Research

My research interests are — (a) compassionate practices and belonging (including well-being, engagement, equity, inclusion and accessibility) in teaching and learning, and (b) usable security and privacy.

What I am generally curious about:

Teaching and Learning

  • How can we be more compassionate in our teaching and learning practices?

    • How do we better understand our learners’ and teachers’ needs?

    • How can we support our teachers in helping students learn?

    • How can we make learning more accessible?

Privacy/security & IoT

  • What can we do to ensure that users’ privacy is protected in daily interactions?

Current projects (revised Sept 2023)

  • Ungrading practices in introductory programming courses

    • People: R. V. Sampangi, E. Poitras, M. Barrera Machuca

  • Attributes of belonging and self-efficacy in learning

    • People: R. V. Sampangi, E. Poitras, G. Mosquera

  • Mobile device security and risk assessment

    • People: T. Shah, PhD student, co-supervised by R. V. Sampangi, A. A. Siegel

Publications

You can find a list of my publications through my Google Scholar profile linked here.

The following are some articles that I have contributed to the Dalhousie FOCUS newsletter/blog:

  • R. V. Sampangi, “Life happens: Empathy-based practices in courses,” FOCUS (Winter 2023), published by the Centre for Learning and Teaching, Dalhousie University, January 2023. This article can be found online on the FOCUS website linked here.

  • R. V. Sampangi, “Teaching and the compassion continuum,” FOCUS (Fall 2020), published by the Centre for Learning and Teaching, Dalhousie University, October 2020. This article can be found online on the FOCUS website linked here.

  • R. V. Sampangi and J. McSweeny, “A Balancing Act: The realities of graduate school,” Focus (Summer 2013), published by the Centre for Learning and Teaching, Dalhousie University, August 2013.

Through my advocacy work on well-being in academia, I have written a couple of articles for Dragonfly Digital Diaries, a monthly publication published by Dragonfly Mental Health:

  • R. V. Sampangi, “ABC: Always Be Compassionate, A call-to-action for being people-centric in our work in academia,” Dragonfly Digital Diaries (March 2021), Vol. 3, March 2021, published by Dragonfly Mental Health (the Global Consortium for Academic Mental Health). This article can be found online here.

  • R. V. Sampangi, “Acts of Courage,” Dragonfly Digital Diaries (June 2021), Vol. 6, June 2021, published by Dragonfly Mental Health (the Global Consortium for Academic Mental Health). This article can be found online here.

You can also read some of my writing on teaching and learning through my blog.

If you have any questions or would like to collaborate, please feel free to reach out!