Estivill-Castro

Miguel Carrillo , Vladimir Estivill-Castro,  David A. Rosenblueth . Model-to-Model Transformations for Efficient Time-domain Verification of Concurrent Models by NuSMV Modules.  MODELSWARD 2020 : 287-298

Complexity Management in Enterprise Architecture

Supervisors: A/Prof. Peter Bernus

Description: The history of mankind can be characterised as a constant development of tools, technologies and systems of various kinds (agriculture, transport, communication, manufacturing, energy, etc.). These  (technical and socio-technical) systems of systems have evolved to be more and more complex and it has become increasingly difficult to manage and control their evolution.

This is a fundamental problem, because the mere survival of humankind became dependent on them.  Taming the complexity of large scale systems requires an interdisciplinary effort, that combines approaches rooted in Enterprise Architecture, AI & Cognitive Science, Systems Engineering, Management Science & Control Engineering, Cybernetics, and others.

Several interdisciplinary PhD projects are available to address the problem: How to direct the evolution and transformation of large scale systems?

Possible topics include:

• Improving the Resilience of Australia's Supply Chain,
• Architecting Energy Transformation,
• Modelling Smart Manufacturing (IoT, Industry 4.0, digital twin),
• Architecting Integrated Transport Systems, Smart Cities, Architectural Solutions to the Water Crisis,
• Agile command and control
• The limits of control (theory development),
• Self Aware Systems Architecture (theory development).

Bernus, P., Noran, Goranson, T. (2020). Toward a Science of Resilience, Supportability 4.0 and Agility. In Proc. IFAC World Congress (July 2020). IFAC Papers Online ISSN: 2405-8963

Turner, P., Bernus, P., Noran, O. (2018). Enterprise Thinking for Self-aware Systems. In S. Cavalieri, M. Macchi and L. Monostori (Eds) Proc Information Control Problems in Manufacturing  IFAC Papers Online ISSN: 2405-8963

Bernus, P., Goranson, T., Gotze, J., Jensen-Waud, A., Kandjani, H., Molina, A., Noran, O., Rabelo, R.J., Romero, D., Saha, P., Turner, P. (2016) Enterprise engineering and management at the crossroads.  Computers in Industry. 79 (2016):87-102.

Bernus, P., Noran, O., Molina, A. (2015). Enterprise Architecture: Twenty Years of the GERAM Framework. Annual Reviews in Control. 39(2015):83-93

Organisationally mandated assimilation processes of an enterprise-wide information system in a radiology practice in Australia

Supervisors: Dr. Bruce Rowlands

Description: The study aims to develop a theoretical framework that integrated elements of Lamb & Kling’s (2003) social actor model concentrating on the relationships among the radiology practitioners, the technology (an enterprise-wide Health Information System), and a larger social milieu surrounding its use.

Alireza Amrollahi and Bruce Rowlands. OSPM: a design methodology for open strategic planning. Information & Management, Vol. 55, No. 6, pages 667-685, 2018

Alireza Amrollahi and Bruce Rowlands. Collaborative open strategic planning: a method and case study. Information Technology & People, Vol. 30, No. 4, pages 832-852, 2017.

IT Risk Management Implementation

Description: Two important gaps exist in IT risk management (ITM) research. Firstly, there is insufficient research on the process IT individuals go through when implementing IT-RM frameworks for the first time. Secondly, there is an absence of literature that addresses how these factors and processes can be depicted in a model.

Neda Azizi, Bruce Rowlands and Shah Jahan Miah. IT risk management implementation as sociotechnical change: a process approach. 30 th Australasian Conference on Information Systems, paper 104, 2019.

Developing the concept of individual IT culture and its impact on IT risk management implementation, paper 178, 2019.

Helping airline pilots fly more safely: Creating, validating and verifying the consistency of dynamic procedures

Supervisors: Dr. Geraldine Torrisi , Dr. Guido Carim Junior , Prof. Vladimir Estivill-Castro

Description: Do you want to help airline pilots perform their flying safer? An airplane is a very complicated safety-critical system whose technology is the main interface to those operating it. However, when a particular failure occurs, pilots must consult emergency checklists, which are either presented as paper-based or in electronic format. Electronics checklists are commonly integrated as part of the avionics or part of the Flight bags (tablets issued by the aircraft manufacturer) as a pdf file or a rudimentary electronic version of the paper-based checklist with one of another extra feature (such as tracking the actions, e.g.). When the situation is more complicated than covered by the checklists, pilots must also judge the procedures’ instructions against their flying experience to handle the problem. Situations like multiple failures, false alarms, inoperative systems are not covered by these checklists, regardless of the format, and impose additional demands on the troubleshooting activity. The situations are dynamic, but the procedures are static.

Despite some artificial intelligence tools currently converting the natural language and artifacts (diagram) of paper-based checklists, there is a need to create, validate and verify the consistency of the dynamic procedures. Your contribution would be to ensuring the information on procedures and course of action is consistent, not contradictory, complete and adequate for the set of symptoms input by pilots. Maybe modelling with behaviour trees, or some other formal logic system (such as defeasible logic) lining it with AI and reasoning. The aim is to confirm procedures are polished and even updateable while retaining consistency. You may find that there may be other challenges. For instance, can some procedures be factored out, and be re-used as subroutines? Can the description of the procedure be also assisting the pilot with a model of the state of the flight?

This PhD research topic is part of a larger project reinventing the way pilots use the documents, manuals and checklist in the cockpit. The objective is to make their work more efficient and safer by providing an intelligent system that provides the information they need, when needed.

Guido C. Carim, Tarcisio A. Saurin and Sidney W.A. Dekker. How the cockpit manages anomalies: revisiting the dynamic fault management model for aviation. Cognition, Technology & Work, Vol. 22, pages 143–157, 2020.

Guido C. Carim, Tarcisio A. Saurin, Jop Havinga, Andrew Rae, Sidney W.A. Dekker, and Éder Henriqson. Using a procedure doesn’t mean following it: A cognitive systems approach to how a cockpit manages emergencies. Safety Science, Vol. 89, pages 147-157, 2016.

Learning Analytics Implementations in Australian Universities

Supervisors: Dr. David Tuffley

Description: Learning Analytics Implementations in Australian Universities: towards a model of success.

Clark, Jo-Anne & Tuffley, David. Learning Analytics implementations in universities: towards a model of success using multiple case studies. Proceedings of the 36 th International Conference on Innovation, Practice and Research in the Use of Educational Technologies in Tertiary Education, pages 82-92, 2019.

Developing high quality software systems through Behaviour Engineering

Supervisors: Dr. Larry Wen

Description: Behavior Engineering (BE), an innovative Software Engineering approach to develop software intensive systems, was firstly proposed by Professor Geoff Dromey in Griffith University. In the past two decades, various research and real industry cases studies have been explored to investigate its capability and received fruitful results. Different from other software engineering approaches, which try to make a software design to satisfy the software requirements, while BE is extracting a software design from the software requirements through a state-of-the-art translation and integration process. This approach can quickly identify defects in software requirements and produce a solution that guarantees to fulfil the requirements.  In the past 20 years, more than one hundred papers have been published. Many software tools have been developed and large-scale case studies have been performed. BE has also been applied in many software engineering areas including requirement engineering, software change management, software process improvement, and formal method. Even though much research has been conducted, and their results have proven the value of this approach, the potential of this approach has yet been fully appreciated. There are many different paths to extend this approach and many different areas that could adapt this approach. As an example, we are currently collaborating with a Chinese company to investigate BE in software acquisition.

Many of BE related publications can be found at BE website.

Cyber Security and Network Security

Using Machine Learning to Detect Cyber Attacks in Industrial Control Systems

Supervisors: A/Prof. Ernest Foo

Description: Industrial Control systems use SCADA protocols to control the electricity grid or water treatment plants or other critical infrastructure.  Many of these systems are being connected to the Internet and are vulnerable to cyber attacks.  This project will employ machine learning and artificial intelligence to automatically detect attacks against these systems and automate the best response for defense.

IEEE Transactions on Industrial Informatics, IEEE Transactions on Information Forensics and Security, Computers & Security

Automated Process Analysis for Intrusion Detection in Industry 4.0 Systems

Description: Next generation manufacturing systems use advanced robotic technologies and complex processes to function.  However many of these systems are connected to the Internet and are vulnerable to cyber attacks.  Stealthy cyber attacks are often difficult to detect.  This project will develop algorithms to monitor system processes for anomalies to automatically detect faults and cyber attacks.

IEEE Transactions on Industrial Informatics, IEEE Transactions on Information Forensics and Security, Computers & Security, IEEE Access

Cyber Security of Vehicle Communication Systems

Description: Driver-less vehicles and Intelligent Transport Systems need to use wireless communications to function with safety.  However these communications may be vulnerable to cyber attacks that allow attackers to manipulate traffic and cause accidents. This project will explore new ways to ensure efficient authentication to detect and prevent attacks against vehicle communication systems.

IEEE Transactions on Industrial Informatics, Vehicular Communications, IEEE Transactions on Vehicular Technology

Advanced Post-Quantum Cryptosystems

Supervisors: Dr. Qinyi Li

Description: Our daily digital life is protected by public-key cryptosystems like public-key encryption and digital signature systems. The security of most public-key cryptosystems have been deployed is ultimately based on the difficulties of solving number-theoretic problems (e.g., integer factoring problem and discrete logarithm problem) using classic computers. It turns out these number-theoretic problems can be efficiently solved by large-scale quantum computers which have been theorised about for decades. There has been substantial progress towards making quantum computing practical. To protect our communication in the long-term, we need a new generation of cryptosystems to defeat quantum computers. Cryptography based on decoding problems (e.g., decoding random linear codes) is a very promising candidate. In this project, you will explore the field of post-quantum cryptography and conduct research on one the two directions: 1) designing advanced post-quantum cryptosystems e.g., attributed-based encryption, functional encryption, fully homomorphic encryption, ring/group signatures and apply them to the real-world problems, e.g., fine-grained access control on encrypted data for cloud computing, efficient search and query on the encrypted database, smart contract and cryptocurrency 2) designing and implementing (in software or hardware) practical public-key encryption and digital signature systems with strong practical security (i.e., secure against various side-channel attacks) and high practicality (i.e., can be used for the Internet security protocols or computing-resource-restricted devices like IoT devices).

Xavier Boyen, Malika Izabachene, Qinyi Li (Corresponding Author): An Efficient Lattice CCA-Secure KEM in the Standard Model. The 12th International Conference on Security and Cryptography for Networks (SCN 2020). Accepted on 14 June, 2020.

Xavier Boyen, Qinyi Li (Corresponding Author): Direct CCA-Secure KEM and Deterministic PKE from Plain LWE. The 10th International Conference on Post-Quantum Cryptography (PQCrypto 2019). LNCS 11505, pp.116-130. Springer 2019.

Xavier Boyen, Qinyi Li (Corresponding Author): All-but-Many Lossy Trapdoor Functions from Lattices and Applications. The 37th International Cryptology Conference (Crypto 2017). LNCS 10403, pp. 298-331, Springer 2017.

Xavier Boyen, Qinyi Li (Corresponding Author): Towards Tightly Secure Lattice Short Signature and Id-Based Encryption. The 22nd International Conference on Theory and Applications of Cryptography and Information Security (AsiaCrypt 2016). LNCS 10032, pp. 404-434. Springer 2016.

Application of Machine Learning Intelligence in Wireless Networks

Supervisors: Dr. Wee Lum Tan

Description: There is great potential in applying machine learning techniques to design self-organising, self-aware, intelligent wireless networks. Machine learning enables network nodes to actively learn the state of the wireless environment, detect correlations in the data, and take actions to optimise network operations and make efficient use of the limited wireless spectrum resources.

The first project will develop methods to parse the massive amount of wireless network statistics/data (e.g. channel state information, signal strength, interference, noise, traffic load/patterns, etc.) in order to analyse and predict the context of the wireless environment. Using these data, we will develop machine learning-guided techniques to address a variety of challenges in wireless networks such as power control, user traffic scheduling, spectrum management, rate selection, etc.

A major challenge of machine learning is its vulnerability to adversarial attacks. Adversarial machine learning attacks in wireless networks can cause network nodes to make incorrect decisions or interfere with data transmissions. For example, network nodes can train a classifier on various wireless statistics and use it to predict future channel availability status and adapt their transmission decisions to the spectrum dynamics. An adversary can train its classifier to be functionally equivalent to the one at the transmitter, and launch attacks (e.g. sends jamming signals) when it predicts that the transmitter will transmit data to the receiver. These attacks can significantly affect network performance, e.g. reduced spectral efficiency and increased node energy consumption.

Therefore, a second project is to investigate the impact of different machine learning vulnerabilities in wireless networks and develop techniques to detect and mitigate these attacks in highly dynamic wireless networks.

Autonomous Systems

Using Adaptive Behaviour Found in Nature to Solve Dynamic Multi-objective Optimisation Problems

Supervisors: Dr. Marde Helbig

Description: Many real-world problems require obtaining an optimal trade-off solution for conflicting goals, for example, trying to minimise the electricity cost while maximising comfort in a room. Normally if you maximise comfort, through for example switching on the air-conditioning and switching on the lights in the room, you are also increasing the electricity cost. Therefore, these two goals conflict with one another. Furthermore, a change in the weather may lead to a different desired solution for the room. Another example is finding the optimal route when using a map application or a GPS when driving from one point to another, by minimising the time required and minimising the cost (such as distance travelled or reducing toll fees and thereby avoiding the motor way). However, minimising the cost may lead to a longer travel time being required. In addition, an accident on the route may change the most optimal solution to not being valid anymore. This research investigates using Computational Intelligence algorithms to solve these types of problems, referred to as dynamic multi-objective optimisation problems. Computational Intelligence algorithms have a population of entities, where each entity represents a possible solution in the search space. These algorithms are based on adaptive behaviour found in nature, such as the flying formation of a flock of birds searching for food, pheromones used by ants when foresting for food, genetic material such DNA, etc.

