Since the traditional techniques of higher level problem solving may be too cumbersome for a general mathematics class, a method must be devised to enable a general mathematics student to solve higher-level, practical, mathematical (HLPM) problems without requiring the student to provide an intricate algorithm of the solution process. Therefore, the author has developed Computer-Facilitated Problem Solving (CFPS). CFPS allows the general mathematics student to solve HLPM problems successfully by alleviating the tedious algorithms and computations necessary to arrive at a solution. However, the student must possess a clear understanding of the problem to respond to the computer's prompts correctly. The author utilized a sample of two CFPS experimental and two non-CFPS control groups. One set of experimental and control groups was utilized in a pilot study, while the final study made use of the second set. Both studies were conducted with identical procedures. All groups were administered an HLPM exam. The control groups completed the exam utilizing a calculator, pencil, paper, and a list of formulas. However, the experimental groups took the exam in a computer laboratory where each student was required to use CFPS. The results of this HLPM testing were processed through an analysis of covariance (ANCOVA) to determine if a significant difference in performance existed between the experimental and traditional groups. The author utilized each student's mathematics California Test of Basic Skills (CTBS) score as a covariate to take differences in mathematical ability among students statistically into account. The ANCOVA procedure proved that there was a significant difference in performance between the control and experimental groups of both the pilot and final studies. Students of the experimental groups scored significantly higher on the HLPM exam than those students of the corresponding control groups. Therefore, through the proper utilization of technology, a general mathematics student can be allowed the opportunity to explore interesting fields of practical, mathematical problem solving.

In an emergency, cognitive ability, skill performance, and decision making skills of medical personnel are often impaired due to the physical and psychological effects of stress created by the emergency event itself. Computerized human patient simulators hold the potential of enabling personnel to recreate the cognitive, psychomotor, and affective demands of a real life medical emergency without putting patients or personnel at risk. While previous research has demonstrated the potential of simulation-based instruction to improve cognitive and psychomotor learning outcomes, there has been no attention focused on affective learning domains and performance outcomes. Repeated practice in a realistic simulation training environment has the potential to decrease the stress response of personnel in an emergency, blunt the effects of skill degradation due to stress, and increase the performance capacity of medical personnel in an actual emergency. In this study, senior anesthesiology nursing residents participated in a series of computerized patient simulation scenarios in which overall medical performance and physiological and psychological indicators of stress were assessed. Physiological measures included noninvasive measures of heart rate, blood pressure, and salivary cortisol level. Psychological measurements included the State-Trait Anxiety Inventory (STAT) and two Likert-scale responses to the subject's perceived level of stress and level of confidence. Because of the individual variation in response to stress, each subject served as their own control. Fifty-four subjects participated in the study. A random sample of 16 subjects participated in a baseline nonemergency simulation scenario. All 54 subjects then participated in a pre- and post-intervention simulated emergency scenario. Between the two scenarios, each subject received 16 hours of simulation-based instruction in the management of anesthesia emergencies and stress inoculation training. Subjects showed a significant increase in all parameters in the pre-intervention emergency scenario when compared to the nonemergency baseline scenario. Equally, all subjects showed a significant increase in parameters during the pre-intervention scenario when compared to that during post-intervention scenario. However, all of the parameters during the post-intervention scenario showed significantly less response to stress than during the pre-intervention scenario. Additionally, ratings for performance showed a significant increase in the post-intervention scenario when compared to performance during the pre-intervention scenario. The research demonstrates that computerized human patient simulation is capable of replicating the demands of a real emergency. The study was able to validate an improvement in medical performance and decrease in responsiveness to stress. The research appears to be the first to confirm the utility of simulation-based instruction in mitigating the physical and psychological effects of stress, created by an emergency event itself. Equally important, the participants reported a decreased perception of stress and an increased level of confidence following the intervention. The combination of stress inoculation training and simulation-based instruction appears to an effective strategy for improving cognitive, psychomotor and affective learning and performance outcomes. Further study in a wider population and evaluation of the duration of the intervention is warranted.

