This dissertation investigated whether computer assisted instruction improves vocabulary, spelling, style, logical sentences, sentence combining thematic maturity, contextual vocabulary, syntactic maturity, contextual spelling, and contextual style when compared to traditional writing instruction. Two groups were used in the study. One group used computer-assisted instruction and the other did not. The questions investigated were, did the computer assisted instruction group show a significant improvement and second, was that improvement significantly larger than that of the traditional writing instruction group. The research hypotheses of this study were not supported. There was not sufficient evidence to conclude that the computer-assisted instruction group showed an improvement and that improvement was higher more than that of the traditional writing instruction group. There were possible reasons why the research hypotheses of this study were not supported. The subjects in the computer-assisted instruction group were not proficient at using the keyboard before entering the study. The subjects in the computer assisted instruction group were frustrated from the lack of keyboarding skills. They seemed to have difficulty looking at the keyboard, their hands, and the screen while they were word processing. The subjects ‘eye hand coordination may have limited their keyboarding skills. There may not have been sufficient time to have the desire affect. The study intervention was for a short time. Only 15 hours were planned. During the posttest section of the study, the subjects in the computer-assisted instruction group and the traditional writing instruction group were fatigued from taking The Test of Written Language - Second Edition (Form B), the Clark County School District new version of the Criterion Reference Test, and the Clark County School District old version of the Criterion Reference Test. The fatigue problem may have had an effect or reduced assisted instruction group were frustrated from the lack of keyboarding skills. They seemed to have difficulty looking at the keyboard, their hands, and the screen while they were word processing. The subjects'eye hand coordination may have limited their keyboarding skills. There may not have been sufficient time to have the desire affect. The study intervention was for a short time. Only 15 hours were planned. During the posttest section of the study, the subjects in the computer-assisted instruction group and the traditional writing instruction group were fatigued from taking The Test of Written Language - Second Edition (Form B), the Clark County School District new version of the Criterion Reference Test, and the Clark County School District old version of the Criterion Reference Test. The fatigue problem may have had an effect or reduced

The term multimedia is polysemous, and the field of multimedia encompasses several other disciplines; so it is striving for more definition, more clarity. Taxonomies offer both clarity and definition through their classification of information. Therefore, a Taxonomy of Media Usage in Multimedia (T-MUM) has been developed to further define the multimedia discipline by identifying how media elements are used in multimedia. The taxonomy was developed based on expertise and research in the area of multimedia, and its foundation was provided by previous work defined in the literature. Its validity was then tested through a series of evaluations using an evaluator pool made up of graduate students, professors, and professionals in the field of multimedia. They validated the proposed taxonomy using a predefined set of questions combined with candid feedback. The taxonomy helps determine everything from whether the elements are being used in a way that detracts from the user's experience or whether they are essential to it. T-MUM is able to assist with the design and evaluation of multimedia by defining how the various media elements are being used. That information can then be used to make content and design decisions: "should an element that detracts from the user experience (e.g. Web advertising banner) be included in the application? Is the revenue generated from its inclusion worth the cost to our users')" or "If this audio narration is essential to the user experience, what measures have been taken for those who have no audio capabilities or those who are hearing impaired?" Answering such questions correctly is vital to the success of any application, making a mechanism that assists in that process of great potential value. T-MUM is such a mechanism.