M. Helbig, Heiner Zille, Mahrokh Javadi and Sanaz Mostaghim. Performance of Dynamic Algorithms on the Dynamic Distance Minimization Problem, In Proceedings of the International Genetic and Evolutionary Computation Conference (GECCO) Companion, p. 205-206, Prague, Czech Republic, 13-17 July 2019 (CORE Rank A).

M.  Helbig and   A.P. Engelbrecht. Benchmarks for dynamic multi-objective optimisation algorithms, ACM Computing Surveys, 46(3), September, 2014 (2014 impact factor: 3.373, WoS Rank: Q1).

M.  Helbig and A.P.  Engelbrecht. Performance measures for dynamic multi-objective optimisation, Information Sciences, 250:61-81, November, 2013 (2013 impact factor: 3.643, WoS Rank: Q1).

Estivill-Castro V. (2019) Game Theory Formulation for Ethical Decision Making. In: Aldinhas Ferreira M., Silva Sequeira J., Singh Virk G., Tokhi M., E. Kadar E. (eds) Robotics and Well-Being. Intelligent Systems, Control and Automation: Science and Engineering, vol 95. Springer, Cham.

Multi-agent systems to Model the Human Immunology response to viruses like COVID or to Cancer

David F. Nettleton , Vladimir Estivill-Castro,  Enrique Hernández Jiménez . Multi-agent Modeling Simulation of In-vitro T-cells for Immunologic Alternatives to Cancer Treatment.  ICAART (1) 2020 : 169-178

Intelligent optimisation and deep learning guided protein structure prediction

Supervisors: Professor Abdul Sattar

Explainable AI: reasoning with learning

Learning based search for hard combinatorial optimisation problems

Supervisors: A/Prof. Kaile Su

Description: This Project aims to advance local search technologies to address new challenges for solving hard combinatorial optimization problems in data mining, image processing, and deep neural network. This Project expects to propose new efficient local search strategies, to investigate the mechanism that integrates proposed local search strategies and machine learning for real-world applications, and to explore the local search approach to training deep neural networks. Expected outcomes of this Project include the novel paradigm for efficient local search, and the local search algorithms for solving real-world problems in data mining, image processing, and deep neural network

ChuanLuo ,  Shaowei Cai , Kaile Su,  Wenxuan Huang . CCEHC: An efficient local search algorithm for weighted partial maximum satisfiability.  Artificial Intelligence, Vol. 243 , pages 26-44, 2017.

Yi Fan ,  Nan Li ,  Chengqian Li ,  Zongjie Ma ,  Longin Jan Latecki , Kaile Su. Restart and Random Walk in Local Search for Maximum Vertex Weight Cliques with Evaluations in Clustering Aggregation.  International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence, pages 622-630, 2017.

Explainable AI through rule-based machine learning

Supervisors: Dr. Zhe Wang and Prof. Kewen Wang

Description: As existing deep learning systems often behave in a black-box manner and thus are incapable to provide human-understandable explanations for their predictions, which limits their wide application in decision critical applications. This project focuses on the automated construction of rule-based knowledge bases to support machine reasoning and explaining the predictions made.

Pouya Ghiasnezhad Omran, Kewen Wang, and Zhe Wang. An Embedding-based Approach to Rule Learning in Knowledge Graphs. In: IEEE Transactions on Knowledge and Data Engineering (accepted for publication).

Pouya Ghiasnezhad Omran, Kewen Wang, and Zhe Wang. Scalable Rule Learning via Learning Representation. In: Proceedings of the 27th International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence (IJCAI-18), pages 2149-2155, 2018.

Machine Learning, Data Analytics and Big Data

Privacy-Preserving Data-Mining

David F. Nettleton , Vladimir Estivill-Castro,  Julián Salas . Privacy in Multiple On-line Social Networks - Re-identification and Predictability.  Trans. Data Priv. 12(1) : 29-56 (2019)

Explanation and verification of machine learning models

Supervisors: Dr. Zhe Hou

Description: Machine learning is a subset of artificial intelligence that is focused on building mathematical models based on sample data, and making predictions without explicitly being programmed to perform the task. Machine learning has been used in data analytics for insurance, sports, tourism, marketing and many other areas. However, most existing machine learning algorithms often give excellent prediction results without telling the user how the decisions are made. This weakness results in trust issues from the user and limitations for adopting machine learning in some applications. To realise white-box machine learning, we propose to develop a new prediction model analysis method based on automated reasoning that systematically extracts logical explanations from prediction models and presents them in a way that users can easily understand. We will then leverage my previous experience in formal verification to convert prediction model into logical model and verify it against user specifications. Finally, we will develop new learning algorithms that can train correct-by-construction prediction models with respect to user specifications.

Optimisation-driven safe reinforcement learning for medical decision-making

Description: There is a tremendous gap between today’s AI systems and the requirements in mission-critical applications. Improving reliability, safety, and security of AI decision-making is of paramount importance. These challenges drove us to develop new AI decision-making techniques which are safer and more secure. Particularly, we propose to integrate formal verification and bio-inspired optimisation techniques into (deep) reinforcement learning (RL) in order to provide a higher level of safety and security guarantees. There are three main modules for the proposed work. The first module concerns the development of new reliable optimisation algorithms that are suitable to be used as the core for reinforcement learning. The second module is about designing an efficient safe reinforcement learning algorithm using PAT and reliability-based optimisation. The third module is an application of the previous two in the scenario of cyber-physical attacks. We propose to extend the previous two modules with an adversarial deep reinforcement learning approach to train a more secure system. Finally we will apply the developed techniques in medical decision-making case studies such as the usage of respirator for COVID-19 treatments and drug dosage analysis.

Automated Intelligence Analysis of Social Media Data for Causal Discovery

Supervisors: Dr. Saiful Islam

Description: The recent growth of social media data opens-up a potentiality for automated systems to collect, process and analyse user generated data on causality. Automated discovery of causality detects the relationship between a cause and the corresponding effect. The discovered causality related information can be directly applied to several applications including automatic question answering, security and prescriptive event analysis. For instance, can we conclude that “lack of communication” caused “a disruption in bus service in Gold Coast” from the tweet “A disruption in bus service in Gold Coast due to lack of communication between translink and event organizers” posted by a user in twitter? Automated discovery of causality in social media data is not straightforward. Rather, it is a very challenging problem due to the unstructured, informal, and diverse nature of social media data. In this project, we aim to tackle this issue by developing an autonomous intelligent system that will collect and process social media data, develop transfer-learning based artificial intelligence (AI) models and algorithms to detect text causality in social media data. Some of our preliminary works have already been accepted by the community and published in the top venues of data mining and AI fields.

Data Privacy for Machine Learning

Description: Machine learning (ML) allows computer systems to train themselves to improve their performance. It is pervasive and plays a key role in a wide range of applications. At a high level, ML consists of two phases. In the first phase, it applies a learning algorithm to a set of training data drawn from some unknown distribution to generate a model (hypothesis). In the second phase, the model can be used to explain new data (e.g., classify new data from the unknown distribution, or generate new data from a distribution that is close to the unknown distribution). In many applications of ML, sensitive data is needed and therefore data privacy becomes a concern. For example, when comes to Machine Learning As a Service, remote entities (usually untrusted) provide access to machine learning algorithms using the Internet to user’s data and return the results. User’s data might be completely exposed to the remote entities if security/privacy mechanisms are not imposed. Also, even with the best privacy on the training data, output (in cleartext form) of the second phase of ML may reveal information on training data. Therefore, with ML is being applied ubiquitously, a set of techniques that protect data privacy in ML is desirable and important. In this project, you will closely analyse the data privacy issues in the context of ML and explore advanced cryptographic and privacy techniques (e.g., fully homomorphic encryption, secure multi-party computation and differential privacy) to provide innovative and practical solutions.

Unified stream learning of medical data for continuous patient outcome monitoring, prognosis, and hospital resource allocation

Supervisors: A/Prof. Alan Wee-Chung Liew

Description: This project aims to develop novel stream learning algorithms for continuous patient outcome monitoring and prognosis by taking into account patient's data collected during hospital admission. The algorithms are expected to integrate high frequency time series data with patient's demographic data, lab test data, diagnosis data, prescription data, etc. as exemplified in MIMIC-III, for accurate patient outcome monitoring and prognosis. This will in turn used to inform hospital resource planning and allocation using for example, our highly efficient binary QP solver [1]. Practical issues such as data sparsity, noisy and missing data, data non-stationarity, data leakage, prediction bias, model explainability, etc. will be investigated.

B.S.Y. Lam, A.W.C. Liew, “A Fast Binary Quadratic Programming Solver based on Stochastic Neighborhood Search”, IEEE Trans on Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence, 2020. DOI: 10.1109/TPAMI.2020.3010811

Privacy Preserving Big Data Analytics in Cloud Environments

Supervisors: Dr. Hui Tian

Description: Along with the advances of computing and network technologies, applying AI and machine learning techniques to analyse various types of big data from heterogeneous sources has become a major form of data processing and analysis. However, privacy leakage in accessing, processing and analysing shared (published) data is a major concern that obstacles the development of big data analytics. There have been numerous example of shocking damages and losses - both political and financial - caused by privacy breaches in different scales.

In order to safeguard data sharing for the purpose of big data analytics required by our industry and business, in the project we will investigate effective models, methods and techniques for privacy protection in data publishing, processing and analysis. For data publishing, we will study both cryptographic and non-cryptographic techniques including block cypher, randomization and anonymization to achieve effective protection of different type of data. For data processing, we will study effective privacy-preserving computing techniques including secure multi-party computation (SMC) and differential privacy. We will apply them in a cloud environment on virtualized network and computing resources. For data analysis, we will embed privacy-preserving techniques into machine learning models to achieve secure machine learning on big data.

Project outcomes will benefit both researchers and practitioners in big data analytics, machine learning, cloud computing and social network analysis, and potentially result significant economic gain for Australia's network-centric industry and business.

Hui Tian, Wenwen Sheng, Hong Shen, Can Wang. Truth Finding by Reliability Estimation on Inconsistent Entities for Heterogeneous Data Sets. Knowledge-Based Systems, Jul. 2019. (CORE B, IF 5.921)

Hui Tian, Jingtian Liu and Hong Shen. Diffusion Wavelet-based Privacy Preserving in Social Networks. Computers & Electrical Engineering, Feb. 2018. (CORE B, IF 2.663)

Ruoxuan Wei, Hui Tian and Hong Shen. Improving k-Anonymity Based Privacy Preservation for Collaborative Filtering. Computers & Electrical Engineering, Mar. 2018. (CORE B, IF 2.663)

Effective and Efficient Recommender Systems via Social Networks

Supervisors: Dr. Can Wang

Description: This project aims at building a series of efficient recommender systems with high accuracy from social networks, such as Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Netflix, and so on. The research questions may include how to quantify the coupling relationships in recommender systems from different levels, how to enhance the interpretability of recommender systems, how to involve the trend information and how to model trust in various recommendation problems, how to speed up the recommendation process but with acceptable accuracy, and etc.

Can Wang, Chi-Hung Chi, Zhong She, Longbing Cao, Bela Stantic. Coupled Clustering Ensemble by Exploring Data Interdependence. ACM Transactions on Knowledge Discovery from Data, Vol. 12, No. 6, Article 63, pages 1-38, 2018. [Impact Factor 2.538, Q1]

Can Wang, Xiangjun Dong, Fei Zhou, Longbing Cao, Chi-Hung Chi. Coupled Attribute Similarity Learning on Categorical Data. IEEE Transactions on Neural Networks and Learning Systems, Vol. 26, No. 4, pages 781-797, 2015. [Impact Factor: 11.683, Q1]

Zhe Liu ,  Lina Yao ,  Lei Bai ,  Xianzhi Wang ,  Can Wang . Spectrum-Guided Adversarial Disparity Learning. The 2020 ACM SIGKDD Conference on Knowledge Discovery and Data Mining (Accepted by KDD 2020). [CORE Ranking: A*]

Ye Tao, Can Wang, Lina Yao, Weimin Li, Yonghong Yu. TRec: Sequential Recommender Based On Latent Item Trend Information. International Joint Conference on Neural Networks (IJCNN 2020), pp. 1-8, 2020. [CORE Ranking: A]

Yunwei Zhao, Can Wang, Chi-Hung Chi, Kwok-Yan Lam, Sen Wang. A Comparative Study of Transactional and Semantic Approaches for Predicting Cascades on Twitter, The 27th International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence (IJCAI 2018), pages 1212-1218, 2018 [CORE Ranking: A*]

Approximate query answering in large graphs Description

Supervisors: A/Prof. Junhu Wang

Description: Graphs are increasingly being used to model complex data, and collections of graphs are getting very large, which brings big challenges to query processing. On one hand, many queries in graph databases are expensive by nature, and computing their exact answers can be infeasible when the graph size is large. On the other, in many applications an error-bounded estimate will suffice.  These motivates the work on approximate query answering in large graphs.

This project will investigate approximate query answering in large dynamic graphs where nodes and edges can be frequently updated. We will focus on property graphs where the nodes (and/or edges) are associated with key-value pairs, and queries that may involve simple aggregation (e.g., counting the number of occurrences of substructures), and develop novel techniques to efficiently find high-quality approximate answers.

The approaches will generally involve offline pre-processing (e.g., summarization, smart indexing), algorithm design, and experimental evaluation.  Due to the dynamic nature of the graphs, any auxiliary data structures need to be efficiently maintainable, and ideally incremental computation of query answers will be explored.  We are particularly interested in summarization-based techniques and applying machine-learning in auxiliary structure construction.

