Publications

Instructional Design

  1. Shoufan, A., "Rethinking Programming Education: A Lecture-Free Approach", IEEE, 2026
  2. Alwheibi, S., Shoufan, A., and Hassan, A., "Active Distance Learning: How Student Perceptions Affect Academic Performance", IEEE International Conference on Teaching, Assessment and Learning for Engineering (TALE), 2023
  3. Shoufan, A., "Active Distance Learning of Embedded Systems", IEEE Access 9 (2021): 41104-41122, 2021
  4. Shoufan, A., "Lecture-free Classroom: Fully active Learning on Moodle", IEEE Transactions on Education, Vol. 63, Issue 4, 2020
  5. Shoufan, A. and Huss S., "A Course on Reconfigurable Computing", ACM Transactions on Computing Education. Vol. 10, Issue 2, pp. 7.1-7.20, June, 2010
  6. Shoufan, A., "A Compact Course on VHDL-AMS", ISCAS2010, IEEE International Symposium on Circuits and Systems, Paris, 2010
  7. Shoufan, A. and Huss S., "Learning Outcomes Aligned Course on Reconfigurable Computing", 6th International Symposium on Applied Reconfigurable Computing ARC 2010., 2010

Educational Videos and YouTube Analytics

  1. Shoufan, A. , Mohamed, F. and Damian, "Endorsement System and Techniques for Educational Content", U.S. Patent 11,974,021, 2024
  2. Mohamed, F. and Shoufan, A., "Users’ experience with health-related content on YouTube: an exploratory study", BMC Public Health, 24(1), p.86, 2024
  3. Shoufan, A. and Mohamed, F., "YouTube and Education: A Scoping Review", IEEE Access, 2022
  4. Osman, W., Mohamed, F., Elhassan, M. and Shoufan, A., "Is YouTube a reliable source of health-related information? A systematic review", BMC Medical Education, 2022
  5. Mohamed, F. and Shoufan, A., "Choosing YouTube videos for self-directed learning", IEEE Access, 2022
  6. Tadbier, A. and Shoufan, A., "Ranking educational channels on YouTube: Aspects and issues", Education and Learning Technologies, Springer, 2021
  7. Shoufan, A., "What motivates university students to like or dislike an educational online video? A sentimental framework", Computers & Education, 134, pp.132-144, 2019
  8. Shoufan, A., "Estimating the Cognitive Value of YouTube’s Educational Videos: A Learning Analytics Approach", Computers in Human Behavior, 92, pp.450-458, 2018
  9. Shoufan, A. and Mohamed, F., "On the Likes and Dislikes of YouTube’s Educational Videos", ACM Conference on IT Education, 2017

