Examines the use of query reformulation and particularly the use of relevance feedback by users of the Excite Web search engine. Discusses results that show limited use of query reformulation and relevance feedback; identifies the most common pattern of searching; and discusses implications for Web search system design. (Contains 16 references.)…

The purpose of this research is to simulate the manual process of assigning descriptors to magazine articles by machine, to investigate how successful automated assignment of descriptors to a heterogeneous text collection is when a text classifier is trained based upon a small set of manually classified example texts, and to test performance of…

Introduces, through a conversation with computer-system designers from the Netherlands, the Language/Action Perspective on modeling business workflow and communication processes. Describes their attempts to develop system models that go beyond data flow to incorporate the communicative actions or transactions that result in the creation of a…

Discusses librarians' use of electronic resource (e-resource) statistics. Topics include the historical context of computerized monitoring of human-computer interaction; where e-resource usage statistics originate; organizational efforts to gain value from e-resource usage statistics; practical aspects, including funding decisions, measuring…

Discusses the need to revise concepts of teaching and learning in relation to technology. Topics include distance learning; accountability in learning and the outcomes of the educational process; the relationship between humans and technology; globalization; measuring an organization's knowledge; assessment; regulating agencies; and the role of…

Discusses rapid changes that have taken place in science over the last decade and its effects on computer science and instructional design. Topics include the idea of change; chaos; humanities and the arts; cultural literacy; paradigm shifts in education; networks of computers and humans; user-involved instructional design; and curriculum…

Proposes a mechanism that carefully integrates human and machine efforts to explore Web users' search interests. The approach consists of a four-step process: extraction of core terms; construction of subject taxonomy; automatic subject categorization of query terms; and observation of users' search interests. Research findings are proved valuable…

Case studies of professional software development practices describe how real (or realistic) projects are planned and executed. Cases provide engaging models of the activities and materials of software development to students and other novice practitioners. They vividly remind learners of the possibilities for meaningfully applying knowledge and…

VisSearch is a collaborative Web searching environment intended for sharing Web search results among people with similar interests, such as college students taking the same course. It facilitates students' Web searches by visualizing various Web searching processes. It also collects the visualized Web search results and applies an association rule…

This paper presents a characterization of computer-based interactions by which learners can explore and investigate visual mathematical representations (VMRs). VMRs (e.g., geometric structures, graphs, and diagrams) refer to graphical representations that visually encode properties and relationships of mathematical structures and concepts.…

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…

Because of the lack of error-free, on-task performance by young children, cognitive modeling has not generally been considered an appropriate technique for characterizing computer use by young children. It is argued that cognitive modeling can be a useful strategy for organizing data on children's performance when the domain being studied is…

Addressing the need for a framework to distinguish the conditions under which different types of educational computing environments are productive, this paper proposes a cognitively based Contextual Analysis Framework consisting of two primary elements: (1) conceptual characteristics of the knowledge domain being learned, including the complexity…

This paper describes the KIDLINK Project, a worldwide e-mail exchange with children from 10 to 15 years of age, which was created as part of the 1990 Children's Cultural Week in Arendahl, Norway, by Odd de Presno, a Norwegian journalist and author of computer books. The goal of the project is to create a global dialog among as many children as…

This paper argues that an important design principle for building expert systems is to represent all control knowledge abstractly and separately from the domain knowledge upon which it operates. Abstract control knowledge is defined as the specifications of when and how a program is to carry out its operations, such as pursuing a goal, focusing,…