Xuguang Ren and Junhu Wang: Exploiting Vertex Relationships in Speeding up Subgraph Isomorphism over Large Graphs. VLDB 2015.

Xuguang Ren and Junhu Wang: Multi-Query Optimization for Subgraph Isomorphism Search. VLDB 2017.

Natural Language Question-Answering over Knowledge Graphs

Description: Knowledge graphs are tremendously popular nowadays because its ability to model diverse information. A knowledge graph can be regarded as a repository of facts about objects and their relationships, represented as labelled edges of a directed graph.  Over the last few years there have been growing interest in industry and academia to develop natural language question-answering (NLQL) systems over large knowledge graphs.  Such systems typically consists of two parts: question understanding and answer searching. Question understanding is to figure out the precise intention of the question, and answer searching is to actually find the answers based on the search intention.  Both tasks are challenging because of the ambiguity of natural language sentences and the fact that the same question an be raised in multiple ways in natural languages, and large size of knowledge graphs.

Existing approaches, whether based on question templates, machine-learning and graph embedding, or subgraph matching, suffer from limited capability in terms of the question types they can handle (i.e., they are limited to simple questions), accuracy, and efficiency. This PhD project will investigate NLQA over large knowledge graphs, with the aim of developing novel techniques to address the above limitations.

Xiangnan Ren, Neha Sengupta, Xuguang Ren, Junhu Wang, Olivier Cur. Finding Structurally Compact Subgraphs with Ontology Exploration in Large RDF data (under review by PVLDB).

Space Research

Development of new machine learning techniques for spectroscopic analysis of Martian soils and rock samples

Supervisors:  Prof. Paulo de Souza and Dr. Liat Rozemberg

Description: During combined 20 years of daily exploration of the surface of Mars, the NASA Mars Exploration Rovers Spirit and Opportunity performed thousands of spectroscopic analysis on soils and rocks [1-2]. A number of approaches have been employed to analyse these spectra including artificial neural networks [3], genetic algorithms [4, 5], and fuzzy logic [6]. These techniques were useful to extract relevant spectral parameters useful in the identification of minerals such as jarosite, hematite, goethite and primary minerals such as olivine and pyroxene [7-10].

Considering the significant temperature dependence of the spectral features and the daily variation of the Martian surface temperature, quality measurements can be at times difficult to be obtained. However, classifying similar samples and combining spectra over extensive ranges might be an acceptable approach aiming at increasing sampling quality over an extensive region visited by the rovers.

This project aims at the development of a new machine learning technique that will be able to combine similar spectroscopic measurements and utilise this combination to gain insights into mineral phase composition of the Martian surface.

[1] R. E. Arvidson, S. W. Squyres, J. F. Bell, J. G. Catalano, B. C. Clark, L. S. Crumpler, P. A. de Souza, A. G. Fairen, W. H. Farrand, V. K. Fox, R. Gellert, A. Ghosh, M. P. Golombek, J. P. Grotzinger, E. A. Guinness, K. E. Herkenhoff, B. L. Jolliff, A. H. Knoll, R. Li, S. M. McLennan, D. W. Ming, D. W. Mittlefehldt, J. M.  Moore, R. V. Morris, S. L. Murchie, et al. Ancient Aqueous Environments at Endeavour Crater, Mars. Science v. 343, p. 1248097-1248097, 2014. Doi: 10.1126/science.1248097

[2] S. W. Squyres, R. E. Arvidson, J. F. Bell, F. Calef, B. C. Clark, B. A. Cohen, L. A. Crumpler, P. A. de Souza, W. H. Farrand, R. Gellert, J. Grant, K. E. Herkenhoff, J. A. Hurowitz, J. R. Johnson, B. L. Jolliff, A. H. Knoll, R. Li, S. M. Mclennan, D. W. Ming, D. W. Mittlefehldt, T. J. Parker, G. Paulsen, M. S. Rice, S. W. Ruff, C. Schroder, A. S. Yen, K. Zacny, Ancient Impact and Aqueous Processes at Endeavour Crater, Mars. Science, v. 336, p. 570-576, 2012. doi: 10.1126/science.1220476

[3] P. A. de Souza (1998) Advances in Mössbauer data analysis. Hyperfine Interactions, 113, 383-390. doi: 10.1023/A:1012673027232.

[4] F. Susanto, P. de Souza, Mössbauer spectral curve fitting combining fundamentally different techniques, Nuclear Instruments and Methods in Physics Research Section B, v. 385 (2016) 40-45. doi: 10.1016/j.nimb.2016.08.011

[5] Jeremy Breen, P. de Souza, G. Timms, R. Ollington, Onboard assessment of XRF spectra using genetic algorithms for decision making on an autonomous underwater vehicle, Nuclear Instruments and Methods in Physics Research B 269 (2011) 1341-1245. doi: 10.1016/j.nimb.2011.03.012.

[6] P. A. de Souza (1999) Automation in Mössbauer Spectroscopy Data Analysis. Laboratory Robotics and Automation, 113-23. doi: 10.1002/(SICI)1098-2728(1999)11:1<3::AID-LRA2>3.0.CO;2-F.

[7] M. S. Rice, J. F. Bell III, E. A. Cloutis, A. Wang, S. W. Ruff, M. A. Craig, D. T. Bailey, J. R. Johnson, P. A. de Souza, W. H. Farrand (2010) Hydrated Minerals in Gusev Crater. Icarus, Vol 205, 2 (2010) 375-395. doi: 10.1016/j.icarus.2009.03.035.

[8] W. Goetz, P. Bertelsen, C. S. Binau, H. P. Gunnlaugsson, S. F. Hviid, K. M. Kinch, D. E. Madsen, M. B. Madsen, M. Olsen, R. Gellert, G. Klingelhöfer, D. W. Ming, R. V. Morris, R. Rieder, D. S. Rodionov, P. A. de Souza, C. Schröder, S. W. Squyres, T. Wdowiak, A. Yen (2005) Indication of drier periods on Mars from the chemistry and mineralogy of atmospheric dust, Nature, Vol 43662-65. doi: 10.1038/nature03807.

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54 Most Interesting Technology Research Topics for 2023

May 30, 2023

Scrambling to find technology research topics for the assignment that’s due sooner than you thought? Take a scroll down these 54 interesting technology essay topics in 10 different categories, including controversial technology topics, and some example research questions for each.

Social technology research topics

Whether you have active profiles on every social media platform, you’ve taken a social media break, or you generally try to limit your engagement as much as possible, you probably understand how pervasive social technologies have become in today’s culture. Social technology will especially appeal to those looking for widely discussed, mainstream technology essay topics.

• How do viewers respond to virtual influencers vs human influencers? Is one more effective or ethical over the other?
• Across social media platforms, when and where is mob mentality most prevalent? How do the nuances of mob mentality shift depending on the platform or topic?
• Portable devices like cell phones, laptops, and tablets have certainly made daily life easier in some ways. But how have they made daily life more difficult?
• How does access to social media affect developing brains? And what about mature brains?
• Can dating apps alter how users perceive and interact with people in real life?
• Studies have proven “doomscrolling” to negatively impact mental health—could there ever be any positive impacts?

Cryptocurrency and blockchain technology research topics

Following cryptocurrency and blockchain technology has been a rollercoaster the last few years. And since Bitcoin’s conception in 2009, cryptocurrency has consistently showed up on many lists of controversial technology topics.

• Is it ethical for celebrities or influential people to promote cryptocurrencies or cryptographic assets like NFTs ?
• What are the environmental impacts of mining cryptocurrencies? Could those impacts ever change?
• How does cryptocurrency impact financial security and financial health?
• Could the privacy cryptocurrency offers ever be worth the added security risks?
• How might cryptocurrency regulations and impacts continue to evolve?
• Created to enable cryptocurrency, blockchain has since proven useful in several other industries. What new uses could blockchain have?

Artificial intelligence technology research topics

We started 2023 with M3GAN’s box office success, and now we’re fascinated (or horrified) with ChatGPT , voice cloning , and deepfakes . While people have discussed artificial intelligence for ages, recent advances have really pushed this topic to the front of our minds. Those searching for controversial technology topics should pay close attention to this one.

• OpenAI –the company behind ChatGPT–has shown commitment to safe, moderated AI tools that they hope will provide positive benefits to society. Sam Altman, their CEO, recently testified before a US Senate He described what AI makes possible and called for more regulation in the industry. But even with companies like OpenAI displaying efforts to produce safe AI and advocating for regulations, can AI ever have a purely positive impact? Are certain pitfalls unavoidable?
• In a similar vein, can AI ever actually be ethically or safely produced? Will there always be certain risks?
• How might AI tools impact society across future generations?
• Countless movies and television shows explore the idea of AI going wrong, going back all the way to 1927’s Metropolis . What has a greater impact on public perception—representations in media or industry developments? And can public perception impact industry developments and their effectiveness?

Beauty and anti-aging technology 

Throughout human history, people in many cultures have gone to extreme lengths to capture and maintain a youthful beauty. But technology has taken the pursuit of beauty and youth to another level. For those seeking technology essay topics that are both timely and timeless, this one’s a gold mine.

• With augmented reality technology, companies like Perfect allow app users to virtually try on makeup, hair color, hair accessories, and hand or wrist accessories. Could virtual try-ons lead to a somewhat less wasteful beauty industry? What downsides should we consider?
• Users of the Perfect app can also receive virtual diagnoses for skin care issues and virtually “beautify” themselves with smoothed skin, erased blemishes, whitened teeth, brightened under-eye circles, and reshaped facial structures. How could advancements in beauty and anti-aging technology affect self-perception and mental health?
• What are the best alternatives to animal testing within the beauty and anti-aging industry?
• Is anti-aging purely a cosmetic pursuit? Could anti-aging technology provide other benefits?
• Could people actually find a “cure” to aging? And could a cure to aging lead to longer lifespans?
• How might longer human lifespans affect the Earth?

Geoengineering technology research topics

An umbrella term, geoengineering refers to large-scale technologies that can alter the earth and its climate. Typically, these types of technologies aim to combat climate change. Those searching for controversial technology topics should consider looking into this one.

• What benefits can solar geoengineering provide? Can they outweigh the severe risks?
• Compare solar geoengineering methods like mirrors in space, stratospheric aerosol injection, marine cloud brightening, and other proposed methods. How have these methods evolved? How might they continue to evolve?
• Which direct air capture methods are most sustainable?
• How can technology contribute to reforestation efforts?
• What are the best uses for biochar? And how can biochar help or harm the earth?
• Out of all the carbon geoengineering methods that exist or have been proposed, which should we focus on the most?

Creative and performing arts technology topics

While tensions often arise between artists and technology, they’ve also maintained a symbiotic relationship in many ways. It’s complicated. But of course, that’s what makes it interesting. Here’s another option for those searching for timely and timeless technology essay topics.

• How has the relationship between art and technology evolved over time?
• How has technology impacted the ways people create art? And how has technology impacted the ways people engage with art?
• Technology has made creating and viewing art widely accessible. Does this increased accessibility change the value of art? And do we value physical art more than digital art?
• Does technology complement storytelling in the performing arts? Or does technology hinder storytelling in the performing arts?
• Which current issues in the creative or performing arts could potentially be solved with technology?

Cellular agriculture technology research topics

And another route for those drawn to controversial technology topics: cellular agriculture. You’ve probably heard about popular plant-based meat options from brands like Impossible and Beyond Meat . While products made with cellular agriculture also don’t require the raising and slaughtering of livestock, they are not plant-based. Cellular agriculture allows for the production of animal-sourced foods and materials made from cultured animal cells.

• Many consumers have a proven bias against plant-based meats. Will that same bias extend to cultured meat, despite cultured meat coming from actual animal cells?
• Which issues can arise from patenting genes?
• Does the animal agriculture industry provide any benefits that cellular agriculture may have trouble replicating?
• How might products made with cellular agriculture become more affordable?
• Could cellular agriculture conflict with the notion of a “ circular bioeconomy ?” And should we strive for a circular bioeconomy? Can we create a sustainable relationship between technology, capitalism, and the environment, with or without cellular agriculture?

Transportation technology research topics

For decades, we’ve expected flying cars to carry us into a techno-utopia, where everything’s shiny, digital, and easy. We’ve heard promises of super fast trains that can zap us across the country or even across the world. We’ve imagined spring breaks on the moon, jet packs, and teleportation. Who wouldn’t love the option to go anywhere, anytime, super quickly? Transportation technology is another great option for those seeking widely discussed, mainstream technology essay topics.

• Once upon a time, Lady Gaga was set to perform in space as a promotion for Virgin Galactic . While Virgin Galactic never actually launched the iconic musician/actor, soon, they hope to launch their first commercial flight full of civilians–who paid $450,000 a pop–on a 90-minute trip into the stars. And if you think that’s pricey, SpaceX launched three businessmen into space for $55 million in April, 2022 (though with meals included, this is actually a total steal). So should we be launching people into space just for fun? What are the impacts of space tourism?
• Could technology improve the way hazardous materials get transported?
• How can the 5.9 GHz Safety Band affect drivers?
• Which might be safer: self-driving cars or self-flying airplanes?
• Compare hyperloop and maglev Which is better and why?
• Can technology improve safety for cyclists?

Gaming technology topics

A recent study involving over 2000 children found links between video game play and enhanced cognitive abilities. While many different studies have found the impacts of video games to be positive or neutral, we still don’t fully understand the impact of every type of video game on every type of brain. Regardless, most people have opinions on video gaming. So this one’s for those seeking widely discussed, mainstream, and controversial technology topics.