Learning Technology

  1. Ghadeer Sawalha, Imran Taj, Abdulhadi Shoufan, "Analyzing student prompts and their effect on ChatGPT’s performance", Cogent, 2024, Large language models present new opportunities for teaching and learning. The response accuracy of these models, however, is believed to depend on the prompt quality which can be a challenge for students. In this study, we aimed to explore how undergraduate students use ChatGPT for problem-solving, what prompting strategies they develop, the link between these strategies and the model’s response accuracy, the existence of individual prompting tendencies, and the impact of gender in this context. Our students used ChatGPT to solve five problems related to embedded systems and provided the solutions and the conversations with this model. We analyzed the conversations thematically to identify prompting strategies and applied different quantitative analyses to establish relationships between these strategies and the response accuracy and other factors. The findings indicate that students predominantly …
  2. Ahmad Samer Wazan, Imran Taj, Abdulhadi Shoufan, Romain Laborde, Remi Venant, "How to design and deliver courses for higher education in the AI era?", Springer Nature Switzerland, 2024, Technological breakthroughs in Generative Artificial Intelligence (AI) are challenging education. We argue that higher education will only cope with the era of AI when we reduce the reliance on textbooks and memorization, and take deliberate steps to integrate AI into the design and delivery of courses and exams. This chapter presents some strategies for this based on Delors report (Delors, Learning, the treasure within: Report to UNESCO of the international commission on education for the twenty-first century. Unesco Publication, 1996) on education. We demonstrate how we used these strategies in multiple courses in cybersecurity, programming, English language teaching, and art. As for course delivery, we automated the Socratic teaching approach by building a dedicated chatbot called the AI Socrates Chatbot. We employed this chatbot in our classes to offer personalized learning experiences for our students …
  3. Abdulhadi Shoufan, Ahmad-Azmi-Abdelhamid Esmaeil, "AI hallucination from students' perspective: A thematic analysis", ., 2026, As students increasingly rely on large language models, hallucinations pose a growing threat to learning. To mitigate this, AI literacy must expand beyond prompt engineering to address how students should detect and respond to LLM hallucinations. To support this, we need to understand how students experience hallucinations, how they detect them, and why they believe they occur. To investigate these questions, we asked university students three open-ended questions about their experiences with AI hallucinations, their detection strategies, and their mental models of why hallucinations occur. Sixty-three students responded to the survey. Thematic analysis of their responses revealed that reported hallucination issues primarily relate to incorrect or fabricated citations, false information, overconfident but misleading responses, poor adherence to prompts, persistence in incorrect answers, and sycophancy. To detect hallucinations, students rely either on intuitive judgment or on active verification strategies, such as cross-checking with external sources or re-prompting the model. Students' explanations for why hallucinations occur reflected several mental models, including notable misconceptions. Many described AI as a research engine that fabricates information when it cannot locate an answer in its "database." Others attributed hallucinations to issues with training data, inadequate prompting, or the model's inability to understand or verify information. These findings illuminate vulnerabilities in AI-supported learning and highlight the need for explicit instruction in verification protocols, accurate mental models of generative AI, and awareness of …
  4. Shoufan, A., "Can students without prior knowledge use ChatGPT to answer test questions? An empirical study", ACM Transactions on Computing Education, 23(4), pp.1-29, 2023
  5. Shoufan, A., "Exploring Students’ Perceptions of ChatGPT: Thematic Analysis and Follow-up Survey", IEEE ACCESS, 2023
  6. Shoufan, A., Lu, Z. and Huss, S., "A Web-based Visualization and Animation Platform for Digital Logic Design", IEEE Transactions on Learning Technology, Vol. 8, Issue 2, 2015
  7. Shoufan, A., "Live Demonstration of DLD-VISU: an eLearning Platform for Digital Logic Design", ISCAS 2016, IEEE International Symposium on circuits and systems, 2016
  8. Shoufan, A., "A Platform for Visualizing Digital Circuit Synthesis with VHDL", 15th ACM Conference on Innovation and Technology in Computer Science Education (ITiCSE 2010), 26-30 June, Ankara, Turkey, 2010
  9. Shoufan, A. and Huss, S., "Construction of a SPICE-similar Simulator for Education", Analog’06, 8. GMM/ITG-Diskussionssitzung. Entwicklung von Analog­schaltungen mit CAE-Methoden, Dresden, Germany, Sep. 2006, 2006

Cognitive Learning

  1. Shoufan, A., "Toward Modeling the Intrinsic Complexity of Test Problems", IEEE Transactions on Education 60, no. 2 (2017): 157-163, 2017
  2. Shoufan, A., "SR Latch: The Wrong Introduction to Digital Memory", ISCAS, 2020
  3. Shoufan, A. and Alnaqbi, A., "On the Intrinsic Complexity of Logical Transformation Problems", IEEE EDUCON, 2018
  4. Shoufan, A. and Alnaqbi, A., "An Intrinsic Complexity Model for the Problem of Total Resistance", ISCAS 2017, IEEE International Symposium on circuits and systems, 2017
  5. Shoufan, A., "Epistemic Fidelity and Cognitive Constructivism in DLD-VISU", IEEE Global Engineering Education Conference, 2016
  6. Shoufan, A., "ABS Controller: An Introductory Case Study for Motivating Non-Major Students", IEEE Global Engineering Education Conference, 2016