Institute of Communications Studies

Born in Nottingham, Steve graduated in Economics and Government at the University of Essex in 1975. He gained his PhD from the University of Bradford in 1980 and began lecturing (in statistics) at Leeds Polytechnic in the same year. In 1981 he joined the School of Media at Trinity and All Saints College, Leeds and was promoted to Principal Lecturer in 1995. He was the architect of the degree programme in Digital Media at the College and this took its first students in 1998.

Research interests include applications of web-database connectivity; web usage tracking; design of ‘web-systems’. Stephen Sobol is familiar with a number of programming languages and is currently using Cold Fusion and Structured Query Language to develop web applications – see DMASC.

I currently teach on the following modules:

COMM3730 Data Mining Techniques
COMM3720 Project II (New Media)

Chapters

• Sobol S (2007) “University Portals as Gateway or Wall, Narrative, or Database”, Encyclopedia of Portal Technologies and Applications, Tatnall A (eds.).

  Author URL [www.igi-global.com]

• Sobol SC; Stones CM (2005) “Evaluating Usage of Dynamic Web Site Structures through Visualization”, Adaptable and Adaptive Hypermedia Systems, Chen SY; Magoulas GD (eds.). IRM Press/Idea Group.

Conferences

• Sobol SC (2006) Personalization in Interactive Systems: The Generation of Compliance?. 8th International Conference on Enterprise Information Systems.

  Author URL [www.iceis.org]

• Sobol SC; Stones CM; Whitworth A (2005) Qualitative Evaluation of E-learning using a Visualisation tool. IADIS International Conference Applied Computing 2005.

• Sobol SC (2005) The Journalist in the Machine: The SeQuel to the Fourth Estate. Media in Transition 4 - The Work of Stories.

  Author URL [web.mit.edu]

• Sobol SC; Roux JK (2004) Developing Web-Based Infrastructures For Collaborative Working: The Case For Localised Solutions. IEEE Database and Expert Systems Applications Conference (DEXA, 04).: 242-246.

• Stones CM; Sobol SC (2002) DMASC: A Tool for Visualizing User Paths Through a Web Site. IEEE Computer Society. 13: 389-393.

Stephen acts as an external assessor for a number of UK higher education institutions and does review work for Pearson, Wiley, Sage, Routledge, New Media & Society and JMM – The International Journal on Media Management.

Artsprofessional is a database driven web site for an arts magazine built by Stephen and he remains a consultant on that project.

Survey6 – an online tool for the analysis of questionnaire data was written by Dr. Sobol.

friendsov.com – the group comminications tool – is his latest project.