• Are different types or genres of video games more cognitively beneficial than others? Or are certain gaming consoles more cognitively beneficial than others?
• How do the impacts of video games differ from other types of games, such as board games or puzzles?
• What ethical challenges and safety risks come with virtual reality gaming?
• How does a player perceive reality during a virtual reality game compared to during other types of video games?
• Can neurodivergent brains benefit from video games in different ways than neurotypical brains?

Medical technology 

Advancements in healthcare have the power to change and save lives. In the last ten years, countless new medical technologies have been developed, and in the next ten years, countless more will likely emerge. Always relevant and often controversial, this final technology research topic could interest anyone.

• Which ethical issues might arise from editing genes using CRISPR-Cas9 technology? And should this technology continue to be illegal in the United States?
• How has telemedicine impacted patients and the healthcare they receive?
• Can neurotechnology devices potentially affect a user’s agency, identity, privacy, and/or cognitive liberty?
• How could the use of medical 3-D printing continue to evolve?
• Are patients more likely to skip digital therapeutics than in-person therapeutic methods? And can the increased screen-time required by digital therapeutics impact mental health

What do you do next?

Now that you’ve picked from this list of technology essay topics, you can do a deep dive and immerse yourself in new ideas, new information, and new perspectives. And of course, now that these topics have motivated you to change the world, look into the best computer science schools , the top feeders to tech and Silicon Valley , the best summer programs for STEM students , and the best biomedical engineering schools .

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Mariya holds a BFA in Creative Writing from the Pratt Institute and is currently pursuing an MFA in writing at the University of California Davis. Mariya serves as a teaching assistant in the English department at UC Davis. She previously served as an associate editor at Carve Magazine for two years, where she managed 60 fiction writers. She is the winner of the 2015 Stony Brook Fiction Prize, and her short stories have been published in Mid-American Review , Cutbank , Sonora Review , New Orleans Review , and The Collagist , among other magazines.

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The Top 10 Most Interesting Technology Research Topics

With technological innovation streamlining processes in businesses at all levels and customers opting for digital interaction, adopting modern technologies have become critical for success in all industries. Technology continues to positively impact organizations , according to Statista, which is why technology research topics have become common among college-level students.

In this article, we have hand-picked the best examples of technology research topics and technology research questions to help you choose a direction to focus your research efforts. These technology research paper topics will inspire you to consider new ways to analyze technology and its evolving role in today’s world.

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What makes a strong technology research topic.

A strong research topic is clear, relevant, and original. It should intrigue readers to learn more about the role of technology through your research paper. A successful research topic meets the requirements of the assignment and isn’t too broad or narrow.

Technology research topics must identify a broad area of research on technologies, so an extremely technical topic can be overwhelming to write. Your technology research paper topic should be suitable for the academic level of your audience.

Tips for Choosing a Technology Research Topic

• Make sure it’s clear. Select a research topic with a clear main idea that you can explain in simple language. It should be able to capture the attention of the audience and keep them engaged in your research paper.
• Make sure it’s relevant. The technology research paper topic should be relevant to the understanding and academic level of the readers. It should enhance their knowledge of a specific technological topic, instead of simply providing vague, directionless ideas about different types of technologies.
• Employ approachable language. Even though you might be choosing a topic from complex technology research topics, the language should be simple. It can be field-specific, but the technical terms used must be basic and easy to understand for the readers.
• Discuss innovations. New technologies get introduced frequently, which adds to the variety of technology research paper topics. Your research topic shouldn’t be limited to old or common technologies. Along with the famous technologies, it should include evolving technologies and introduce them to the audience.
• Be creative . With the rapid growth of technological development, some technology research topics have become increasingly common. It can be challenging to be creative with a topic that has been exhausted through numerous research papers. Your research topic should provide unique information to the audience, which can attract them to your work.

What’s the Difference Between a Research Topic and a Research Question?

A research topic is a subject or a problem being studied by a researcher. It is the foundation of any research paper that sets the tone of the research. It should be broad with a wide range of information available for conducting research.

On the other hand, a research question is closely related to the research topic and is addressed in the study. The answer is formed through data analysis and interpretation. It is more field-specific and directs the research paper toward a specific aspect of a broad subject.

How to Create Strong Technology Research Questions

Technology research questions should be concise, specific, and original while showing a connection to the technology research paper topic. It should be researchable and answerable through analysis of a problem or issue. Make sure it is easy to understand and write within the given word limit and timeframe of the research paper.

Technology is an emerging field with several areas of study, so a strong research question is based on a specific part of a large technical field. For example, many technologies are used in branches of healthcare such as genetics and DNA. Therefore, a research paper about genetics technology should feature a research question that is exclusive to genetics technology only.

Top 10 Technology Research Paper Topics

1. the future of computer-assisted education.

The world shifted to digital learning in the last few years. Students were using the Internet to take online classes, online exams, and courses. Some people prefer distance learning courses over face-to-face classes now, as they only require modern technologies like laptops, mobile phones, and the Internet to study, complete assignments, and even attend lectures.

The demand for digital learning has increased, and it will be an essential part of the education system in the coming years. As a result of the increasing demand, the global digital learning market is expecting a growth of about 110 percent by 2026 .

2. Children’s Use of Social Media

Nowadays, parents allow their children to use the Internet from a very young age. A recent poll by C.S. Mott Children’s Hospital reported that 32 percent of parents allow their children aged seven to nine to use social media sites. This can expose them to cyber bullying and age-inappropriate content, as well as increase their dependence on technology.

Kids need to engage in physical activities and explore the world around them. Using social media sites in childhood can be negative for their personalities and brain health. Analyzing the advantages and disadvantages of the use of technology among young children can create an interesting research paper.

3. The Risks of Digital Voting

Digital voting is an easy way of casting and counting votes. It can save the cost and time associated with traveling to the polling station and getting a postal vote. However, it has a different set of security challenges. A research paper can list the major election security risks caused by digital voting.

Voting in an online format can expose your personal information and decisions to a hacker. As no computer device or software is completely unhackable, the voting system can be taken down, or the hacking may even go undetected.

4. Technology’s Impact on Society in 20 Years

Technological development has accelerated in the last decade. Current technology trends in innovation are focusing on artificial intelligence development, machine learning, and the development and implementation of robots.

Climate change has affected both human life and animal life. Climate technology can be used to deal with global warming in the coming years, and digital learning can make education available for everyone. This technology research paper can discuss the positive and negative effects of technology in 20 years.

5. The Reliability of Self-Driving Cars

Self-driving cars are one of the most exciting trends in technology today. It is a major technology of the future and one of the controversial technology topics. It is considered safer than human driving, but there are some risks involved. For example, edge cases are still common to experience while driving.

Edge cases are occasional and unpredictable situations that may lead to accidents and injuries. It includes difficult weather conditions, objects or animals on the road, and blocked roads. Self-driving cars may struggle to respond to edge cases appropriately, requiring the driver to employ common sense to handle the situation.

6. The Impact of Technology on Infertility

Assisted reproductive technology (ART) helps infertile couples get pregnant. It employs infertility techniques such as In-Vitro Fertilization (IVF) and Gamete Intrafallopian Transfer (GIFT).

Infertility technologies are included in the controversial technology topics because embryonic stem cell research requires extracted human embryos. So, the research can be considered unethical. It is an excellent research topic from the reproductive technology field.

7. Evolution of War Technology

Military technologies have improved throughout history. Modern technologies, such as airplanes, missiles, nuclear reactors, and drones, are essential for war management. Countries experience major innovation in technologies during wars to fulfill their military-specific needs.

Military technologies have controversial ideas and debates linked to them, as some people believe that it plays a role in wars. A research paper on war technology can help evaluate the role of technology in warfare.

8. Using Technology to Create Eco-Friendly Food Packaging

Food technologies and agricultural technologies are trying to manage climate change through eco-friendly food packaging. The materials used are biodegradable, sustainable, and have inbuilt technology that kills microbes harmful to human life.

Research on eco-friendly food packaging can discuss the ineffectiveness of current packaging strategies. The new food technologies used for packaging can be costly, but they are better for preserving foods and the environment.

9. Disease Diagnostics and Therapeutics Through DNA Cloning

Genetic engineering deals with genes and uses them as diagnostics and therapeutics. DNA cloning creates copies of genes or parts of DNA to study different characteristics. The findings are used for diagnosing different types of cancers and even hematological diseases.

Genetic engineering is also used for therapeutic cloning, which clones an embryo for studying diseases and treatments. DNA technology, gene editing, gene therapy, and similar topics are hot topics in technology research papers.

10. Artificial Intelligence in Mental Health Care

Mental health is a widely discussed topic around the world, making it perfect for technology research topics. The mental health care industry has more recently been using artificial intelligence tools and mental health technology like chatbots and virtual assistants to connect with patients.

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Artificial intelligence has the potential to improve the diagnosis and treatment of mental illness. It can help a health care provider with monitoring patient progress and assigning the right therapist based on provided data and information.

Other Examples of Technology Research Topics & Questions

Technology research topics.

• The connection between productivity and the use of digital tools
• The importance of medical technologies in the next years
• The consequences of addiction to technology
• The negative impact of social media
• The rise and future of blockchain technology

Technology Research Questions

• Is using technology in college classrooms a good or bad idea?
• What are the advantages of cloud technologies for pharmaceutical companies?
• Can new technologies help in treating morbid obesity?
• How to identify true and false information on social media
• Why is machine learning the future?

Choosing the Right Technology Research Topic

Since technology is a diverse field, it can be challenging to choose an interesting technology research topic. It is crucial to select a good research topic for a successful research paper. Any research is centered around the research topic, so it’s important to pick one carefully.

From cell phones to self-driving cars, technological development has completely transformed the world. It offers a wide range of topics to research, resulting in numerous options to choose from. We have compiled technology research topics from a variety of fields. You should select a topic that interests you, as you will be spending weeks researching and writing about it.

Technology Research Topics FAQ

Technology is important in education because it allows people to access educational opportunities globally through mobile technologies and the Internet. Students can enroll in online college degrees , courses, and attend online coding bootcamps . Technology has also made writing research papers easier with the tremendous amount of material available online.

Yes, technology can take over jobs as robotics and automation continue to evolve. However, the management of these technologies will still require human employees with technical backgrounds, such as artificial intelligence specialists, data scientists , and cloud engineers.

Solar panels and wind turbines are two forms of technology that help with climate change, as they convert energy efficiently without emitting greenhouse gases. Electric bikes run on lithium batteries and only take a few hours to charge, which makes them environmentally friendly. Carbon dioxide captures are a way of removing CO 2 from the atmosphere and storing it deep underground.

Technology helps companies manage client and employee data, store and protect important information, and develop strategies to stay ahead of competitors. Marketing technologies, such as Search Engine Optimization (SEO), are great for attracting customers online.

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224 Research Topics on Technology & Computer Science

Are you new to the world of technology? Do you need topics related to technology to write about? No worries, Custom-writing.org experts are here to help! In this article, we offer you a multitude of creative and interesting technology topics from various research areas, including information technology and computer science. So, let’s start!

• 🔝 Top 10 Topics

👋 Introduction

• 💾 Top 10 Computer Science Topics

⚙ Artificial Intelligence

💉 biotechnology, 📡 communications and media.

• 💻Computer Science & Engineering

🔋 Energy & Power Technologies

🍗 food technology, 😷 medical devices & diagnostics, 💊 pharmaceutical technologies.

• 🚈 Transportation

✋ Conclusion

🔍 references, 🔝 top 10 technology topics.

• The difference between VR and AR
• Is genetic engineering ethical?
• Can digital books replace print ones?
• The impact of virtual reality on education
• 5 major fields of robotics
• The risks and dangers of biometrics
• Nanotechnology in medicine
• Digital technology’s impact on globalization
• Is proprietary software less secure than open-source?
• The difference between deep learning and machine learning

Is it a good thing that technologies and computer science are developing so fast? No one knows for sure. There are too many different opinions, and some of them are quite radical! However, we know that technologies have changed our world once and forever. Computer science affects every single area of people’s lives.

Just think about Netflix . Can you imagine that 24 years ago it didn’t exist? How did people live without it? Well, in 2024, the entertainment field has gone so far that you can travel anywhere while sitting in your room. All you would have to do is just order a VR (virtual reality) headset. Moreover, personal computers give an unlimited flow of information, which has changed the entire education system.

Every day, technologies become smarter and smaller. A smartphone in your pocket may be as powerful as your laptop. No doubt, the development of computer science builds our future. It is hard to count how many research areas in technologies and computer science are there. But it is not hard to name the most important of them.

Artificial intelligence tops the charts, of course. However, engineering and biotechnology are not far behind. Communications and media are developing super fast as well. The research is also done in areas that make our lives better and more comfortable. The list of them includes transport, food and energy, medical, and pharmaceutical areas.

So check out our list of 204 most relevant computer science research topics below. Maybe one of them will inspire you to do revolutionary research!

💾 Top 10 Computer Science Research Topics

💡 technologies & computer science: research ideas.

Many people probably picture robots from the movie “I, Robot” when they hear about artificial intelligence. However, it is far from the truth.

AI is meant to be as close to a rational way of thinking as possible. It uses binary logic (just like computers) to help solve problems in many areas. Applied AI is only aimed at one task. A generalized AI branch is looking into a human-like machine that can learn to do anything.

Applied AI already helps researchers in quantum physics and medicine. You deal with AI every day when online shops suggest some items based on your previous purchases. Siri and self-driving cars are also examples of applied AI.

Generalized AI is supposed to be a copy of multitasking human intelligence. However, it is still in the stage of development. Computer technology has yet to reach the level necessary for its creation.

One of the latest trends in this area is improving healthcare management. It is done through the digitalization of all the information in hospitals and even helping diagnose the patients.

Also, privacy issues and facial recognition technologies are being researched. For example, some governments collect biometric data to reduce and even predict crime.

