Contemporary culture exhibits an increasingly polarized spectrum of attitudes toward virtualization: those who want photorealism and those who seek sheer fantasy. This author describes "Virtual Realism," his strategy for balancing the two social forces. His students at California's Art Center College of Design are putting it to the test.…

Reports results from a study exploring the information retrieval (IR) and types of interactive feedback during mediated IR. Five types of interactive feedback were identified, extending the interactive IR model to include relevance, magnitude, and strategy interactive feedback. Implications for further research investigating the nature and models…

The methodological sensibility that will lead to the consideration of the new forms of cybersociality is advanced. Cybersociality refers to the new expressions of "being together," sharing emotions, and communicating in networked social environments. Social interactions in the wired city of Blacksburg, Virginia are analyzed and three groups of…

Discusses the design of an innovative learning system that uses new technologies for the man-machine interface, incorporating a combination of Automatic Speech Recognition (ASR) and Text To Speech (TTS) synthesis. Highlights include using speech technologies to mimic the attributes of the ideal tutor and design features. (AEF)

Examines users' cognitive, affective, and physical behaviors during user-Web interaction to understand better the nature of information retrieval on the Web, the needs of Web users, and the problem-solving strategies Web users employ. Describes and interprets searching behavior and problem-solving patterns within the relevant situational context…

Presents factors for librarians to consider when decision-making about information retrieval. Discusses indexing theory; thesauri aids; controlled vocabulary or thesauri to increase access; humans versus machines; automated tools; product evaluations and evaluation criteria; automated classification tools; content server products; and document…

Discusses methodological issues in empirical studies of information-related behavior in six specific research areas: information needs and uses; information seeking; relevance judgment; online searching (including online public access catalog, online database, and the Web); human-system interactions; and reference transactions. (Contains 191…

The ultimate aim of this research is to specify and implement a general authoring framework for content and knowledge engineering for Intelligent Educational Systems (IES). In this context we attempt to develop an authoring tool supporting this framework that is powerful in its functionality, generic in its support of instructional strategies and…

The Open University of Hong Kong (OUHK) is a distance education university with about 22,500 students. In fulfilling its mission, the university has adopted various Web-based and electronic means to support distance learning. For instance, OUHK uses a Web-based course management system (CMS) to provide students with a flexible way to obtain course…

For the thirtieth year, the Research and Theory Division of the Association for Educational Communications and Technology (AECT) is sponsoring the publication of these Proceedings. Papers published in this volume were presented at the National AECT Convention in Anaheim, California. The Proceedings of AECT's Convention are published in two…

This book focuses on what it feels like and what it means to spend substantial portions of one's everyday life in the chat rooms, support groups, and virtual communities of cyberspace. Interviewing heavy users online, and becoming one herself, the author creates and ethnographic site for inquiring into the meanings of life online, a place where…

This paper outlines work on a class of systems called Personal Information Management Assistants (PIMAs). PIMAs observe user interaction with everyday applications and use these observations to anticipate a user's information needs. They then automatically fulfill these needs by accessing Internet information sources, filtering the results, and…

Instructional applications for NeXT computers were developed by nine faculty members from the biology, mathematics and computer science, fine arts, chemistry, physics and astronomy, and geology departments as part of a grant awarded to the California State University at Los Angeles. These notes provide a schedule of events and reports from a 2-day…

This report outlines specifications for the online transaction monitoring and questionnaire administration features of the University of California's (UC) Prototype On-Line Catalog, known as MELVYL. The development and testing of these features by the UC Division of Library Automation (DLA) is also described. This document is the final report…

Instructors in technical schools, polytechnics, and universities of technology must continually help students find the links between theory and practice. Students often don't recognize the links among the various subjects they study, or the links among the various tasks they perform as they study. It is well known that students learn best by…