Anomaly detection in mobile ad hoc network (MANET) is a relatively new area of research. The lack of fixed infrastructure, limited resources, and dynamic topology present numerous problems in MANET security. Recently, several machine learning and data mining techniques have been proposed for anomaly detection in MANETs. In addition, researchers continue to examine new unsupervised detection techniques. As the number of unsupervised learning techniques grows, there is a lack of evidence to support the use of one technique over another. This dissertation research conducted a set of experiments to evaluate the effectiveness of different unsupervised learning techniques for anomaly detection in MANETs, more specifically, the K-means, the C-means, the Fixed-width clustering, the Principal Component Analysis, and the One-class Support Vector Machine. While the main goal of the research was to compare performance of the unsupervised learning techniques, this dissertation research also investigated: i) tradeoffs between competing factors such as high detection performance and limited resource utilization, ii) the impact of normal profile selection models on anomaly detection, iii) the influence of the link change rate as the weighting function on the unsupervised learning algorithms and iv) the influence of decision thresholds on the detection techniques. The results of this dissertation research showed that both K-means and C-means delivered the best performance when using different normal profile models. The results indicated that direct application of clustering techniques provided a worse average performance than that of trained clusters. This dissertation research found that a small value for the time slot was preferred for all techniques. Moreover, a short training interval was also preferred. These preferences appeared to provide better performance while minimizing resource usage (e.g. execution time, CPU, and memory usages). Additionally, the method of using only the initial training data set was found to provide a comparable performance to that of random, recent, and adaptive normal profile models, but required the least resource usage. Finally, the study found that the application of link change rate as the weighting function to adjust the importance of the time slot had no influence on all techniques. Choosing appropriate parameter and decision thresholds for each detection algorithm had a significant influence on maximizing the performance results.

The study of Talmud has experienced a virtual explosion. Aside from many benefits that can be gained from the daily study of Talmud, it facilitates life-long learning behaviors. The creation of life-long learners is especially crucial in today's job market, where the introduction of new technologies makes it essential for employees to constantly update their skills. In particular, the idea of studying a page of Talmud a day, known as Daf Yomi, conceived in 1923 by Rabbi Meir Shapiro, has become common practice. Although once the purview of Orthodox males, it has been proposed this practice has extended to females, Jews of all denominations, and even some non-Jews. Paralleling this practice, there has been an explosion of technology based resources created for the Daf Yomi student. The last known study of these resources was in 1990 and focused exclusively on the one resource available, a telephone call-in system. Based upon the many developments in computing technologies in the past 25 years, the time has arrived to determine what types of additional resources currently exist, how they are being used, and who is using them. These methods were documented in a single, current resource to enable both people who learn Daf Yomi to easily determine what resources are available, and those designing the programs to better take the needs of the customer into account. In addition, the demographic of those using these resources is largely undocumented. The study attempted to discover if the increase in technological tools has caused the study of Talmud to expand to a much larger segment. It was found that many people are currently studying Daf Yomi for the first time. Woman, Conservative Jews, and non-Jews are involved in Talmud study; many for the first time ever. Many attributed the technological tools available to them as the reason for their study.

The usability of Identity Management (IdM) systems is highly dependent upon design that simplifies the processes of identification, authentication, and authorization. Recent findings reveal two critical problems that degrade IdM usability: (1) unfeasible techniques for managing various digital identifiers, and (2) ambiguous security interfaces. The rapid growth of online services consisting of various identifier concepts and indistinct designs overwhelm users and disrupt desired computing activities. These complexities have led to an increase in work operations and additional effort for end users. This work focused on these challenges towards developing a contextual model that enhanced IdM usability. The context of this model provided users with preapproved identification and technical features for managing digital identifiers. A sample population of military and government participants were surveyed to capture their relative computing characteristics and end user requirements for IdM and identifiers. Characteristics, such as Ease of Access Management, Cognitive Overload, Identifier Selection, Confidentiality, and Trust were recorded and measured by means of their frequency of occurrence. A standard deviation was utilized for assessing the volatility of the results. Conclusive results were successfully integrated into an attribute-based architecture so that the contextual model's algorithm, which was the contribution of this work, could be utilized for interpreting requirement attributes for defining end user IdM parameters for business applications. Usability inspection results illustrated that the model's algorithm was able to reduce cognitive overloads and disruptions in workflow by limiting recognition, recall, and convenience values of end users.