Research Topics on Artificial Intelligence Technology

Since AI development is exceptionally relevant nowadays, it would be smart to invest your time and effort into researching it. Here are some ideas on artificial intelligence research topics that you can look into:

• What areas of life machine learning are the most influential?
• How to choose the right algorithm for machine learning ?
• Supervised vs. unsupervised machine learning: compare & contrast
• Reinforcement machine learning algorithms
• Deep learning as a subset of machine learning
• Deep learning & artificial neural networks
• How do artificial neural networks work?
• A comparison of model-free & model-based reinforcement learning algorithms
• Reinforcement learning: single vs. multi-agent
• How do social robots interact with humans?
• Robotics in NASA
• Natural language processing: chatbots
• How does natural language processing produce natural language?
• Natural language processing vs. machine learning
• Artificial intelligence in computer vision
• Computer vision application: autonomous vehicles
• Recommender systems’ approaches
• Recommender systems: content-based recommendation vs. collaborative filtering
• Internet of things & artificial intelligence: the interconnection
• How much data do the Internet of things devices generate?

Biotechnology uses living organisms to modify different products. Even the simple thing as baking bread is a process of biotechnology. However, nowadays, this area went as far as changing the organisms’ DNA. Genetics and biochemistry are also a part of the biotechnology area.

The development of this area allows people to cure diseases with the help of new medicines. In agriculture, more and more research is done on biological treatment and modifying plants. Biotechnology is even involved in the production of our groceries, household chemicals, and textiles.

There are many exciting trends in biotechnology now that carry the potential of changing our world! For example, scientists are working on creating personalized drugs. This is feasible once they apply computer science to analyze people’s DNA.

Also, thanks to using new technologies, doctors can collect exact data and provide the patients with correct diagnosis and treatment. Now, you don’t even need to leave your place to get a doctor’s check-up. Just use telehealth!

Data management is developing in the biotechnology area as well. Thanks to that, doctors and scientists can store and access a tremendous amount of information.

The most exciting is the fact that new technology enables specialists to assess genetic information to treat and prevent illnesses! It may solve the problem of some diseases that were considered untreatable before.

Research Topics on Biotechnology

You can use the following examples of research questions on biotechnology for presentation or even a PhD paper! Here is a wide range of topics on biotechnology and its relation to agriculture, nanotechnology, and many more:

• Self-sufficient protein supply and biotechnology in farming
• Evaporation vs. evapotranspiration
• DNA cloning and a southern blot
• Pharmacogenetics & personalized drugs
• Is cloning “playing God”?
• Pharmacogenetics: cancer medicines
• How much can we control our genetics, at what point do we cease to be human?
• Bio ethics and stem cell research
• Genetic engineering: gene therapy
• The potential benefits of genetic engineering
• Genetic engineering: dangers and opportunities
• Mycobacterium tuberculosis : counting the proteins
• Plant genetic enhancement: developing resistance to scarcity
• Y-chromosome genotyping: the case of South Africa
• Agricultural biotechnology: GMO crops
• How are new vaccines developed?
• Nanotechnology in treating HIV
• Allergenic potential & biotechnology
• Whole-genome sequencing in biotechnology
• Genes in heavy metal tolerance: an overview
• Food biotechnology & food-borne illnesses
• How to eliminate heat-resistant microorganisms with ultraviolet?
• High-throughput screening & biotechnology
• How do new food processing technologies affect bacteria related to Aspalathus Linearis?
• Is sweet sorghum suitable for the production of bioethanol in Africa?
• How can pesticides help to diagnose cancer?
• How is embelin used to prevent cancer?

One of the first areas that technologies affected was communications and media. People from the last century couldn’t have imagined how easy it would be to get connected with anyone! Internet connection starts appearing even in the most remote places.

Nowadays, media is used not only for social interaction but for business development and educational purposes as well. You can now start an entirely online business or use special tools to promote the existing one. Also, many leading universities offer online degrees.

In communications and media, AI has been playing the role of enhancement recently. The technology helps create personalized content for always demanding consumers.

Developing media also create numerous job opportunities. For instance, recently, an influencer has become a trending career. Influencers always use the most relevant communication tools available. At the moment, live videos and podcasting are on the top.

Now, you just need to reach your smartphone to access all the opportunities mentioned above! You can apply for a college, find a job, or reach out to all your followers online. It is hard to imagine how far communication and media can go…

Communications and Media Technology Research Topics

There are quite a few simple yet exciting ideas for media and communications technology research topics. Hopefully, you will find THE ONE amongst these Information and Communications Technology (ICT) research proposal topics:

• New media: the importance of ethics in the process of communication
• The development of computer-based communication over the last decade
• How have social media changed communication?
• Media during the disasters: increasing panic or helping reduce it?
• Authorities’ media representations in different countries: compare & contrast
• Do people start preferring newspapers to new media again?
• How has the Internet changed media?
• Communication networks
• The impact of social media on super bowl ads
• Communications: technology and personal contact
• New content marketing ideas
• Media exposure and its influence on adolescents
• The impact of mass media on personal socialization
• Internet and interactive media as an advertising tool
• Music marketing in a digital world
• How do people use hype in the media?
• Psychology of videoblog communication
• Media & the freedom of speech
• Is it possible to build trustful relationships in virtual communication?
• How to maintain privacy in social media ?
• Communication technologies & cyberbullying
• How has the interpersonal communication changed with the invention of computers?
• The future of the communication technologies
• Yellow journalism in new media
• How enterprises use ICT to get a competitive advantage?
• Healthcare and ICT
• Can we live without mass media ?
• Mass media and morality in the 21st century

💻 Computer Science & Engineering

If you have ever wondered how computers work, you better ask a professional in computer science and engineering. This major combines two different, yet interconnected, worlds of machines.

Computer science takes care of the computer’s brain. It usually includes areas of study, such as programming languages and algorithms. Scientists also recognize three paradigms in terms of the computer science field.

For the rationalist paradigm, computer science is a part of math. The technocratic paradigm is focused on software engineering, while the scientific one is all about natural sciences. Interestingly enough, the latter can also be found in the area of artificial intelligence!

On the other hand, computer engineering maintains a computer’s body – hardware and software. It relies quite heavily on electrical engineering. And only the combination of computer science and engineering gives a full understanding of the machine.

If talking about trends and innovations, artificial intelligence development is probably the main one in the area of computer science technology. Big data is the field that has been extremely popular in recent years.

Cybersecurity is and will be one of the leading research fields in our Information Age. The latest trend in computer science and engineering is also virtual reality.

Computer Science Research Topics

If you want to find a good idea for your thesis or you are just preparing for a speech, check out this list of research topics in computer science and engineering:

• How are virtual reality & human perception connected?
• The future of computer-assisted education
• Computer science & high-dimensional data modeling
• Computer science: imperative vs. declarative languages
• The use of blockchain and AI for algorithmic regulations
• Banking industry & blockchain technology
• How does the machine architecture affect the efficiency of code?
• Languages for parallel computing
• How is mesh generation used for computational domains?
• Ways of persistent data structure optimization
• Sensor networks vs. cyber-physical system
• The development of computer graphics: non-photorealistic rendering case
• The development of the systems programming languages
• Game theory & network economics
• How can computational thinking affect science?
• Theoretical computer science in functional analysis
• The most efficient cryptographic protocols
• Software security types: an overview
• Is it possible to eliminate phishing?
• Floating point & programming language

Without energy, no technological progress is possible. Scientists are continually working on improving energy and power technologies. Recently, efforts have been aimed at three main areas.

Developing new batteries and fuel types helps create less expensive ways of storing energy. For example, fuel cells can be used for passenger buses. They need to be connected to a source of fuel to work. However, it guarantees the constant production of electricity as long as they have fuel.

One of the potential trends of the next years is hydrogen energy storage. This method is still in the stage of development. It would allow the use of hydrogen instead of electricity.

A smart grid is another area that uses information technology for the most efficient use of energy. For instance, the first-generation smart grid tracks the movement of electric energy on the go and sends the information back. It is a great way to correct the consumption of energy in real-time. More development is also done on the issue of electricity generation. It aims at technologies that can produce power from the sources that haven’t been used. The trends in this area include second-generation biofuels and photovoltaic glass.

Energy Technologies Research Topics

Since humanity cannot be using fossil fuels forever, the research in the area of energy can be extremely fruitful. The following list of energy and power technology research paper topics can give you an idea of where to dig:

• How can fuel cells be used for stationary power generation?
• Lithium-ion vs. lithium-air batteries: energy density
• Are lithium-air batteries better than gasoline?
• Renewable energy usage: advantages and disadvantages
• The nuclear power usage in the UAE
• India’s solar installations
• Gas price increasing and alternative energy sources
• How can methods of energy transformation be applied with hydrogen energy?
• Is hydrogen energy our future?
• Thermal storage & AC systems
• How to load balance using smart grid?
• Distributed energy generation to optimize power waste
• Is the smart energy network a solution to climate change ?
• The future of the tidal power
• The possibility of 3D printing of micro stirling engines
• How can robots be used to adjust solar panels to weather?
• Advanced biofuels & algae
• Can photovoltaic glass be fully transparent?
• Third-generation biofuels : algae vs. crop-based
• Space-based solar power: myth or reality of the future?
• Can smaller nuclear reactors be more efficient?
• Inertial confinement fusion & creal energy
• Renewable energy technologies: an overview
• How can thorium change the nuclear power field?

The way we get our food has changed drastically with the technological development. Manufacturers look for ways to feed 7.5 billion people more efficiently. And the demand is growing every year. Now technology is not only used for packaging, but for producing and processing food as well.

Introducing robots into the process of manufacturing brings multiple benefits to the producer. Not only do they make it more cost-efficient, but they also reduce safety problems.

Surprisingly enough, you can print food on the 3D printer now! This technology is applied to produce soft food for people who can’t chew. NASA decided to use it for fun as well and printed a pizza!

Drones now help farmers to keep an eye on crops from above. It helps them see the full picture and analyze the current state of the fields. For example, a drone can spot a starting disease and save the crop.

The newest eco trends push companies to become more environmentally aware. They use technologies to create safer packaging. The issue of food waste is also getting more and more relevant. Consumers want to know that nothing is wasted. Thanks to the new technologies, the excess food is now used more wisely.

Food Technology Research Topics

If you are looking for qualitative research topics about technology in the food industry, here is a list of ideas you don’t want to miss:

• What machines are used in the food industry?
• How do robots improve safety in butchery?
• Food industry & 3D printing
• 3D printed food – a solution to help people with swallowing disorder?
• Drones & precision agriculture
• How is robotics used to create eco-friendly food packaging ?
• Is micro packaging our future?
• The development of edible cling film
• Technology & food waste : what are the solutions? 
• Additives and preservatives & human gut microbiome 
• The effect of citric acid on the orange juice: physicochemical level 
• Vegetable oils in mass production: compare & contrast 
• Time-temperature indicators & food industry 
• Conventional vs. hydroponic farming  
• Food safety: a policy issue in agriculture today  
• How to improve the detection of parasites in food? 
• What are the newest technologies in the baking industry? 
• Eliminating byproducts in edible oils production 
• Cold plasma & biofilms 
• How good are the antioxidant peptides derived from plants? 
• Electronic nose in food industry and agriculture 
• The harm of polyphenols in food 

Why does the life expectancy of people get higher and higher every year? One of the main aspects of it is the promotion of innovation in the medical area. For example, the development of equipment helps medical professionals to save many lives.

Thanks to information technology, the work is much more structured now in the medical area. The hospitals use tablets and the method of electronic medical records. It helps them to access and share the data more efficiently.

If talking about medical devices, emerging technologies save more lives than ever! For instance, operations done by robots are getting more and more popular. Don’t worry! Doctors are still in charge; they just control the robots from the other room. It allows operations to be less invasive and precise.

Moreover, science not only helps treat diseases but also prevent them! The medical research aims for the development of vaccines against deadly illnesses like malaria.

Some of the projects even sound more like crazy ideas from the future. But it is all happening right now! Scientists are working on the creation of artificial organs and the best robotic prosthetics.

All the technologies mentioned above are critical for successful healthcare management.

Medical Technology Research Topics

If you feel like saving lives is the purpose of your life, then technological research topics in the medical area are for you! These topics would also suit for your research paper:

• How effective are robotic surgeries ?
• Smart inhalers as the new solution for asthma treatment
• Genetic counseling – a new way of preventing diseases?
• The benefits of the electronic medical records
• Erythrocytapheresis to treat sickle cell disease
• Defibrillator & cardiac resynchronization therapy
• Why do drug-eluting stents fail?
• Dissolvable brain sensors: an overview
• 3D printing for medical purposes
• How soon will we be able to create artificial organs?
• Wearable technologies & healthcare
• Precision medicine based on genetics
• Virtual reality devices for educational purposes in medical schools
• The development of telemedicine
• Clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats as the way of treating diseases
• Nanotechnology & cancer treatment
• How safe is genome editing?
• The trends in electronic diagnostic tools development
• The future of the brain-machine interface
• How does wireless communication help medical professionals in hospitals?

In the past years, technologies have been drastically changing the pharmaceutical industry. Now, a lot of processes are optimized with the help of information technology. The ways of prescribing and distributing medications are much more efficient today. Moreover, the production of medicines itself has changed.

For instance, electronic prior authorization is now applied by more than half of the pharmacies. It makes the process of acquiring prior authorization much faster and easier.

The high price of medicines is the number one reason why patients stop using prescriptions. Real-time pharmacy benefit may be the solution! It is a system that gives another perspective for the prescribers. While working with individual patients, they will be able to consider multiple factors with the help of data provided.

The pharmaceutical industry also adopts some new technologies to compete on the international level. They apply advanced data analytics to optimize their work.

