Elaine Farrow

About me

My focus is on learning analytics and educational technology, using natural language processing and machine learning to analyse data and convert it into actionable information, so that people can make better choices affecting their learning, their lives, and their environment.

Much of my previous work involved creating tutorial dialogue systems which use natural language interaction to support learning. Recent projects looked at how personal digital data from social media can be repackaged to tell stories; and how smart technology can help people communicate better with healthcare providers and find ways to use less gas and electricity in their homes.

I worked in the School of Informatics from 2012-2024. During that time, I was a member of the Institute for Language, Cognition and Computation and the Human Communication Research Centre. I am now a Visitor.

Recent outputs

Peer-reviewed publications and conference presentations

• Names, Nicknames, and Spelling Errors: Protecting Participant Identity in Learning Analytics of Online Discussions. Elaine Farrow, Johanna D. Moore, and Dragan Gašević. (2023). Proceedings of the 13th International Learning Analytics and Knowledge Conference (LAK '23). pp. 145-155.
  http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/3576050.3576070 [preprint pdf | bib]

  @inproceedings{Farrow:LAK23,
    author = {Farrow, Elaine and Moore, Johanna D. and Ga\v{s}evi\'{c}, Dragan},
    title = {{Names, Nicknames, and Spelling Errors: Protecting Participant Identity in Learning Analytics of Online Discussions}},
    booktitle = {LAK23: 13th International {L}earning {A}nalytics and {K}nowledge Conference},
    series = {LAK2023},
    year = {2023},
    isbn = {978-1-4503-9865-7},
    publisher = {Association for Computing Machinery},
    address = {New York, NY, USA},
    url = {https://doi.org/10.1145/3576050.3576070},
    doi = {10.1145/3576050.3576070},
    pages = {145--155},
    numpages = {11},
    keywords = {personal name, privacy, anonymisation, learning analytics, pseudonymisation, redaction, ethical issues, de-identification},
    location = {Arlington, TX, USA},
  } 

• The EuroPat Corpus: A Parallel Corpus of European Patent Data. Kenneth Heafield, Elaine Farrow, Jelmer van der Linde, Gema Ramírez-Sánchez and Dion Wiggins. 2022. Proceedings of the 13th Conference on Language Resources and Evaluation (LREC 2022). pp. 732-740.
  https://aclanthology.org/2022.lrec-1.78 [bib | video]

  @InProceedings{heafield-EtAl:2022:LREC,
    author    = {Heafield, Kenneth and Farrow, Elaine and van der Linde, Jelmer and Ramírez-Sánchez, Gema and Wiggins, Dion},
    title     = {The EuroPat Corpus: A Parallel Corpus of European Patent Data},
    booktitle      = {Proceedings of the Language Resources and Evaluation Conference},
    month          = {June},
    year           = {2022},
    address        = {Marseille, France},
    publisher      = {European Language Resources Association},
    pages     = {732--740},
    url       = {https://aclanthology.org/2022.lrec-1.78},
    keywords = {Parallel data, Corpus, Patent, Legal, Technical translation},
  } 

• Markers of cognitive quality in student contributions to online course discussion forums. Elaine Farrow, Johanna Moore, and Dragan Gašević. 2022. Journal of Learning Analytics, 9(2). pp. 38-65.
  https://doi.org/10.18608/jla.2022.7250 [bib]

  @article{Farrow:JLA2022,
    author = {Farrow, Elaine and Moore, Johanna D. and Ga\v{s}evi\'{c}, Dragan},
    title = {{Markers of Cognitive Quality in Student Contributions to Online Course Discussion Forums}},
    journal = {Journal of Learning Analytics},
    volume = {9},
    number = {2},
    pages = {38--65},
    year = {2022},
    doi = {10.18608/jla.2022.7250},
    issn = {1929-7750},
    keywords = {discussion forum, participation, engagement, quality, Community of Inquiry, cognitive presence, ICAP, feature analysis},
  } 

• Ordering Effects in a Role-Based Scaffolding Intervention for Asynchronous Online Discussions. Elaine Farrow, Johanna Moore, and Dragan Gašević. 2021. Proceedings of the 22nd International Conference on Artificial Intelligence in Education (AIED). pp. 125-136.
  http://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-78292-4_11 [preprint pdf | bib]