This study involves the design of an expert system for academic advisement. Expert systems model the approach that a human expert would take in solving a problem. Expert systems have made important contributions in many areas by applying artificial intelligence technology to a variety of areas of human problem solving. Academic advisement seems to be an appropriate domain for this technology. Today two-year colleges face challenges offering a sound academic advising program. The colleges must provide faculty advisors who are knowledgeable about academic requirements. These faculty advisors must organize and disseminate complex student information. This information includes whether development classes are needed, if prerequisites to classes have been fulfilled. The advisors must also determine if a class will count toward graduation, and if a class will transfer to a four-year in situation. Faculty advisors are overwhelmed with the sheer volume of information for which they are responsible. Faced with the increasing complexity of institutional policies, procedures and curricula, and articulation agreements with other institutions, faculty advisors struggle to keep up with the constant changes. The advisors feel unprepared with minimal training. Moreover, necessary resources, such as ASSET scores, courses completed, and transfer institution requirements needed for advising are not readily available. The composition of the student body has changed due to increased numbers of minorities, women, veterans, educationally disadvantaged students, low income students, disabled students, and adult students. All of these students have expressed a need for increased access to academic advising and more individual plans of study. The changing characteristics of the students, the complexities of our institutions of learning, perceptions of advising, and our current advising system reinforce the need to introduce new technology into academic advising. With all the problems associated with academic advising, especially at the two-year college level, faculty advisors are seeking help with the advising process. Computer assisted advising, using an expert system, offers the promise of a solution to one of the most fundamental advising problems: getting accurate and up-to-date information to students and advisors, and dispensing this information to be the most beneficial to the student. An expert system designed for the advisement of two-year community college students seems to be an appropriate domain for this technology. This study details the design, development, implementation, and validation of an expert system for the advisement of two-year college students. A rule based prototype expert system was developed, implemented, and then validated using a twostep process. The validation phase utilized four human expert advisors and the expert system for academic advising. Two human experts and the expert system were used in the first step of validation. The records of 30 students to provide the data for the first step. Based on the data in the records each human expert provided academic advisement and completed advising forms for fifteen students. The expert system then provided academic advisement for all 30 students. The second step utilized the remaining two human experts, as evaluators, and the academic advising forms completed in the first step. The advising forms completed in step one were separated into two sets: one set from the human experts and the second set from the expert system. Fifteen advising forms from each set were selected and placed in a folder along with the matching student records. The remaining fifteen forms from each set were placed in another folder with the matching student records. Each human expert received a folder and were asked to evaluate the courses were selected for the students by the human experts and the academic advisor. The two evaluators independently reviewed, and judged the advisement produced by the two human experts and the academic advising system in step one. The evaluators were instructed to grade the advisement forms on a four-category rating scale: ideal, acceptable, less than acceptable, and unacceptable. The 60 ratings, one set of 30 from each of the reviewing advisors, were then used to determine the extent of difference between the ratings assigned by the advisors. The expert system produced output that was not significantly different from the human experts.

This study was designed to investigate both present and potential future applications and usage of CD - ROM technology within Ontario Government libraries and information centers. The author first reviewed the history of the Ontario Government Libraries Council, from the perspective of its mandate to provide a degree coordination between various government libraries of and improvement of library management in the Public Service, through cooperative activities. Acquisition and implementation of CD-ROM technology is a joint venture that can be undertaken for mutual benefit of Council members, and was the subject of the Feasibility Study carried out by the author. The researcher conducted a comprehensive literature review, examining many articles and the few available published studies covering a full spectrum of CD-ROM issues. This data, plus the researcher's exposure to four CD-ROM database systems, was employed to design a feasibility study, that follows the literature review The author formally collected information needed for study purposes via a questionnaire sent out to 76 Council libraries and information centers. This process was followed up by personal contact with concerned Library Managers, for data clarification. Subsequently, the researcher formulation documented the findings of specific solutions, recommendations, for accessing and that resulted in conclusions and implementing CD-ROM technology within the Ontario Government Libraries Council. The resulting document can be employed by the Ontario Government Libraries Council and the Ontario Government Management Board, as a policy planning and implementation instrument for development and installation of CD-ROM facilities