Companies try to reduce the cost and boost the effectiveness of the medicines. That is why they look into technologies that help avoid failures in the final clinical trials.

The constant research in the area of pharma is paying off. New specialty drugs and therapies arrive to treat chronic diseases. However, there are still enough opportunities for development.

Pharmaceutical Technologies Research Topics

Following the latest trends in the pharmaceutical area, this list offers a wide range of creative research topics on pharmaceutical technologies:

• Electronic prior authorization as a pharmacy technological trend
• The effectiveness of medication therapy management
• Medication therapy management & health information exchanges
• Electronic prescribing of controlled substances as a solution for drug abuse issue
• Do prescription drug monitoring programs really work?
• How can pharmacists help with meaningful use?
• NCPDP script standard for specialty pharmacies
• Pharmaceutical technologies & specialty medications
• What is the patient’s interest in the real-time pharmacy?
• The development of the vaccines for AIDS
• Phenotypic screening in pharmaceutical researches
• How does cloud ERP help pharmaceutical companies with analytics?
• Data security & pharmaceutical technologies
• An overview of the DNA-encoded library technology
• Pharmaceutical technologies: antibiotics vs. superbugs
• Personalized medicine: body-on-a-chip approach
• The future of cannabidiol medication in pain management
• How is cloud technology beneficial for small pharmaceutical companies?
• A new perspective on treatment: medicines from plants
• Anticancer nanomedicine: a pharmaceutical hope

🚈 Transportation Technologies

We used to be focused on making transportation more convenient. However, nowadays, the focus is slowly switching to ecological issues.

It doesn’t mean that vehicles can’t be comfortable at the same time. That is why the development of electric and self-driving cars is on the peak.

Transportation technologies also address the issues of safety and traffic jams. There are quite many solutions suggested. However, it would be hard for big cities to switch to the other systems fast.

One of the solutions is using shared vehicle phone applications. It allows reducing the number of private cars on the roads. On the other hand, if more people start preferring private vehicles, it may cause even more traffic issues.

The most innovative cities even start looking for more eco-friendly solutions for public transport. Buses are being replaced by electric ones. At the same time, the latest trend is using private electric vehicles such as scooters and bikes.

So that people use public transport more, it should be more accessible and comfortable. That is why the payment systems are also being updated. Now, all you would need is to download an app and buy a ticket in one click!

Transportation Technologies Research Topics

Here you can find the best information technology research topics related to transportation technologies:

• How safe are self-driving cars ?
• Electric vs. hybrid cars : compare & contrast
• How to save your smart car from being hijacked?
• How do next-generation GPS devices adjust the route for traffic?
• Transportation technologies: personal transportation pods
• High-speed rail networks in Japan
• Cell phones during driving: threats and solutions
• Transportation: electric cars effects
• Teleportation: physics of the impossible
• How soon we will see Elon Musk’s Hyperloop?
• Gyroscopes as a solution for convenient public transportation
• Electric trucks: the effect on logistics
• Why were electric scooters banned in some cities in 2018?
• Carbon fiber as an optional material for unit load devices
• What are the benefits of the advanced transportation management systems?
• How to make solar roadways more cost-effective?
• How is blockchain applied in the transportation industry
• Transportation technologies: an overview of the freight check-in
• How do delivery companies use artificial intelligence?
• Water-fueled cars: the technology of future or fantasy?
• What can monitoring systems be used to manage curb space?
• Inclusivity and accessibility in public transport: an overview
• The development of the mobility-as-a-service

All in all, this article is a compilation of the 204 most interesting research topics on technology and computer science. It is a perfect source of inspiration for anyone who is interested in doing research in this area.

We have divided the topics by specific areas, which makes it easier for you to find your favorite one. There are 20 topics in each category, along with a short explanation of the most recent trends in the area.

You can choose one topic from artificial intelligence research topics and start working on it right away! There is also a wide selection of questions on biotechnology and engineering that are waiting to be answered.

Since media and communications are present in our everyday life and develop very fast, you should look into this area. But if you want to make a real change, you can’t miss on researching medical and pharmaceutical, food and energy, and transportation areas.

Of course, you are welcome to customize the topic you choose! The more creativity, the better! Maybe your research has the power to change something! Good luck, and have fun!

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• Recent papers in Technology: Academia
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• Top 5 Topics in Information Technology: King University Online
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• Biotechnology: Definition, Examples, & Applications (Britannica)
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Home » 500+ Qualitative Research Titles and Topics

500+ Qualitative Research Titles and Topics

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Qualitative research is a methodological approach that involves gathering and analyzing non-numerical data to understand and interpret social phenomena. Unlike quantitative research , which emphasizes the collection of numerical data through surveys and experiments, qualitative research is concerned with exploring the subjective experiences, perspectives, and meanings of individuals and groups. As such, qualitative research topics can be diverse and encompass a wide range of social issues and phenomena. From exploring the impact of culture on identity formation to examining the experiences of marginalized communities, qualitative research offers a rich and nuanced perspective on complex social issues. In this post, we will explore some of the most compelling qualitative research topics and provide some tips on how to conduct effective qualitative research.

Qualitative Research Titles

Qualitative research titles often reflect the study’s focus on understanding the depth and complexity of human behavior, experiences, or social phenomena. Here are some examples across various fields:

• “Understanding the Impact of Project-Based Learning on Student Engagement in High School Classrooms: A Qualitative Study”
• “Navigating the Transition: Experiences of International Students in American Universities”
• “The Role of Parental Involvement in Early Childhood Education: Perspectives from Teachers and Parents”
• “Exploring the Effects of Teacher Feedback on Student Motivation and Self-Efficacy in Middle Schools”
• “Digital Literacy in the Classroom: Teacher Strategies for Integrating Technology in Elementary Education”
• “Culturally Responsive Teaching Practices: A Case Study in Diverse Urban Schools”
• “The Influence of Extracurricular Activities on Academic Achievement: Student Perspectives”
• “Barriers to Implementing Inclusive Education in Public Schools: A Qualitative Inquiry”
• “Teacher Professional Development and Its Impact on Classroom Practice: A Qualitative Exploration”
• “Student-Centered Learning Environments: A Qualitative Study of Classroom Dynamics and Outcomes”
• “The Experience of First-Year Teachers: Challenges, Support Systems, and Professional Growth”
• “Exploring the Role of School Leadership in Fostering a Positive School Culture”
• “Peer Relationships and Learning Outcomes in Cooperative Learning Settings: A Qualitative Analysis”
• “The Impact of Social Media on Student Learning and Engagement: Teacher and Student Perspectives”
• “Understanding Special Education Needs: Parent and Teacher Perceptions of Support Services in Schools

Health Science

• “Living with Chronic Pain: Patient Narratives and Coping Strategies in Managing Daily Life”
• “Healthcare Professionals’ Perspectives on the Challenges of Rural Healthcare Delivery”
• “Exploring the Mental Health Impacts of COVID-19 on Frontline Healthcare Workers: A Qualitative Study”
• “Patient and Family Experiences of Palliative Care: Understanding Needs and Preferences”
• “The Role of Community Health Workers in Improving Access to Maternal Healthcare in Rural Areas”
• “Barriers to Mental Health Services Among Ethnic Minorities: A Qualitative Exploration”
• “Understanding Patient Satisfaction in Telemedicine Services: A Qualitative Study of User Experiences”
• “The Impact of Cultural Competence Training on Healthcare Provider-Patient Communication”
• “Navigating the Transition to Adult Healthcare Services: Experiences of Adolescents with Chronic Conditions”
• “Exploring the Use of Alternative Medicine Among Patients with Chronic Diseases: A Qualitative Inquiry”
• “The Role of Social Support in the Rehabilitation Process of Stroke Survivors”
• “Healthcare Decision-Making Among Elderly Patients: A Qualitative Study of Preferences and Influences”
• “Nurse Perceptions of Patient Safety Culture in Hospital Settings: A Qualitative Analysis”
• “Experiences of Women with Postpartum Depression: Barriers to Seeking Help”
• “The Impact of Nutrition Education on Eating Behaviors Among College Students: A Qualitative Approach”
• “Understanding Resilience in Survivors of Childhood Trauma: A Narrative Inquiry”
• “The Role of Mindfulness in Managing Work-Related Stress Among Corporate Employees: A Qualitative Study”
• “Coping Mechanisms Among Parents of Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder”
• “Exploring the Psychological Impact of Social Isolation in the Elderly: A Phenomenological Study”
• “Identity Formation in Adolescence: The Influence of Social Media and Peer Groups”
• “The Experience of Forgiveness in Interpersonal Relationships: A Qualitative Exploration”
• “Perceptions of Happiness and Well-Being Among University Students: A Cultural Perspective”
• “The Impact of Art Therapy on Anxiety and Depression in Adult Cancer Patients”
• “Narratives of Recovery: A Qualitative Study on the Journey Through Addiction Rehabilitation”
• “Exploring the Psychological Effects of Long-Term Unemployment: A Grounded Theory Approach”
• “Attachment Styles and Their Influence on Adult Romantic Relationships: A Qualitative Analysis”
• “The Role of Personal Values in Career Decision-Making Among Young Adults”
• “Understanding the Stigma of Mental Illness in Rural Communities: A Qualitative Inquiry”
• “Exploring the Use of Digital Mental Health Interventions Among Adolescents: A Qualitative Study”
• “The Psychological Impact of Climate Change on Young Adults: An Exploration of Anxiety and Action”
• “Navigating Identity: The Role of Social Media in Shaping Youth Culture and Self-Perception”
• “Community Resilience in the Face of Urban Gentrification: A Case Study of Neighborhood Change”
• “The Dynamics of Intergenerational Relationships in Immigrant Families: A Qualitative Analysis”
• “Social Capital and Economic Mobility in Low-Income Neighborhoods: An Ethnographic Approach”
• “Gender Roles and Career Aspirations Among Young Adults in Conservative Societies”
• “The Stigma of Mental Health in the Workplace: Employee Narratives and Organizational Culture”
• “Exploring the Intersection of Race, Class, and Education in Urban School Systems”
• “The Impact of Digital Divide on Access to Healthcare Information in Rural Communities”
• “Social Movements and Political Engagement Among Millennials: A Qualitative Study”
• “Cultural Adaptation and Identity Among Second-Generation Immigrants: A Phenomenological Inquiry”
• “The Role of Religious Institutions in Providing Community Support and Social Services”
• “Negotiating Public Space: Experiences of LGBTQ+ Individuals in Urban Environments”
• “The Sociology of Food: Exploring Eating Habits and Food Practices Across Cultures”
• “Work-Life Balance Challenges Among Dual-Career Couples: A Qualitative Exploration”
• “The Influence of Peer Networks on Substance Use Among Adolescents: A Community Study”

Business and Management

• “Navigating Organizational Change: Employee Perceptions and Adaptation Strategies in Mergers and Acquisitions”
• “Corporate Social Responsibility: Consumer Perceptions and Brand Loyalty in the Retail Sector”
• “Leadership Styles and Organizational Culture: A Comparative Study of Tech Startups”
• “Workplace Diversity and Inclusion: Best Practices and Challenges in Multinational Corporations”
• “Consumer Trust in E-commerce: A Qualitative Study of Online Shopping Behaviors”
• “The Gig Economy and Worker Satisfaction: Exploring the Experiences of Freelance Professionals”
• “Entrepreneurial Resilience: Success Stories and Lessons Learned from Failed Startups”
• “Employee Engagement and Productivity in Remote Work Settings: A Post-Pandemic Analysis”
• “Brand Storytelling: How Narrative Strategies Influence Consumer Engagement”
• “Sustainable Business Practices: Stakeholder Perspectives in the Fashion Industry”
• “Cross-Cultural Communication Challenges in Global Teams: Strategies for Effective Collaboration”
• “Innovative Workspaces: The Impact of Office Design on Creativity and Collaboration”
• “Consumer Perceptions of Artificial Intelligence in Customer Service: A Qualitative Exploration”
• “The Role of Mentoring in Career Development: Insights from Women in Leadership Positions”
• “Agile Management Practices: Adoption and Impact in Traditional Industries”

Environmental Studies

• “Community-Based Conservation Efforts in Tropical Rainforests: A Qualitative Study of Local Perspectives and Practices”
• “Urban Sustainability Initiatives: Exploring Resident Participation and Impact in Green City Projects”
• “Perceptions of Climate Change Among Indigenous Populations: Insights from Traditional Ecological Knowledge”
• “Environmental Justice and Industrial Pollution: A Case Study of Community Advocacy and Response”
• “The Role of Eco-Tourism in Promoting Conservation Awareness: Perspectives from Tour Operators and Visitors”
• “Sustainable Agriculture Practices Among Smallholder Farmers: Challenges and Opportunities”
• “Youth Engagement in Climate Action Movements: Motivations, Perceptions, and Outcomes”
• “Corporate Environmental Responsibility: A Qualitative Analysis of Stakeholder Expectations and Company Practices”
• “The Impact of Plastic Pollution on Marine Ecosystems: Community Awareness and Behavioral Change”
• “Renewable Energy Adoption in Rural Communities: Barriers, Facilitators, and Social Implications”
• “Water Scarcity and Community Adaptation Strategies in Arid Regions: A Grounded Theory Approach”
• “Urban Green Spaces: Public Perceptions and Use Patterns in Megacities”
• “Environmental Education in Schools: Teachers’ Perspectives on Integrating Sustainability into Curricula”
• “The Influence of Environmental Activism on Policy Change: Case Studies of Grassroots Campaigns”
• “Cultural Practices and Natural Resource Management: A Qualitative Study of Indigenous Stewardship Models”