  @inproceedings{Farrow:AIED2021,
    author = {Farrow, Elaine and Moore, Johanna and Ga\v{s}evi\'{c}, Dragan},
    title = {Ordering Effects in a Role-Based Scaffolding Intervention for Asynchronous Online Discussions},
    booktitle = {Artificial Intelligence in Education},
    editor={Roll, Ido and McNamara, Danielle and Sosnovsky, Sergey and Luckin, Rose and Dimitrova, Vania},
    year = {2021},
    isbn = {978-3-030-78292-4},
    pages = {125--136},
    url = {https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-78292-4_11},
    doi = {10.1007/978-3-030-78292-4_11},
    publisher = {Springer International Publishing},
    address = {Cham},
    keywords = {online discussion, scaffolding, critical thinking, student engagement, learning analytics, Community of Inquiry, cognitive presence, cognitive engagement, Epistemic Network Analysis},
  } 

• A network analytic approach to integrating multiple quality measures for asynchronous online discussions. Elaine Farrow, Johanna Moore, and Dragan Gašević. 2021. Proceedings of the 11th International Learning Analytics and Knowledge Conference (LAK '21). pp. 248-258. (nominated for best full paper award)
  http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/3448139.3448163 [preprint pdf | bib]

  @inproceedings{Farrow:LAK21,
    author = {Farrow, Elaine and Moore, Johanna and Ga\v{s}evi\'{c}, Dragan},
    title = {A network analytic approach to integrating multiple quality measures for asynchronous online discussions},
    booktitle = {Proceedings of the 11th International Conference on Learning Analytics \& Knowledge},
    series = {LAK '21},
    year = {2021},
    isbn = {9781450389358},
    pages = {248--258},
    url = {https://doi.org/10.1145/3448139.3448163},
    doi = {10.1145/3448139.3448163},
    publisher = {Association for Computing Machinery},
    address = {New York, NY, USA},
    keywords = {discussion forum, critical thinking, Community of Inquiry, cognitive presence, ICAP, Epistemic Network Analysis},
  } 

• Dialogue attributes that inform depth and quality of participation in course discussion forums. Elaine Farrow, Johanna Moore, and Dragan Gašević. 2020. Proceedings of the 10th International Learning Analytics and Knowledge Conference (LAK '20). pp. 129-134 (nominated for best short paper award)
  http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/3375462.3375481 [preprint pdf | bib]

  @inproceedings{Farrow:LAK20,
    author = {Farrow, Elaine and Moore, Johanna and Ga\v{s}evi\'{c}, Dragan},
    title = {Dialogue attributes that inform depth and quality of participation in course discussion forums},
    booktitle = {Proceedings of the 10th International Conference on Learning Analytics and Knowledge},
    series = {LAK '20},
    year = {2020},
    isbn = {978-1-4503-7712-6/20/03},
    pages = {129--134},
    numpages = {6},
    url = {http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/3375462.3375481},
    doi = {10.1145/3375462.3375481},
    publisher = {ACM},
    address = {New York, NY, USA},
    keywords = {text analysis, discussion forum, participation, engagement, cognitive presence, Community of Inquiry, ICAP},
  } 

• Modelling student participation using discussion forum data. Elaine Farrow. 2020. Companion Proceedings of the 10th International Learning Analytics and Knowledge Conference (LAK '20 DC). [pdf | poster | bib | online]

  @inproceedings{Farrow:LAK20DC,
    author = {Farrow, Elaine},
    title = {Modelling student participation using discussion forum data},
    booktitle = {Companion Proceedings of the 10th International Conference on Learning Analytics and Knowledge},
    series = {LAK '20},
    year = {2020},
    pages = {201--206},
    numpages = {6},
    url = {https://www.solaresearch.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/LAK20_Companion_Proceedings.pdf},
    keywords = {learning analytics, student engagement, Community of Inquiry, ICAP, natural language processing},
  } 

• Automatic coding of occupation and cause-of-death records. Richard Tobin, Elaine Farrow, Claire Grover, Beatrice Alex. 2019. International Journal of Population Data Science, 4(3). 1 page.
  https://doi.org/10.23889/ijpds.v4i3.1202 [preprint pdf | bib]

