Dr. Mohammed Saqr is an Associate Professor of Computer Science at the School of Computing, University of Eastern Finland. He leads UEF’s Learning Analytics Unit, which has emerged as Europe’s most productive learning analytics lab, as recognized by Scopus and Web of Science over the past five years (2019-2023). Dr. Saqr’s academic journey began with a PhD in Learning Analytics from Stockholm University, Sweden, followed by a postdoctoral position at Université Paris Cité, France. Later, he earned the title of Docent in Learning Analytics from the University of Oulu, Finland. His scholarly work is diverse, interdisciplinary, and prolific. It spans more than 150 peer-reviewed interdisciplinary, methodological, and empirical studies, two books, and more than a dozen editorials. His research covers areas such as learning analytics, artificial intelligence, big data, network science, the science of science, and medicine. Dr. Saqr has received several international recognitions. His PhD thesis was awarded the best thesis, and he has also received several international research awards (e.g., best paper at LAK, ICCE, SITE, TEEM). He obtained the University of Michigan Office of Academic Innovation fellowship. In 2023, the Society of Learning Analytics Research (SOLAR) awarded Dr. Saqr the Europe’s Emerging Scholar Award for “Noteworthy research leading to significant knowledge and understanding of learning analytics and the impact of research on learning analytics application, adoption, and professional development in Europe”. Dr. Saqr has secured funding from esteemed institutions, including the Academy of Finland (as Principal Investigator) and the Swedish Research Council (as Co-Principal Investigator). Additionally, he serves on the editorial boards of prominent journals such as Transactions of Learning Technologies, British Journal of Education Technologies, and PLOS ONE. Mohammed Saqr actively contributes to international conferences, sharing insights through invited keynote addresses as well as academic engagement. His extensive collaboration network spans over a hundred researchers. Mohammed Saqr has offered consultations to governmental organizations and companies and contributed to the evaluation of the World Academy of Sciences (a UNESCO organization). His 189 research publications include 81 journal articles, 57 conference papers, 33 book chapters, 12 editorials, 5 other publications, and 1 thesis.
Mohammed Saqr
Associate Professor of Computer Science
Research Interests
In the grand scheme of things, my interests are interdisciplinary at the intersection of analytics, novel methods, open science and education. My focus is to push the boundaries of methodological advances and unlock the power of big data to bring new insights. In so doing, I explore the temporality, individual differences and heterogeneity as an overarching analytical framework for personalized, equitable and debiasing science. As such, I worked with machine learning, mixture models, network science, sequence analysis, process mining, Markov models, psychological networks, temporal networks, meta-analyses, topic modelling and scientometrics One of my main areas of research centers around networks and network analysis. I published about networks in collaborative learning, in problem-based learning, in language learning and in computer science education. I also worked on finding best methods for network analysis, performed a large scale empirical investigation of centrality measures and did a meta-analysis on centralities to find out which measures capture students’ achievement. Other threads of network research include intervention based on network analysis, modeling diffusion and social contagion of knowledge, modeling conflict and robustness in networks and group influence on collaborative dynamics and success factors.I also contributed to guidelines on best practices in network analysis, finding future agendas, and addressing the challenges that face network analysis in education.... Read more
Selected publications
Contact me
If you have a research idea, want to collaborate, thinking of a funding proposal, a PhD or a master supervision. You are welcome to connet with me, send me at e-mail at mohammed.saqr@uef.fi.