This paper presents the requirements work carried out as part of developing an intervention to improve students' critical thinking skills using location-based mobile learning. The research emerged from seeking to identify ways of getting Interaction Design students into real world environments, similar to those in which they will eventually be…

Computer assisted instruction can be used for stimulating rhetorical invention in English composition. The computer program is responsible for the direction of the inquiry and the motivational sequence while the writer is responsible for the content. The resulting interaction raises to the conscious level what writers already know about their…

Describes the experiences of the University of Southern California at Los Angeles (UCLA) Biomedical Library in testing MEDLINE on CD-ROM. Preparations for testing are discussed, as well as patron response to the system, measured by evaluation forms, and implications for libraries providing new technological tools for patrons. (MES)

Conducted in the attribution-research paradigm of social psychology, a study examined whether human-computer interaction is fundamentally social (as in human-human interaction) or parasocial (as in human-television interaction). All 30 subjects (drawn from an undergraduate class on communication) were exposed to an identical interaction with…

Anticipating a possible future method of multimedia newspaper design and delivery, a study examined the interface among people, modality (paper, computer, multimedia), and three types of news story (news, sports, entertainment). Subjects, 55 undergraduate students enrolled in journalism classes and 20 university library employees considered as…

Concern that computers in the classroom might alienate learners and depersonalize learning raises questions about the impact of computers on writing instruction. A study examined relationships in one school's computer writing lab among instructor, student tutors, and students through what was called the "computer lab matrix of…

The Fishbein and Ajzen model of attitude-behavior consistency was applied to 56 undergraduates learning to use a microcomputer. Two levels of context for this act were compared: the students' beliefs about themselves, and their beliefs about people in general. The results indicated that students' beliefs were good predictors of their behavioral…

A number of variables may affect the ability of students to perceive, and learn from, instructional materials. The objectives of the study presented here were to determine the projected color that provided the best visual acuity for the viewer, and the necessary minimum exposure time for achieving maximum visual acuity. Fifty…

In their eight years of involvement in Computer Assisted Learning, the Division of Education Research Services has assisted many authors in developing their courseware. Whether the courseware has been a short half hour module or a large course involving over a hundred hours of student time, there have been many common problems. A major objective…

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 OASIS, a prototype adaptive online catalog implemented as a front end to the University of California MELVYL catalog. Topics addressed include the concept of adaptive retrieval systems, strategic search commands, feedback, prototyping using a front-end, the problem of excessive retrieval, commands to limit or increase search results, and…

Two institutions of higher learning in Oklahoma have successfully implemented an interactive computer-video system of instruction in their basic communication courses. The system will be made avaliable to other institutions. Four learning principles and their implementations comprise the heart of this system including behavioral objectives,…

A study was devised, using 20 undergraduate students chosen at random from an introductory psychology course, to measure the teaching effectiveness of two computer tutorials oriented to the spreadsheet portion of Appleworks. The first tutorial provided a data disk with pre-entered data for the user to manipulate, but no error correction…

This paper follows the evaluation of a system of student performance analyses programs which has advanced from a crude manual system to an easy to use, on-line, interactive system. Recently, emphasis has focused upon the development of a system which requires little computer expertise on the part of the author to obtain a concise, easy to read…

As publishers make the transition from ink-on-paper to digitalized messages, researchers must ask whether the system is the solution. Are there advantages to presenting newspaper content on computers? Or do people prefer to handle paper? A study reported subjects' self-report responses regarding interface between people (experimental subjects) and…