  @inproceedings{Tobin:ADR2019,
    title     = {Automatic coding of occupation and cause-of-death records},
    author    = {Richard Tobin and Elaine Farrow and Claire Grover and Beatrice Alex},
    year      = {2019},
    journal   = {International Journal of Population Data Science},
    volume    = {4},
    number    = {3}
    issn      = {2399-4908},
    publisher = {London/Swansea: University of Wales Press/Duckworth},
    doi       = {10.23889/ijpds.v4i3.1202},
  } 

• Modelling Student Participation Using Discussion Forum Data. Elaine Farrow. 2019. Proceedings of the 14th EC-TEL Doctoral Consortium co-located with 14th European Conference on Technology Enhanced Learning. [pdf | bib]

  @inproceedings{Farrow:EC-TEL2019,
    title     = {Modelling Student Participation Using Discussion Forum Data},
    author    = {Elaine Farrow},
    year      = {2019},
    booktitle = {Proceedings of the 14th EC-TEL Doctoral Consortium co-located with 14th European Conference on Technology Enhanced Learning (EC-TEL 2019)},
    publisher = {CEUR Workshop Proceedings (CEUR-WS.org)},
  } 

• Text mining student discussion forum data: common pitfalls and how to avoid them. Elaine Farrow, Johanna Moore, and Dragan Gašević. 2019. Abstract presented at Advances in Data Science 2019. [pdf | bib | online]

  @conference{Farrow:DSAdvances2019,
    title = {Text mining student discussion forum data: common pitfalls and how to avoid them},
    author = {Elaine Farrow and Johanna Moore and Dragan Ga\v{s}evi\'{c}},
    year = {2019},
    month = {5},
    note = {Advances in Data Science 2019 ; Conference date: 20-05-2019 Through 21-05-2019},
    location = {Manchester, UK},
    url = {http://www.ds-advances.org/ds-advances2019},
  } 

• "Why is the Doctor a Man?" Reactions of Older Adults to a Virtual Training Doctor. Aurora Constantin, Catherine Lai, Elaine Farrow, Beatrice Alex, Ruth Pel-Littel, Henk Herman Nap, Johan Jeuring. 2019. Extended Abstracts of the 2019 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI EA '19). 6 pages.
  https://doi.org/10.1145/3290607.3312811 [preprint pdf | bib]

  @inproceedings{Constantin:CHI19,
    author = {Constantin, Aurora and Lai, Catherine and Farrow, Elaine and Alex, Beatrice and Pel-Littel, Ruth and Nap, Henk Herman and Jeuring, Johan},
    title = {``Why is the Doctor a Man?'' Reactions of Older Adults to a Virtual Training Doctor},
    booktitle = {Extended Abstracts of the 2019 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems},
    series = {CHI'19},
    year = {2019},
    isbn = {978-1-4503-5971-9},
    location = {Glasgow, Scotland, UK},
    pages = {LBW1719:1--LBW1719:6},
    articleno = {LBW1719},
    numpages = {6},
    url = {http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/3290607.3312811},
    doi = {10.1145/3290607.3312811},
    acmid = {3312811},
    publisher = {ACM},
    address = {New York, NY, USA},
    keywords = {user experience, evaluation study, technology for older adults, Shared Decision Making, health},
  } 

• Analysing discussion forum data: a replication study avoiding data contamination. Elaine Farrow, Johanna Moore, and Dragan Gašević. 2019. Proceedings of the 9th International Learning Analytics & Knowledge Conference (LAK-19) pp. 170-179
  https://doi.org/10.1145/3303772.3303779 [preprint pdf | bib]

  @inproceedings{Farrow:LAK2019,
    author = {Farrow, Elaine and Moore, Johanna and Ga\v{s}evi\'{c}, Dragan},
    title = {Analysing Discussion Forum Data: A Replication Study Avoiding Data Contamination},
    booktitle = {Proceedings of the 9th International Conference on Learning Analytics \& Knowledge},
    series = {LAK19},
    year = {2019},
    isbn = {978-1-4503-6256-6},
    location = {Tempe, AZ, USA},
    pages = {170--179},
    numpages = {10},
    url = {http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/3303772.3303779},
    doi = {10.1145/3303772.3303779},
    acmid = {3303779},
    publisher = {ACM},
    address = {New York, NY, USA},
    keywords = {Community of Inquiry, cognitive presence, data contamination, replication},
  }