Certain features of the PLATO IV system allow the gathering of large quantities and varieties of information describing the interaction of students with computer based education courseware. Two kinds of information can be provided: (1) data concerning single student interaction, which must be analyzed manually; and (2) data summarizing activities…

The conjecture was investigated that the intellective load carrying capability for selected intellective functions is identifiable and measurable. Intellective load carrying failure was defined as the point at which a change in transfer function components occurs as a tracking and a scaled intellective function were concomitantly performed. The…

Discusses the CODER system, which was developed to investigate the application of artificial intelligence methods to increase the effectiveness of information retrieval systems, particularly those involving heterogeneous documents. Highlights include the use of PROLOG programing, blackboard-based designs, knowledge engineering, lexicological…

Thirty junior high students with and without learning disabilities used three forms of an encyclopedia--printed, electronic with menus, and electronic with commands. Students without disabilities were more successful in retrieval. Both groups were more successful at simple versus complex tasks, assigned versus self-selected tasks, and when using…

Describes probabilistic document retrieval systems as a sequential learning process, in which the system learns the parameters of probability distributions describing the frequencies of feature occurrences in relevant and nonrelevant documents. Several techniques for estimating the parameters of distributions are described and the results of tests…

In order to explore possible impacts of changing information technology on the role of the institutional research analyst, three institutional research foundations, measurement, human information processing, and decision support technology are examined. (Author/MLW)

Describes the mouse and other pointing devices used with microcomputers to facilitate easier user-microcomputer interaction, reviews previous educational applications and research, presents a study comparing the efficiency of the mouse with users of different ages, and discusses the implications for software design. (MBR)

This paper describes an evaluation of the Kea automatic keyphrase extraction algorithm. Tools that automatically identify keyphrases are desirable because document keyphrases have numerous applications in digital library systems, but are costly and time consuming to manually assign. Keyphrase extraction algorithms are usually evaluated by…

Discusses the need for a rich semantics for the user interface in interactive image retrieval and presents two methods for building such interfaces: possibility theory applied to fuzzy data retrieval, and a machine learning technique applied to learning the user's deep need. Prototypes developed using videodisks and knowledge-based software are…

Describes a study that compared the effectiveness of screen designs for system interfaces by tallying keyboarding errors during online searches. The methodology is described as an unobtrusive means for obtaining objective and empirically based data for interface comparisons. A questionnaire used to determine users' reactions to screen designs is…

Synthesizes major findings from research on the magnitude of individual differences in information retrieval (IR) tasks and suggests implications for practice and design of IR systems and interfaces. Topics discussed include indexing consistency, relevance judgments, selection of subject headings, selection of search terms, and search retrievals.…

Describes a hypermedia system, HSYS, that was developed by the Idaho National Engineering Laboratory to investigate human performance in technologically complex operational settings, i.e., nuclear power plants and offshore oil platforms. Three subsystems are explained: (1) a knowledge base; (2) an embedded training module; and (3) an advisory and…

Describes the mental coding processes involved in the flow of information when the user is interacting with an enabling information-retrieval (IR) system, or a system designed to stimulate the user's grasping towards a higher understanding of the information need/problem/task that brought the user to the system. (Author/AEF)

Explores the utility of using prior domain knowledge (in the form of taxonomies over attributes, attribute values and concept classes) to constrain the rule learner's search by requiring it to be consistent with what is already known about the domain. Spreading Activation Learning (SAL) is used to efficiently learn over taxonomically structured…

Presents an interaction model and an experimental method for information retrieval. This automated method helps identify which user and system variables are relevant, which are independent of other variables, and which ranges of the variables are most important. Results show that relevance feedback consistently improves retrieval performance. (AEF)