Anthropology

• “Kinship and Social Organization in Matrilineal Societies: An Ethnographic Study”
• “Rituals and Beliefs Surrounding Death and Mourning in Diverse Cultures: A Comparative Analysis”
• “The Impact of Globalization on Indigenous Languages and Cultural Identity”
• “Food Sovereignty and Traditional Agricultural Practices Among Indigenous Communities”
• “Navigating Modernity: The Integration of Traditional Healing Practices in Contemporary Healthcare Systems”
• “Gender Roles and Equality in Hunter-Gatherer Societies: An Anthropological Perspective”
• “Sacred Spaces and Religious Practices: An Ethnographic Study of Pilgrimage Sites”
• “Youth Subcultures and Resistance: An Exploration of Identity and Expression in Urban Environments”
• “Cultural Constructions of Disability and Inclusion: A Cross-Cultural Analysis”
• “Interethnic Marriages and Cultural Syncretism: Case Studies from Multicultural Societies”
• “The Role of Folklore and Storytelling in Preserving Cultural Heritage”
• “Economic Anthropology of Gift-Giving and Reciprocity in Tribal Communities”
• “Digital Anthropology: The Role of Social Media in Shaping Political Movements”
• “Migration and Diaspora: Maintaining Cultural Identity in Transnational Communities”
• “Cultural Adaptations to Climate Change Among Coastal Fishing Communities”

Communication Studies

• “The Dynamics of Family Communication in the Digital Age: A Qualitative Inquiry”
• “Narratives of Identity and Belonging in Diaspora Communities Through Social Media”
• “Organizational Communication and Employee Engagement: A Case Study in the Non-Profit Sector”
• “Cultural Influences on Communication Styles in Multinational Teams: An Ethnographic Approach”
• “Media Representation of Women in Politics: A Content Analysis and Audience Perception Study”
• “The Role of Communication in Building Sustainable Community Development Projects”
• “Interpersonal Communication in Online Dating: Strategies, Challenges, and Outcomes”
• “Public Health Messaging During Pandemics: A Qualitative Study of Community Responses”
• “The Impact of Mobile Technology on Parent-Child Communication in the Digital Era”
• “Crisis Communication Strategies in the Hospitality Industry: A Case Study of Reputation Management”
• “Narrative Analysis of Personal Stories Shared on Mental Health Blogs”
• “The Influence of Podcasts on Political Engagement Among Young Adults”
• “Visual Communication and Brand Identity: A Qualitative Study of Consumer Interpretations”
• “Communication Barriers in Cross-Cultural Healthcare Settings: Patient and Provider Perspectives”
• “The Role of Internal Communication in Managing Organizational Change: Employee Experiences”

Information Technology

• “User Experience Design in Augmented Reality Applications: A Qualitative Study of Best Practices”
• “The Human Factor in Cybersecurity: Understanding Employee Behaviors and Attitudes Towards Phishing”
• “Adoption of Cloud Computing in Small and Medium Enterprises: Challenges and Success Factors”
• “Blockchain Technology in Supply Chain Management: A Qualitative Exploration of Potential Impacts”
• “The Role of Artificial Intelligence in Personalizing User Experiences on E-commerce Platforms”
• “Digital Transformation in Traditional Industries: A Case Study of Technology Adoption Challenges”
• “Ethical Considerations in the Development of Smart Home Technologies: A Stakeholder Analysis”
• “The Impact of Social Media Algorithms on News Consumption and Public Opinion”
• “Collaborative Software Development: Practices and Challenges in Open Source Projects”
• “Understanding the Digital Divide: Access to Information Technology in Rural Communities”
• “Data Privacy Concerns and User Trust in Internet of Things (IoT) Devices”
• “The Effectiveness of Gamification in Educational Software: A Qualitative Study of Engagement and Motivation”
• “Virtual Teams and Remote Work: Communication Strategies and Tools for Effectiveness”
• “User-Centered Design in Mobile Health Applications: Evaluating Usability and Accessibility”
• “The Influence of Technology on Work-Life Balance: Perspectives from IT Professionals”

Tourism and Hospitality

• “Exploring the Authenticity of Cultural Heritage Tourism in Indigenous Communities”
• “Sustainable Tourism Practices: Perceptions and Implementations in Small Island Destinations”
• “The Impact of Social Media Influencers on Destination Choice Among Millennials”
• “Gastronomy Tourism: Exploring the Culinary Experiences of International Visitors in Rural Regions”
• “Eco-Tourism and Conservation: Stakeholder Perspectives on Balancing Tourism and Environmental Protection”
• “The Role of Hospitality in Enhancing the Cultural Exchange Experience of Exchange Students”
• “Dark Tourism: Visitor Motivations and Experiences at Historical Conflict Sites”
• “Customer Satisfaction in Luxury Hotels: A Qualitative Study of Service Excellence and Personalization”
• “Adventure Tourism: Understanding the Risk Perception and Safety Measures Among Thrill-Seekers”
• “The Influence of Local Communities on Tourist Experiences in Ecotourism Sites”
• “Event Tourism: Economic Impacts and Community Perspectives on Large-Scale Music Festivals”
• “Heritage Tourism and Identity: Exploring the Connections Between Historic Sites and National Identity”
• “Tourist Perceptions of Sustainable Accommodation Practices: A Study of Green Hotels”
• “The Role of Language in Shaping the Tourist Experience in Multilingual Destinations”
• “Health and Wellness Tourism: Motivations and Experiences of Visitors to Spa and Retreat Centers”

Qualitative Research Topics

Qualitative Research Topics are as follows:

