Richard's Home Page

Who and Where?

Note: I shall be taking Voluntary Redundancy from UWA in March 2007. I expect to do contracting work thereafter.

• contact details

Teaching and Admin (in 2006)

• Semesters 1 and 2: CITS3200 Professional Computing

• Professional Practicum Coordinator
• Director of Graduate Programmes ( CSSE Prospective Students Information )
• Equity and Diversity Advisor ( UWA Equity & Diversity Services )

Research

Research PhD and Masters/Honours Students

• Jonathan Knispel

Research Interests and Activities(to be updated, drastically)

• Departmental Group Membership
  • I am in the Software Engineering Group

• Conference Organising and Programme Committees
  • HCI'98, Sheffield Hallam University, UK
  • INTERACT'99
  • First Australasian User Interface Conference, part of ACSW, ANU Feb 2000
  • CATaC'00 Murdoch University, Perth, Australia, July 2000
  • OzCHI 2000 Sydney, December 2000
    and Co-chair of the Workshops Committee
  • Technical Co-chair for OzCHI 2001, Fremantle, WA, 20-23 November 2001
  • OzCogSci 2002 6th Conference of the Australasian Cognitive Science Society, Fremantle, WA, 3-5 April 2002

• The main focus of research has been into longitudinal aspects of HCI and learning, see my book.
• Collaboration on a huge field study of more than 4000 people for seven years with Judy Kay at the then Basser Department of Computer Science, University of Sydney.
  Since 2005 I have been Honorary Associate, University of Sydney, The School of Information and Technologies
• I was part of the team on the GRUMPS project into remote monitoring at Computing Science, University of Glasgow
• I am now collaborating with Dr Amela Karahasanovic at Simula Research Laboratory, Norway. GRUMPS is being applied into Empirical Software Engineering, especially programming comprehension.

• Some work has also been undertaken into
  • intelligent interfaces to turbine vibration simulation models
  • cursive script recognition and
  • Augmented Reality.

Selected Publications

• Cook R., Kay J., Ryan G. and Thomas R.C. A toolkit for appraising the long term usability of a text editor. Software Quality Journal, Vol 4, 2, pp 131-154, 1995.
• Li W., Thomas R.C. and McDonald C. LRNL(1): LR(1) with non-terminal lookaheads and its benefits for incremental parsing. Australian Computer Science Conference, Adelaide, pp 302-309, January, 1995.
• Lau D. and Thomas R.C. Whole word recognition using probabalistic neural networks. Sixth Australian Conference on Neural Networks, ACNN'95, Sydney, pp 253-256, February 6-8 1995.
• Kay J. and Thomas R.C. Studying long term system use, Communications of the ACM, Special Issue on End-user Training and Learning, Vol 38, 7, pp 61-69, July 1995.
• Thomas R.C. Long term variation in user actions, ACM SIGCHI Bulletin, vol 28, pp 36-39, April 1996.
• Kay J. and Thomas R.C. Visualisation of Entrenched User Preferences, Human Factors in Computing Systems, CHI 96 Conference Companion, ACM Press, pp 285-286, Vancouver BC, April 1996. Science, November 1996.
• Thomas R.C. Long term human-computer interaction - an exploratory perspective. Research Monograph. Springer-Verlag 1998. ISBN 3-540-76209-4
• Thomas R.C. Fear reduction for seniors. Proceedings of INTERACT '99 Conference, vol 2, pp 63-4, Edinburgh, Scotland, September 1999.
• Thomas R.C. Riding the wave of the reckless explorer. Second Workshop on Computers and Fun, York, UK, 20 December 1999. Interfaces, Number 42, 13-14, Spring 2000.
• Brown, T & Thomas R.C. Finger tracking for the digital desk. Proceedings of First Australasian User Interface Conference AUIC, Canberra, ACT, Australian Computer Science Communications, vol 22, number 5, pp 11-16, 31Jan - 3 Feb 2000.
• Thomas R.C. A culture for computer literacy. Proceedings of 2nd International Conference on Cultural Attitudes Towards Technology and Communication 2000, Perth, pp341-5, 12-15 July, 2000.
• Kay, J. & Thomas R.C. Personal Usability based upon a Scrutable, Dynamic, Individual User Model. OzCHI 2000 Conference, Sydney, pp 292-8, December 2000.
• Thomas R.C. & Foster M.R.K. A Pilot Study of Teaching the Strategic Use of Common Computer Applications. Second Australasian User Interface Conference AUIC 2001, Gold Coast, Qld, Australian Computer Science Communications, vol 23, number 5, pp 85-92, 29 Jan -1 Feb 2001.
• Thomas R.C., Cashman, P., Edwin, D. & Ritchie, M. Investigations into Privacy and Other Aspects of a Real-Time Distributed Marks Collection System. OzCHI 2001 Conference, Fremantle, 20-22 November 2001.
• Evans H., Atkinson M. , Brown M., Cargill J., Crease M., Draper S., Gray P., Thomas R.C. The Pervasiveness of Evolution in GRUMPS Software. USE 2002 First International Workshop on Unanticipated Software Evolution, Malaga, Spain, 10-14 June, 2002. Also appears in Software Practice & Experience, Vol 33, 2, 99-120, 2003.
• Thomas, R.C., Kennedy, G.E., Draper, S.D., Mancy, R., Crease, M., Evans, H. & Gray, P.D. Generic usage monitoring of programming students. ASCILITE 2003 Conference, Adelaide, 7-10 December 2003, 715-719.
• Gray, P; McLeod, I; Draper, S; Crease, M; and Thomas, R. A Distributed Usage Monitoring System. In Proc. CADUI 2004. Madeira, Jan, 2004. pp. 121-132.
• Thomas, R.C. and Mancy, R. The use of large databases for group projects at the nexus of teaching and research. Proc 9th Annual Conference on Innovation and Technology in Computer Science Education, ITiCSE 04, University of Leeds 28-30 June 2004, SIGCSE, 161-165.
• Karahasanovic, A., Fjuk, A., Sjoberg and Thomas, R.C. A controlled experiment to evaluate the reactivity and usefulness of the think-aloud tool. Proc. Information Resources Management Association International Conference IRMA.04, New Orleans La, USA, 1033-4, New Idea Group Publishing, 2004.
• Thomas, R.C., Karahasanovic, A. and Kennedy, G.E. An Investigation into Keystroke Latency Metrics as an Indicator of Programming Performance. 7th Australasian Computing Education Conference (ACE2005) , Conference in Research and Practice in Information Technology, Vol 42, 127-134. (pdf)
• A. Karahasanovic, A. Fjuk, D. Sjoberg and R. Thomas. Revealing Object-Oriented Comprehension by Feedback Collection. In Comprehensive Object-Oriented Learning. The Learner.s Perspective, Ed A. Fjuk, A. Karahasanovic, J. Kaasboll. Informing Science Press, chapter 7, 111-130, 2006. (pdf)
• Karahasanovic, A. and Thomas, R.C. Difficulties experienced by students in maintaining object-oriented systems: an empirical study. 9th Australasian Computing Education Conference (ACE2007), Conference in Research and Practice in Information Technology, Vol 66, 81-87. (pdf)