Dr Paul Brna

Email: paulb@comp.lancs.ac.uk

Position: lecturer

Research Interests


Programming Support Tools:

For both novices and experts to enable them to perform their programming tasks efficiently and effectively.

Specifically, to support: constructing Prolog programs (e.g. the Recursion Editor), the Prolog Techniques Editor (e.g. TED); debugging Prolog programs (e.g. TADP).

Intelligent Tutoring Systems/Learning Environments:

The development of multiple teaching strategies; the use of Socratic style techniques for promoting conceptual change; the teaching of troubleshooting; the use of external representations to aid problem solving.

Specifically, teaching strategies relating to: troubleshooting (e.g. TADP); programming languages (e.g. SWANN); physics (e.g. DYNLAB, The DEVRL Virtual Classroom); analytic reasoning (e.g. switchER).

Analysis of Errors and Misconceptions:

The representation of misconceptions; student modelling; and automated diagnosis (both model based and data driven).

Specifically, errors and misconceptions relating to: simple electrical circuits (e.g. ELECTRICO); Prolog unification (e.g. PUBS); and Prolog control flow (e.g. BSM).

Current Activity:

This includes work on a Distributed Extensible Virtual Reality Laboratory (DEVRL), Graphical Reasoning in Programming (with the GRIP group), and the modelling of students learning to model physical phenomena (with COAST) with the logiciel CHENE

Some Representative Papers

  • Brna, P. (1996). Can't See the Words for the Tree: Interpretation and Graphical Representations. Proceedings of the Colloquium on Thinking with Diagrams, Digest No: 96/010, IEE, London.
  • Bull, S., Brna, P. and Pain, H. (1995). Extending the Scope of Student Models. User Modeling and User-Adapted Interaction 5(1):45-65.
  • Bental, D. and Brna, P. (1995). Enabling Abstractions: Key Steps in Building Physics Models. In Greer, J. (ed.) Artificial Intelligence in Education, 1995: Proceedings of AI-ED'95 - 7th World Conference on Artificial Intelligence in Education. pp162-169. Charlottesville, VA: AACE.
  • Cox, R. and Brna, P. (1995). Supporting the Use of External Representations in Problem Solving: the Need for Flexible Learning Environments. Journal of Artificial Intelligence in Education. 6(2/3):239-302.
  • Duncan, D., Brna, P. and Morss, L. (1994). A Bayesian approach to diagnosing problems with Prolog control flow. Proceedings of the 4th International Conference on User Modelling, Cape Cod.
  • Brna, P. (1993). Teaching Prolog Techniques. Computers & Education, 20(1): 111--117.
  • Brna, P. and Mathieson, M. (1993). Support for Novices Learning to Debug: SWANN's Way. In Artificial Intelligence in Education, 1993: Proceedings of AI-ED 93 , pp 505-512. Virginia: AACE.
  • Bull, S., Pain, H. and Brna, P. (1993). Student Modelling in an Intelligent Computer Assisted Language Learning System: The Issues of Language Transfer and Learning Strategies. In Proceedings of International Conference on Computers in Education, ICCE'93, pp121-126, Taiwan.
  • Brna, P. (1991). Promoting Creative Confrontations. Journal of Computer Assisted Learning , 7:114-122.

    Some Papers

    Some Other Papers

    Some Research Snippets

    Some More Personal Information

    Some references in very loosely defined categories

    An Article on How to Prevent PhD Completion!

    AAI/AI-ED Group Computing Department Lancaster University