The goal in this study was the design and prototype implementation of procedures, programs, views, schema, and data (toolset) for the management of Web applications. This toolset pertained to all phases of the Web application's life including design, construction, deployment, operation, and change. The toolset built upon key functional perspectives including accounting, administration, automation, availability, business, capacity, change, configuration, fault, operations, performance, problem, security, service level, and software distribution. The main problems addressed by the researcher through the toolset were the lack of support in a number of key areas such as keeping applications available and performing well, making applications easy to fix when they fail, making applications easier to change and maintain, and ensuring that applications are secure. The toolset addressed these challenges and at the same time reduced the impact of application complexity, the labor needed, and the skill required to achieve Web application manageability. Joint application design techniques were used for requirements and design activities. A rapid application design approach was used for toolset implementation, planning, and construction. Evaluation was done using a five-question survey that focused on input about the toolset's software attributes and technology, level of satisfaction with the toolset, and perceived contribution of the toolset to the organization. It is expected that this research project will be used as input for future service-based offerings for IBM's e-Business Hosting line of business.

This dissertation addresses the technical utilization of multimedia computer technology to increase the effectiveness of distance education. Text-based conferencing using computers has been in use for more than ten years but suffers from interaction speeds paced by the participant's keyboarding proficiency. Multimedia computers capable of rendering voice and graphics can increase information delivery by an order of magnitude. Constraining the development of multipoint conferencing system are the low bandwidth communications infrastructure, the absence of a data bridge, and effective multimedia compression and multiplexing techniques for the diverse user platforms. Many applications are reviewed that can, in part, perform at least some of the functions required. Research is presented describing current implementations of group conferencing systems which use both high-power workstation computing equipment and high-speed communication connections. Implementations of voice point-to-point connectivity, found in the numerous "internet phone" applications, are surveyed. A key component of each system is a technique to address the high data rates required for voice data. Voice data compression can use differing techniques, depending on the computing hardware and auxiliary compression hardware available. An analysis of software voice compression techniques is performed noting that computing power for encoding and decoding are not always symmetrical. Unlike standard data driven systems, a voice conferencing application is time-sensitive. Network behaviors, such as queuing, or multitasking operating systems which are not deterministic can introduce significant delays during transmission. Additionally, multitasking operating systems which are not deterministic can also introduce delays. These delays can render voice transmission unusable, introducing sudden stops and starts in the voice reproduction. Techniques for design of a time-sensitive system will be developed. The dissertation develops an implementation of a group conferencing system combining the capabilities of text-data and voice multiplexing, compression, and bridging. The system will be designed to adapt to the many diverse hardware platforms, selecting the compression algorithm to maximize performance on the client system.

