Dr James Ohene-Djan

Dr James Ohene-Djan has over nine years' successful teaching experience at undergraduate level within Goldsmiths' Department of Computing, developing, preparing and delivering courses in telecommunications, database systems, electronic commerce, computer programming and information systems.

In 2004 he was presented with the Goldsmiths award for the development of learning and teaching.

His current administrative responsibilities within the Department of Computing range from Department Senior Tutor to Schools Liaison Officer.

Areas of supervision

Adaptive and personalisable hypermedia, hypertext telecommunications systems and e-commerce, user interface design and web-based database systems.

Featured works

James Ohene-Djan and Saduf Naqvi, An Adaptive WWW-based System to teach British Sign Language, in Proc. of the 5th IEEE International Conference on Advanced Learning Technologies ICALT 2005, pp. 575-579, Kaohsiung, Taiwan, July 2005.

Saduf Naqvi, James Ohene-Djan, Rainer Spiegel, Testing the Effectiveness of Digital Representations of Sign Language with Children An International Symposium Instructional Technology and Education of the Deaf, Supporting Learners, K — College, National Technical Institute for the Deaf Rochester Institute of Technology Rochester, New York, USA, June 27 - June 30, 2005

James Ohene-Djan and M Gorle. An adaptive function for hypermedia-based advanced learning technology. In 3rd IEEE International Conference on Advanced Learning Technologies, Informatics and Telematics Institute, Centre for Research and Technology-Hellas ,Athens, Greece, July 9-11 2003. IEEE Learning Technologies Task Force, IEEE Computer Society Press. To appear.

James Ohene Djan and Matt Gorle. Modelling adaptive functionality for hypermedia systems. In Poster: Hypertext 03, Fourteenth Conference on Hypertext and Hypermedia, Nottingham, UK, August 26 2003. ACM.

James Ohene Djan, Christopher P. Bailey Matt Gorle, Gary B. Wills, and Hugh C. Davis. Is it possible to devise a unifying model of adaptive hypermedia and is one necessary? In Paul De Bra and Monica Schraefel, editors, AH2003: Proceedings of the Workshop on Adaptive Hypermedia and Adaptive Web-Based Systems, Fourteenth Conference on Hypertext and Hypermedia, pages 167?183, Nottingham, UK, August 26 2003. ACM. Available from http: //wwwis.win.tue.nl/ah2003/proceedings/.

James Ohene-Djan and A A A Fernandes. Designing personalisable hyperdocuments for electronic books. In Workshop: E-books + E-Readers + E-jounrnals = E-education? (6th European Conference on Research and Advanced Technology for Digital Libraries), Rome, Italy, September 16-18 2002.

James Ohene-Djan. Ownership transfer via personalisation as a value-adding strategy for web-based education. In P Brusilovsky, N Henze, and E. Mill?n, editors, Proceedings of the Workshop on Adaptive Systems for Web-based Education, 2nd International Conference on Adaptive Hypermedia and Adaptive Web Based Systems, Malaga, Spain, May 28 2002.

James Ohene-Djan and A A A Fernandes. Modelling personalizable hyperlink-based interaction. In P Brusilovsky and P De Bra, editors, Proceedings of the 2nd Workshop on Adaptive Hypertext and Hypermedia (Ninth ACM Conference on Hypertext and Hypermedia HYPERTEXT?98), pages 87?91, Pittsburgh, USA, June 20-24 1998. ISSN 0926-4515.

Research Interests

Since joining the Department of Computing, Goldsmiths College in January 2001 Dr James Ohene-Djan has actively conducted research in the areas of Adaptive, Intelligent Hypermedia, Assistive Learning Technologies for the Deaf and the Personalisation and Adaptation of advanced learning technologies.

Adaptive, Intelligent Hypermedia, is an area of research that aims to enhance the functionality of hypermedia systems such as the World Wide Web by making the user interaction process personalisable. The approach taken is to endow hypermedia systems with personalisation and machine learning adaptation features, which may be initiated by the users or, by the system itself.

Assistive Learning Technologies for the Deaf is a relatively new research area that aims to devise interactive systems and technologies to support the learning and teaching of deaf and hearing impaired students. Dr James Ohene-DjanÂ’s research aims to devise methods and techniques for the teaching of sign languages and writing systems using advanced digital media.

Personalisation of advanced learning technologies is an area of research that focuses on ownership transfer via personalisation as a value-adding strategy for advanced learning technology. This research aims to enhance interactive learning systems with features that enable the personalisation of the interactions between users and electronic learning materials such as hyper-documents.

Dr James Ohene-Djan research has resulted in 25 refereed publications in international journals and conference proceedings and has been presented at 10 international conferences. Dr James Ohene-Djan has acted as session chair and review committee member for the IEEE International Conference series on Advanced Learning Technologies.

He is a review committee member of Conference and Workshop on assistive Technologies for Vision and Hearing Impairment series.

He is currently supervising a PhD student, who is researching the area of systems interaction for the deaf and hearing impaired, and has previously been an Examiner for other PhD Students.

Other research areas include:
Deaf Technolgogies
Digital Sign Writing Technologies
Hypermedia and Hypertext Modelling
E-Commerce
Business Information systems
Database Management Systems

Current research

Currently Dr James Ohene-Djan is researching digital representations of sign languages, assitive technologies for the hearing-imparied, adaptive hypermedia systems and the application of personalisation techniques in the
development of learning technologies.

Dr James Ohene-Djan is currently conducting research in collaboration with the Royal National Institute for the Deaf, Deafax UK . James Ohene-Djan is a Trustee/Director of AACT.(Access-Ability Communications Technology) for Children: ACCT is a registered charity that Enables children, young people and adults with aphasia, autism, deafblindness, dyslexia, dysphasia, dyspraxia, dysphonia and dysgraphia to improve their speech, language and communications through the use of Information and Communication Technology.

I have recently submitted proposals for several grants to continue this work.