Knowledge has been recognized as an important intangible asset to gain competitive advantage for organizations. Many firms invest and deploy knowledge management (KM) practices to manage the knowledge asset effectively. KM practices are context-specific since context acts as a governance mechanism of how employees behave. The deployment of KM practices, in turn, will be varied based on the organizational context differences. These differences can be both KM barriers and important enablers. Moreover, a successful KM project is believed to be associated with the organization design and structuring of knowledge assets, information technology, and people. This research examined organizational context influences on knowledge sharing, one of the KM practices. More specifically, this research model focused on three organizational context factors - organizational structure, organizational culture, and information technology - and their roles on the sharing of two types of knowledge assets: tacit and explicit. Organizational context constitutes the environment where knowledge sharing practices take place. The goal of this research was to detect and explain the environment and to provide both academics and practitioners with the empirical evidence relating to the knowledge sharing enablers. A survey research study was conducted to obtain a comprehensive understanding of how organizational context influenced employees' knowledge sharing intentions, based on a social-technical perspective. The results identified key factors (such as organizational norms, innovation, and specialization) that contributed to promoting individual knowledge sharing intention. It also indicated that social factors, compared to the technical factor, were more likely to stimulate knowledge sharing. The findings supported extant studies, lending credibility to the results. Additionally, this research extended the literature on knowledge sharing by simultaneously considering individual intention to share two forms of knowledge assets: tacit and explicit.

The current method of distributing Automated Teller Machine (ATM) Data Encryption Standard (DES) keys involves manual distribution of the same DES key in component form to all A TMs in a banks network. The components are entered into the ATM keyboard and combined to form the ATM Terminal Master Key (TMK) used for all ATM transactions. Public key cryptosystems can be used to distribute and manage A TM TMKs. However, existing cryptosystem implementations have numerous problems. Moreover, little research has targeted cryptosystem implementations that use tamper-resistant security modules (TRSMs). Almost all security attacks of cryptosystems utilizing security processors and cryptography are the result of weak implementation and deployment. This case study describes how a public key cryptosystem for distribution and management of A TM Triple Data Encryption Standard (3DES) TMKs may be successfully implemented. This case study was developed to offer a repeatable approach, design, and implementation for a public key cryptosystem for A TM 3DES TMK distribution and management. The study's design was based on a single case, using multiple sources of evidence and propositions. Using Toronto Dominion (TD) Bank as the unit of analysis, the study focuses on four main propositions relating to (a) system development processes (SDPs), (b) electronic data assurances, (c) key and certificate life cycle management, and (d) ATM key hierarchies. Results of the study show that SDPs provided a general framework for system development and were not tailored to specific needs of an A TM cryptosystem. Evidence shows that the ATM public key cryptosystem met all CAIN digital assurance and ATM key hierarchy requirements but did not meet all key and certificate life cycle requirements. The author recommends a modified SDP framework for A TM public key cryptosystems called cryptosystem SDPs. These consist of SDPs, an integration of A TM cryptosystem requirements, and software security best practices. This framework utilizes existing SDPs but adds four new phases to take into account ATM public key cryptosystem requirements.

College Faculty, in small institutions, are reluctant to upgrade their classroom presentations to include multimedia support. Research has indicated that traditional instruction persists because of insufficient faculty training in the use of appropriate technologies, inaccessibility of hardware and software, and a general unawareness of presentation software that can provide a user-friendly introduction to multimedia technology in the presentation process. The goal of this dissertation is to move Siena Heights College faculty in the direction of technology supported teaching and learning. This work is a giant first step in that process. It involves selection and purchase of appropriate multimedia hardware and software, creation of a training manual, guided mastery of the tutorial material, preparation and presentation of software supported classroom presentations, faculty and student feedback, and plans for college-wide technology development. The work performed will be readily applicable to small two and four year colleges operating on limited budgets.

No description available.

The purpose of this dissertation was to investigate, design, and develop a computer system which is capable of controlling several small experiments in a space environment. The steps taken to design such a computer system included reviewing literature pertaining to computer architecture for space based computers and determining which architectures did support the necessary computing needs. Based on the literature review, a computer design and methodology was determined which is the basis for building a complete computer system. Seven experiments were interfaced to the computer system which was launched aboard the Space Shuttle "Discovery". After returning, the collected data shows the performance of this computer was satisfactory. Future research is needed in using modem computer structures to control experiments that will be subjected to longer durations in a space environment. This research would greatly enhance the scientific usability for small payloads within the International Space Station.