XML has emerged as a universal data exchange format for disseminating and sharing information, particularly on the World Wide Web. As more XML data are generated, stored, and exchanged, the need to index XML data efficiently for querying purposes is becoming increasingly important. Designing efficient indexing structures for XML data presents serious challenges because any indexing scheme must index the structural a well as the data components of XML documents and provide tight integrations of the two components. This thesis studies XML indexing methods for tree-structured XML documents that can be queried by a subset of XPath expressions. More specifically, this thesis proposes a new main memory index structure, named M*Ctree, which is an enhanced Ctree. Unlike the Ctree which is constructed solely from the structural and data characteristics of the database, the M*Ctree includes query workload characteristics in order to speedup query evaluations on frequently used paths and nodes on the index structure. The Ctree index cleverly uses arrays to preserve child-parent relationships among individual data node pairs in a summary tree structure in order to avoid expensive structural join costs. The M*Ctree combines the use of child-parent links with additional arrays which provide child-ancestor links along frequently used paths to accelerate query evaluations. These child-ancestor links can be pre-computed based on query workloads, added, and removed as needed to reflect changing workload characteristics. Combined with value indexes which are structure-and-content sensitive, the M*Ctree becomes a multi-resolution index structure optimized for frequently used paths and achieves better overall performance than those index structures which do not consider query workloads. The M*Ctree trades off extra memory costs to support additional arrays and achieves better execution times for queries along frequently used paths of the index structure. Experiments conducted in this research show that the M*Ctree achieves better performance than the Ctree for both simple and branching path queries matching index paths with child-ancestor links. The M*Ctree achieves larger performance gain over the Ctree on index paths which do not contain regular groups.

When workers are separated in time and space, but have to cooperate in solving a business problem, there is a need for computer-based support to assist the group in remembering group decisions, past activities, current assignments and on-going conversations about the work in progress. Computer technology can provide a repository that allows group members to record and retrieve this type of information from a central system. This dissertation has focused on the system requirements for this type of group memory in the Any-Time/Any-Place domain of computer-supported cooperative work. A set of requirements for a central system to support distributed group work has been developed. The consolidated requirements have been documented in a requirements specification. This specification has refined the system designs presented in the published literature. The requirements developed were used to produce a software reference architecture for an Any-Time/Any-Place group memory system. The reference architecture that resulted from the consolidated requirements was validated through comparison with representative implementations documented in the published literature of cooperative work. Functional mappings from the reference architecture to the validation instantiations have shown that the reference architecture represents the class of systems that support group memory.

There is a critical need for comprehensive residential living facilities, in other than large institutional environments, for persons with both mental and physical disabilities. In an automated small-group home, these people could achieve a quality of life derived from having some control over their living and learning environments. Technology could be the answer to help the multiple handicapped individual. The purpose of this dissertation project was to design specifications and requirements for a training methodology to prepare multiple and severely disabled people to use a computerized environmental-control system. A residential facility for mentally retarded individuals in Broward County served as the "Project Center". The primary objectives for the project were: (1) to determine the category of individual with the ability to use a computerized environmental-control system; and (2) to design an appropriate training methodology. Training candidates were carefully chosen to select individuals who represented a cross-section of people with multiple handicaps and who were potentially able to derive benefit from an automated small-group home environment. Baseline evaluation, formative evaluation, and summative evaluation procedures were studied and applied, as appropriate, to learners, to lessons (objectives), and to the total program. The product of this project was a prototype of a training program to be used as the basis for the formative revision of future expanded training. Expectations for using a standard or semi-standard keyboard for computer input were not reasonable; therefore, an alternative input device was developed. It consisted of two large-format, recessed, push-button keypads that were distinctly color-coded and permitted trainees with limited hand control to sequence through the menu options and select the desired choice. Consistent with previous experience of the trainees in the use of communication aids, menu choices for control-action functions were represented as easily recognized pictures ("icons") instead of words. Target goals (performance objectives) designed to teach the general skills required to accomplish desired functions using the computer and related input and output devices were written to be meaningful, measurable, and referenced to the broad goals initially established. When Target Goals were successfully achieved, the trainee had acquired the knowledge necessary to make menu choices and use the computer system, including input and output devices. Pre-training evaluation was conducted by a team of observers. Evaluation of training sessions followed; during which the trainer applied Training session Procedures developed specifically for this project to teach trainees to accomplish the Target Goals. Post-training evaluation was conducted by the same team that conducted pre-training evaluation The overall increase for all trainees, who when totaled together completed 64 of the maximum possible 80 rounds (8 trainees x 10 rounds per trainee). Trainees as a group were able to accomplish an average of 76.04 percent of the maximum possible goals. They were able to accomplish an average of 95.05 percent of goals tried. The broad program goals were effectively transformed into educationally sound performance objectives. The training session procedures were appropriate to accomplish the Target Goals for 5 of the 6 training candidates who were not classified as being in the severe to profound level of mental retardation, even though their physical disabilities were classified as severe. The two keypad input approach used with the icon-based, binary choice menu software and the training session procedures proved to be very effective for the be used as the basis for future training of persons with disabilities similar to those at the project center.