• Understanding the lived experiences of first-generation college students
• Exploring the impact of social media on self-esteem among adolescents
• Investigating the effects of mindfulness meditation on stress reduction
• Analyzing the perceptions of employees regarding organizational culture
• Examining the impact of parental involvement on academic achievement of elementary school students
• Investigating the role of music therapy in managing symptoms of depression
• Understanding the experience of women in male-dominated industries
• Exploring the factors that contribute to successful leadership in non-profit organizations
• Analyzing the effects of peer pressure on substance abuse among adolescents
• Investigating the experiences of individuals with disabilities in the workplace
• Understanding the factors that contribute to burnout among healthcare professionals
• Examining the impact of social support on mental health outcomes
• Analyzing the perceptions of parents regarding sex education in schools
• Investigating the experiences of immigrant families in the education system
• Understanding the impact of trauma on mental health outcomes
• Exploring the effectiveness of animal-assisted therapy for individuals with anxiety
• Analyzing the factors that contribute to successful intergenerational relationships
• Investigating the experiences of LGBTQ+ individuals in the workplace
• Understanding the impact of online gaming on social skills development among adolescents
• Examining the perceptions of teachers regarding technology integration in the classroom
• Analyzing the experiences of women in leadership positions
• Investigating the factors that contribute to successful marriage and long-term relationships
• Understanding the impact of social media on political participation
• Exploring the experiences of individuals with mental health disorders in the criminal justice system
• Analyzing the factors that contribute to successful community-based programs for youth development
• Investigating the experiences of veterans in accessing mental health services
• Understanding the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on mental health outcomes
• Examining the perceptions of parents regarding childhood obesity prevention
• Analyzing the factors that contribute to successful multicultural education programs
• Investigating the experiences of individuals with chronic illnesses in the workplace
• Understanding the impact of poverty on academic achievement
• Exploring the experiences of individuals with autism spectrum disorder in the workplace
• Analyzing the factors that contribute to successful employee retention strategies
• Investigating the experiences of caregivers of individuals with Alzheimer’s disease
• Understanding the impact of parent-child communication on adolescent sexual behavior
• Examining the perceptions of college students regarding mental health services on campus
• Analyzing the factors that contribute to successful team building in the workplace
• Investigating the experiences of individuals with eating disorders in treatment programs
• Understanding the impact of mentorship on career success
• Exploring the experiences of individuals with physical disabilities in the workplace
• Analyzing the factors that contribute to successful community-based programs for mental health
• Investigating the experiences of individuals with substance use disorders in treatment programs
• Understanding the impact of social media on romantic relationships
• Examining the perceptions of parents regarding child discipline strategies
• Analyzing the factors that contribute to successful cross-cultural communication in the workplace
• Investigating the experiences of individuals with anxiety disorders in treatment programs
• Understanding the impact of cultural differences on healthcare delivery
• Exploring the experiences of individuals with hearing loss in the workplace
• Analyzing the factors that contribute to successful parent-teacher communication
• Investigating the experiences of individuals with depression in treatment programs
• Understanding the impact of childhood trauma on adult mental health outcomes
• Examining the perceptions of college students regarding alcohol and drug use on campus
• Analyzing the factors that contribute to successful mentor-mentee relationships
• Investigating the experiences of individuals with intellectual disabilities in the workplace
• Understanding the impact of work-family balance on employee satisfaction and well-being
• Exploring the experiences of individuals with autism spectrum disorder in vocational rehabilitation programs
• Analyzing the factors that contribute to successful project management in the construction industry
• Investigating the experiences of individuals with substance use disorders in peer support groups
• Understanding the impact of mindfulness meditation on stress reduction and mental health
• Examining the perceptions of parents regarding childhood nutrition
• Analyzing the factors that contribute to successful environmental sustainability initiatives in organizations
• Investigating the experiences of individuals with bipolar disorder in treatment programs
• Understanding the impact of job stress on employee burnout and turnover
• Exploring the experiences of individuals with physical disabilities in recreational activities
• Analyzing the factors that contribute to successful strategic planning in nonprofit organizations
• Investigating the experiences of individuals with hoarding disorder in treatment programs
• Understanding the impact of culture on leadership styles and effectiveness
• Examining the perceptions of college students regarding sexual health education on campus
• Analyzing the factors that contribute to successful supply chain management in the retail industry
• Investigating the experiences of individuals with personality disorders in treatment programs
• Understanding the impact of multiculturalism on group dynamics in the workplace
• Exploring the experiences of individuals with chronic pain in mindfulness-based pain management programs
• Analyzing the factors that contribute to successful employee engagement strategies in organizations
• Investigating the experiences of individuals with internet addiction disorder in treatment programs
• Understanding the impact of social comparison on body dissatisfaction and self-esteem
• Examining the perceptions of parents regarding childhood sleep habits
• Analyzing the factors that contribute to successful diversity and inclusion initiatives in organizations
• Investigating the experiences of individuals with schizophrenia in treatment programs
• Understanding the impact of job crafting on employee motivation and job satisfaction
• Exploring the experiences of individuals with vision impairments in navigating public spaces
• Analyzing the factors that contribute to successful customer relationship management strategies in the service industry
• Investigating the experiences of individuals with dissociative amnesia in treatment programs
• Understanding the impact of cultural intelligence on intercultural communication and collaboration
• Examining the perceptions of college students regarding campus diversity and inclusion efforts
• Analyzing the factors that contribute to successful supply chain sustainability initiatives in organizations
• Investigating the experiences of individuals with obsessive-compulsive disorder in treatment programs
• Understanding the impact of transformational leadership on organizational performance and employee well-being
• Exploring the experiences of individuals with mobility impairments in public transportation
• Analyzing the factors that contribute to successful talent management strategies in organizations
• Investigating the experiences of individuals with substance use disorders in harm reduction programs
• Understanding the impact of gratitude practices on well-being and resilience
• Examining the perceptions of parents regarding childhood mental health and well-being
• Analyzing the factors that contribute to successful corporate social responsibility initiatives in organizations
• Investigating the experiences of individuals with borderline personality disorder in treatment programs
• Understanding the impact of emotional labor on job stress and burnout
• Exploring the experiences of individuals with hearing impairments in healthcare settings
• Analyzing the factors that contribute to successful customer experience strategies in the hospitality industry
• Investigating the experiences of individuals with gender dysphoria in gender-affirming healthcare
• Understanding the impact of cultural differences on cross-cultural negotiation in the global marketplace
• Examining the perceptions of college students regarding academic stress and mental health
• Analyzing the factors that contribute to successful supply chain agility in organizations
• Understanding the impact of music therapy on mental health and well-being
• Exploring the experiences of individuals with dyslexia in educational settings
• Analyzing the factors that contribute to successful leadership in nonprofit organizations
• Investigating the experiences of individuals with chronic illnesses in online support groups
• Understanding the impact of exercise on mental health and well-being
• Examining the perceptions of parents regarding childhood screen time
• Analyzing the factors that contribute to successful change management strategies in organizations
• Understanding the impact of cultural differences on international business negotiations
• Exploring the experiences of individuals with hearing impairments in the workplace
• Analyzing the factors that contribute to successful team building in corporate settings
• Understanding the impact of technology on communication in romantic relationships
• Analyzing the factors that contribute to successful community engagement strategies for local governments
• Investigating the experiences of individuals with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) in treatment programs
• Understanding the impact of financial stress on mental health and well-being
• Analyzing the factors that contribute to successful mentorship programs in organizations
• Investigating the experiences of individuals with gambling addictions in treatment programs
• Understanding the impact of social media on body image and self-esteem
• Examining the perceptions of parents regarding childhood education
• Analyzing the factors that contribute to successful virtual team management strategies
• Investigating the experiences of individuals with dissociative identity disorder in treatment programs
• Understanding the impact of cultural differences on cross-cultural communication in healthcare settings
• Exploring the experiences of individuals with chronic pain in cognitive-behavioral therapy programs
• Analyzing the factors that contribute to successful community-building strategies in urban neighborhoods
• Investigating the experiences of individuals with alcohol use disorders in treatment programs
• Understanding the impact of personality traits on romantic relationships
• Examining the perceptions of college students regarding mental health stigma on campus
• Analyzing the factors that contribute to successful fundraising strategies for political campaigns
• Investigating the experiences of individuals with traumatic brain injuries in rehabilitation programs
• Understanding the impact of social support on mental health and well-being among the elderly
• Exploring the experiences of individuals with chronic illnesses in medical treatment decision-making processes
• Analyzing the factors that contribute to successful innovation strategies in organizations
• Investigating the experiences of individuals with dissociative disorders in treatment programs
• Understanding the impact of cultural differences on cross-cultural communication in education settings
• Examining the perceptions of parents regarding childhood physical activity
• Analyzing the factors that contribute to successful conflict resolution in family relationships
• Investigating the experiences of individuals with opioid use disorders in treatment programs
• Understanding the impact of emotional intelligence on leadership effectiveness
• Exploring the experiences of individuals with learning disabilities in the workplace
• Analyzing the factors that contribute to successful change management in educational institutions
• Investigating the experiences of individuals with eating disorders in recovery support groups
• Understanding the impact of self-compassion on mental health and well-being
• Examining the perceptions of college students regarding campus safety and security measures
• Analyzing the factors that contribute to successful marketing strategies for nonprofit organizations
• Investigating the experiences of individuals with postpartum depression in treatment programs
• Understanding the impact of ageism in the workplace
• Exploring the experiences of individuals with dyslexia in the education system
• Investigating the experiences of individuals with anxiety disorders in cognitive-behavioral therapy programs
• Understanding the impact of socioeconomic status on access to healthcare
• Examining the perceptions of parents regarding childhood screen time usage
• Analyzing the factors that contribute to successful supply chain management strategies
• Understanding the impact of parenting styles on child development
• Exploring the experiences of individuals with addiction in harm reduction programs
• Analyzing the factors that contribute to successful crisis management strategies in organizations
• Investigating the experiences of individuals with trauma in trauma-focused therapy programs
• Examining the perceptions of healthcare providers regarding patient-centered care
• Analyzing the factors that contribute to successful product development strategies
• Investigating the experiences of individuals with autism spectrum disorder in employment programs
• Understanding the impact of cultural competence on healthcare outcomes
• Exploring the experiences of individuals with chronic illnesses in healthcare navigation
• Analyzing the factors that contribute to successful community engagement strategies for non-profit organizations
• Investigating the experiences of individuals with physical disabilities in the workplace
• Understanding the impact of childhood trauma on adult mental health
• Analyzing the factors that contribute to successful supply chain sustainability strategies
• Investigating the experiences of individuals with personality disorders in dialectical behavior therapy programs
• Understanding the impact of gender identity on mental health treatment seeking behaviors
• Exploring the experiences of individuals with schizophrenia in community-based treatment programs
• Analyzing the factors that contribute to successful project team management strategies
• Investigating the experiences of individuals with obsessive-compulsive disorder in exposure and response prevention therapy programs
• Understanding the impact of cultural competence on academic achievement and success
• Examining the perceptions of college students regarding academic integrity
• Analyzing the factors that contribute to successful social media marketing strategies
• Investigating the experiences of individuals with bipolar disorder in community-based treatment programs
• Understanding the impact of mindfulness on academic achievement and success
• Exploring the experiences of individuals with substance use disorders in medication-assisted treatment programs
• Investigating the experiences of individuals with anxiety disorders in exposure therapy programs
• Understanding the impact of healthcare disparities on health outcomes
• Analyzing the factors that contribute to successful supply chain optimization strategies
• Investigating the experiences of individuals with borderline personality disorder in schema therapy programs
• Understanding the impact of culture on perceptions of mental health stigma
• Exploring the experiences of individuals with trauma in art therapy programs
• Analyzing the factors that contribute to successful digital marketing strategies
• Investigating the experiences of individuals with eating disorders in online support groups
• Understanding the impact of workplace bullying on job satisfaction and performance
• Examining the perceptions of college students regarding mental health resources on campus
• Analyzing the factors that contribute to successful supply chain risk management strategies
• Investigating the experiences of individuals with chronic pain in mindfulness-based pain management programs
• Understanding the impact of cognitive-behavioral therapy on social anxiety disorder
• Understanding the impact of COVID-19 on mental health and well-being
• Exploring the experiences of individuals with eating disorders in treatment programs
• Analyzing the factors that contribute to successful leadership in business organizations
• Investigating the experiences of individuals with chronic pain in cognitive-behavioral therapy programs
• Understanding the impact of cultural differences on intercultural communication
• Examining the perceptions of teachers regarding inclusive education for students with disabilities
• Investigating the experiences of individuals with depression in therapy programs
• Understanding the impact of workplace culture on employee retention and turnover
• Exploring the experiences of individuals with traumatic brain injuries in rehabilitation programs
• Analyzing the factors that contribute to successful crisis communication strategies in organizations
• Investigating the experiences of individuals with anxiety disorders in mindfulness-based interventions
• Investigating the experiences of individuals with chronic illnesses in healthcare settings
• Understanding the impact of technology on work-life balance
• Exploring the experiences of individuals with learning disabilities in academic settings
• Analyzing the factors that contribute to successful entrepreneurship in small businesses
• Understanding the impact of gender identity on mental health and well-being
• Examining the perceptions of individuals with disabilities regarding accessibility in public spaces
• Understanding the impact of religion on coping strategies for stress and anxiety
• Exploring the experiences of individuals with chronic illnesses in complementary and alternative medicine treatments
• Analyzing the factors that contribute to successful customer retention strategies in business organizations
• Investigating the experiences of individuals with postpartum depression in therapy programs
• Understanding the impact of ageism on older adults in healthcare settings
• Examining the perceptions of students regarding online learning during the COVID-19 pandemic
• Analyzing the factors that contribute to successful team building in virtual work environments
• Investigating the experiences of individuals with gambling disorders in treatment programs
• Exploring the experiences of individuals with chronic illnesses in peer support groups
• Analyzing the factors that contribute to successful social media marketing strategies for businesses
• Investigating the experiences of individuals with ADHD in treatment programs
• Understanding the impact of sleep on cognitive and emotional functioning
• Examining the perceptions of individuals with chronic illnesses regarding healthcare access and affordability
• Investigating the experiences of individuals with borderline personality disorder in dialectical behavior therapy programs
• Understanding the impact of social support on caregiver well-being
• Exploring the experiences of individuals with chronic illnesses in disability activism
• Analyzing the factors that contribute to successful cultural competency training programs in healthcare settings
• Understanding the impact of personality disorders on interpersonal relationships
• Examining the perceptions of healthcare providers regarding the use of telehealth services
• Investigating the experiences of individuals with dissociative disorders in therapy programs
• Understanding the impact of gender bias in hiring practices
• Exploring the experiences of individuals with visual impairments in the workplace
• Analyzing the factors that contribute to successful diversity and inclusion programs in the workplace
• Understanding the impact of online dating on romantic relationships
• Examining the perceptions of parents regarding childhood vaccination
• Analyzing the factors that contribute to successful communication in healthcare settings
• Understanding the impact of cultural stereotypes on academic achievement
• Exploring the experiences of individuals with substance use disorders in sober living programs
• Analyzing the factors that contribute to successful classroom management strategies
• Understanding the impact of social support on addiction recovery
• Examining the perceptions of college students regarding mental health stigma
• Analyzing the factors that contribute to successful conflict resolution in the workplace
• Understanding the impact of race and ethnicity on healthcare access and outcomes
• Exploring the experiences of individuals with post-traumatic stress disorder in treatment programs
• Analyzing the factors that contribute to successful project management strategies
• Understanding the impact of teacher-student relationships on academic achievement
• Analyzing the factors that contribute to successful customer service strategies
• Investigating the experiences of individuals with social anxiety disorder in treatment programs
• Understanding the impact of workplace stress on job satisfaction and performance
• Exploring the experiences of individuals with disabilities in sports and recreation
• Analyzing the factors that contribute to successful marketing strategies for small businesses
• Investigating the experiences of individuals with phobias in treatment programs
• Understanding the impact of culture on attitudes towards mental health and illness
• Examining the perceptions of college students regarding sexual assault prevention
• Analyzing the factors that contribute to successful time management strategies
• Investigating the experiences of individuals with addiction in recovery support groups
• Understanding the impact of mindfulness on emotional regulation and well-being
• Exploring the experiences of individuals with chronic pain in treatment programs
• Analyzing the factors that contribute to successful conflict resolution in romantic relationships
• Investigating the experiences of individuals with autism spectrum disorder in social skills training programs
• Understanding the impact of parent-child communication on adolescent substance use
• Examining the perceptions of parents regarding childhood mental health services
• Analyzing the factors that contribute to successful fundraising strategies for non-profit organizations
• Investigating the experiences of individuals with chronic illnesses in support groups
• Understanding the impact of personality traits on career success and satisfaction
• Exploring the experiences of individuals with disabilities in accessing public transportation
• Analyzing the factors that contribute to successful team building in sports teams
• Investigating the experiences of individuals with chronic pain in alternative medicine treatments
• Understanding the impact of stigma on mental health treatment seeking behaviors
• Examining the perceptions of college students regarding diversity and inclusion on campus.

About the author

Muhammad Hassan

Researcher, Academic Writer, Web developer

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Flow research on the outskirts of space

Experiments in weightlessness isolate classic diffusion phenomenon.

For years, various models have been developed to describe an important class of mixing effects that occur, for example, in the flow in a chemical reactor. Experimental validation, however, has lagged far behind due to the superimposition of gravity effects. A European research team involving the Helmholtz-Zentrum Dresden-Rossendorf (HZDR) and partners at the University of Szeged (Hungary) and Université libre de Bruxelles (ULB, Belgium) has now closed this gap with experiments conducted under weightlessness. The researchers recently published their results in the Nature journal npj Microgravity .

So-called reaction-diffusion fronts occur when two chemicals react with one another and at the same time spread out. Scientists can use this effect to model and better understand problems in chemistry and physics as well as in completely different areas like the financial world or linguistics as the underlying mathematical equations have the same characteristics. It gets more complicated when researchers combine these reactions with flows. Processes of this kind are important for technological applications relating to combustion processes, geology, the production of specific materials and storing carbon dioxide. Despite the plethora of applications, essential parts of these systems are not yet fully understood.

"Up to now, experiments to verify models of such processes have been distorted by buoyancy effects caused by density differences between the reaction solutions. In order to isolate this problem, we conducted experiments using weightlessness on board of a sounding rocket. Our partners did parallel numerical simulations to show the importance of the two-dimensional effects that can't be taken into account in simple one-dimensional models," says Dr. Karin Schwarzenberger of HZDR's Institute of Fluid Dynamics, outlining the work of her team.

Rocket take-off at the Arctic Circle

The experiment took place on 1 October 2022 -- on board of the sounding rocket TEXUS-57 that was launched from the Esrange Space Center, 40 kilometers east of Kiruna in Sweden. The collaborative project involving Airbus Defense & Space, the European Space Agency ESA and the German Aerospace Center (DLR) transported, among other things, the Schwarzenberger team's experimental model to the outskirts of space. The module had three reactors of different sizes consisting of glass plates stacked on top of each other at differing proximity. The rocket reached a height of 240 kilometers, achieving a state of almost complete weightlessness for nearly six minutes. During this period, the researchers were able to run their experiments automatically -- experiments that resulted from several years of meticulous planning. The reaction was triggered when the weightlessness set in. Three high-resolution cameras filmed the reaction fronts that spread between two flowing liquids. It was these images that were the focus of all the team's efforts: with their help, the researchers can now separate a very specific mixing effect from other flow phenomena.

Flow physics in weightlessness

Flows in liquid channels exhibit uneven velocity distribution due to friction with the walls, which subsequently influences the transport of dissolved substances and diffusing reactants in the liquid. This diffusion effect is known as Taylor-Aris dispersion, named for the two researchers who laid the foundations for understanding it back in the 1950s. In the past, theoretical studies proposed models of varying complexity to describe the interplay of Taylor-Aris dispersion and chemical reactions.

With regard to applications, however, it is important to assess the preconditions under which the various models can be used. This meant conducting experiments to isolate Taylor-Aris dispersion from other flow phenomena. On Earth, Taylor-Aris dispersion is essentially superimposed by buoyancy effects caused by gravity. Up to now, researchers have tried minimizing the buoyancy effects by using shallow reactors -- but it never worked completely because a certain range of reactor heights and flow velocities still needed to be covered in order to take in many application fields. But the larger the flow system, the stronger the gravity. The researchers have now been able to overcome these limitations in zero gravity.

A comparison with the reference experiments on the ground revealed that significantly less reaction product was generated at greater reactor heights under weightlessness. Even more important were the image data of the reaction fronts that were not distorted by the buoyancy effects. The Brussels partners were thus able to replicate the development of the front in various theoretical models. Joint evaluation showed that in very shallow reactors with slow flow, simple one-dimensional models can be used. However, in the case of larger reactors or faster flow, two-dimensional models using Taylor-Aris dispersion are required.

Within these validity range the corresponding correlations can now be employed to predict product formation. This can be used to design innovative reactors, for the targeted synthesis of particles and fluid transport in geological layers, but also to supply space stations, where gravitational conditions differ from those on Earth.

• Nature of Water
• Quantum Physics
• Inorganic Chemistry
• Albert Einstein
• Nuclear Energy
• Nitrous oxide
• Sound effect
• Chemical bond
• Breaking wave
• Oscillation

Story Source:

Materials provided by Helmholtz-Zentrum Dresden-Rossendorf . Note: Content may be edited for style and length.

Journal Reference :

• Yorgos Stergiou, Darío M. Escala, Paszkál Papp, Dezső Horváth, Marcus J. B. Hauser, Fabian Brau, Anne De Wit, Ágota Tóth, Kerstin Eckert, Karin Schwarzenberger. Unraveling dispersion and buoyancy dynamics around radial A + B → C reaction fronts: microgravity experiments and numerical simulations . npj Microgravity , 2024; 10 (1) DOI: 10.1038/s41526-024-00390-8

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