Many researchers advocate the cause of end-user participation in systems design as beneficial, but these principles are largely limited to opinions and recommendations. Most participatory design studies encountered in specialty literature lack statistical proof regarding the effectiveness of participatory design as a method causing significant behavioral changes in users. This dissertation details a participatory design experiment conducted in the health care environment, involving patient record users having a diverse occupational background. The majority of previous behavioral research studies concerning computers, conducted with subjects employed in the health care field, traditionally concentrate on a particular professional specialty group. To ascertain current attitudes toward systems used in computer-based patient records applications of medical staff as a whole, the entire medical staff population (N = 105) employed at a not-for-profit Miami health care facility affiliated with the University of Miami School of Medicine was surveyed using the Medical Staff Questionnaire (MSQ). The 30-item Likert type attitude scale was previously developed and validated by the researcher in an independent pilot study (n = 37). Correlational survey results obtained from 104 respondents (99. 05%) indicated that medical staff members had moderately favorable initial attitudes toward computers. Despite the heterogeneous occupational mix of the medical staff population, no significant differences in attitudes toward computers were detected between the 10 professional specialty groups identified at this site of care, suggesting that an approach concurrently involving diverse medical staff occupational categories in experimental behavioral research can be feasible. Furthermore, of the ten independent variables uncovered from a review of the literature that were used as covariates (gender, age, education, length of employment in health care, use of patient records, typing/keyboard skills, computer use, computer proficiency, computer training, and personal computer ownership), significant differences in mean survey scores were attributed only to self-assessed computer proficiency (p = .001), and PC ownership (p < .05). It was shown that the majority of these covariates had no significant effect on factor scores calculated for five independent orthogonally rotated factors obtained in exploratory factor analysis for the MSQ instrument: (1) Involvement with computers (use and participation); (2) Impact of computers; (3) Rewards of using computers; (4) Patient Records; and (5) Ethics (staff displacement and legal responsibility) . While the five factors collectively accounted for 49.6% of the variance in item scores, none of the demographic variables collected adequately predicted overall initial attitudes of medical staff toward the computerization of patient records. To provide acceptable empirical evidence regarding the effects of participatory design on the attitudes of medical staff, a pretest posttest control group type experimental study involving half of the pretested population (n = 52) was conducted. Posttest scores of an experimental group of medical staff (n = 21), randomly selected to participate in health care information systems design activities over a period of 16 weeks, were compared with posttest scores obtained from a randomly selected control group of medical staff (n = 31) who did not receive any treatment. The differences between survey scores of the two post tested groups were found significant at 2-tailed p < .001, indicating that medical staff who actively participated in systems design teams developed more favorable attitudes toward computers than other staff members who were not involved in this process. As part of the experiment, a functional computer- based patient records software product that met the specific requirements of management and medical staff at this site of care was developed and implemented with end-user participation and support. Rapid modular prototyping, software reuse, and phased implementation techniques were applied, using source code from an existing Informix-SQL database application, the ESS Rehabilitation Manager from Easter Seal Systems (1988), as the starting point. The general orientation and structure of the original application was transformed from a problem-oriented to a patient-based record. A new relational model, best suited for a site of care offering patient rehabilitation services, was introduced. The experiment facilitated the process of new technology diffusion in the health care organization, by promoting collaborative strategies intended to positively influence users' attitudes and decrease medical staff's resistance toward computers, which may ultimately benefit the quality of patient care.