<p>This thesis presents work in the area of computer-based speech therapy using different types of visual feedback to replace the auditory feedback channel. The study includes diagnostic assessment methods prior to therapy, type of therapy design, and type of visual feedback for different users during different stages of therapy for increasing the efficiency. The thesis focuses on individual computer-based speech therapy (CBST) for profoundly hearing-impaired children as well as for computer-assisted pronunciation training (CAPT) for teaching and training the prosody of a second language. Children who are born with a profound hearing loss have no acoustic speech target to imi¬tate and compare their own production with. Therefore, they develop no spontaneous speech but have to learn speech through vision, tactile sensation and, if possible, residual hear¬ing. They have to rely on the limited visibility of phonetic features in learning oral speech and on orosensory-motor control in maintaining speech movements. These children constitute a heterogeneous group needing an individualized speech therapy. This is because their possibilities to communicate with speech depend not only on the amount of hearing, as measured by pure-tone audiometry, but also on the quality of the hearing sensa¬tion and the use the children through training are able to make of their functional hearing for speech. Adult second language learners, on the other hand, have difficulties in perceiving the phonetics and prosody of a second language through audition, not because of a hearing loss but because they are not able to hear new sound contrasts because of interference with their native language. The thesis presents an overview of reports made concerning speech communication and profound hearing impairment such as studies about residual hearing for speech processing, effects of speech input limitations on speech production, interaction between individual deviations and speech intelligibility, and speech assessment methods of phonetic realizations of phonological systems. Finally, through several clinical evaluation studies of three Swedish computer-based therapy systems, concerning functionality, efficiency, types of visual feedback, therapy design, and practical usability for different users, important recommendations are specified for future developments.</p>

Includes vita. / Title from PDF of title page. / Document formatted into pages; contains 236 pages. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of South Florida, 2003. / Includes bibliographical references. / Text (Electronic thesis) in PDF format. / ABSTRACT: Using advanced technologies can help increase the availability of educational offerings; however, the steps taken in this direction must be appropriate for the target population and the specific content taught. As such, understanding factors that lead to health educators' intentions and behavior related to computer-mediated instruction for continuing education is an important step in developing and marketing appropriate computer-mediated instruction programs (Hoffman & Novak, 1994). Using the theory of planned behavior (Ajzen, 1988) this study explored the relationships between health educators' perceived behavioral control, attitudes, and subjective norms related to computer-mediated continuing education programs and their intentions to use, and previous experience with, computer-mediated education. / ABSTRACT: Employing a cross sectional survey design, data were collected from 504 members of the Society for Public Health Education (SOPHE) (40% response rate) using an online survey instrument. Logistic regression was used to investigate the associations between attitudes, subjective norm, perceived behavioral control, and intention related to using computer-mediated continuing education programs and a proxy measure representing their computer-mediated continuing education behavior. Perceived behavioral control and attitudes were found to have significant associations with computer-mediated continuing education behavior, with intention partially mediating the association with perceived behavioral control and fully mediating the association with attitudes. / ABSTRACT: When studying a subset of the group composed of respondents with a positive intention toward computer-mediated continuing education programs, respondent characteristics and barriers identified as distinguishing between individuals with positive and negative behaviors included perceived behavioral control, presence of a license or certification, a lack of programs, a lack of relevant topics for programs, and a lack of technical support for programs. These results suggest that for health education and health promotion professionals to engage in computer-mediated continuing education programs, more programs, especially ones that address topics relevant to their current functioning, need to be created and made readily available. / ABSTRACT: Also, ensuring that appropriate technical support is available to assist participants, and informing potential participants of the availability of this technical assistance, may encourage more health educators and health promotion professionals to follow through on their intentions to participate in computer-mediated programs. / System requirements: World Wide Web browser and PDF reader. / Mode of access: World Wide Web.

Gemeinsamer Workshop von Universitaetsrechenzentrum und Professur Rechnernetze und verteilte Systeme (Fakultaet fuer Informatik) der TU Chemnitz. Workshop-Thema: Infrastruktur der ¨Digitalen Universitaet¨ Der Vortrag führt in den in Entwicklung befindlichen Standard IEEE1484 ein. Die Standardisierung im Bereich computer- und netzgestützter Kurse ist Voraussetzung für Datenaustausch und Verbreitung.

Web-based lessons teaching graph construction techniques (via the internet) were presented to 144 undergraduate and graduate college students. One group experienced program-controlled tutorials requiring them to construct answers in a defined sequence. A second group experienced identical lesson material in the form of typographically cued text presentations. The programmed instruction students performed significantly better than the cued-text group on an immediate computer-based posttest assessing comprehension of the graphing lesson material. The cued-text group performed better on an applied graphing assignment. The experiment did not account for individuals internet study habits or the metacognitive approaches to learning employed by the study participants.

Ο ηλεκτρονικός ιατρικός φάκελος κάθε πολίτη της χώρας αποτελείται από ιατρικές πληροφορίες που παράγονται γι' αυτόν, σε οποιονδήποτε φορέα παροχής υπηρεσιών υγείας. Σε κάθε Κέντρο Υγείας εγκαθίσταται πλήρης υποδομή για την τήρηση και ενημέρωση στοιχείων του ηλεκτρονικού ιατρικού φακέλου και για την πρόσβαση σε στοιχεία τα οποία τηρούνται σε άλλους φορείς παροχής υπηρεσιών υγείας όλων των κατοίκων που υπάγονται σε αυτό. Ο οικογενειακός και ο προσωπικός ιατρός υποχρεούται να ενημερώνει τους ηλεκτρονικούς ιατρικούς φακέλους των ασφαλισμένων που τον έχουν επιλέξει με τις πληροφορίες οι οποίες παράγονται από τον ίδιο. Ο πολίτης – ασθενής θα πρέπει να έχει και τη δυνατότητα να λαμβάνει σε ηλεκτρονική μορφή έναν προσωπικό ιατρικό φάκελο ο οποίος θα τον διευκολύνει στην πρόσβασή του στις υπηρεσίες υγείας της χώρας και στην άμεση εξασφάλιση παροχής αναγκαίων πληροφοριών και δεδομένων σχετικών με την υγεία του. Ο προσωπικός ηλεκτρονικός ιατρικός φάκελος μπορεί να περιέχει και άλλες προσωπικές πληροφορίες που αποτυπώνουν αναλυτικά την πιο πρόσφατη κατάσταση του ασθενούς (π.χ. μετά από έκτακτη εισαγωγή ή επίσκεψη σε ιατρό), οι οποίες θα μπορούν να τροποποιηθούν και από τον ίδιο. Η διπλωματική εργασία έχει ως στόχο την ανάπτυξη ενός τέτοιου προσωπικού ηλεκτρονικού ιατρικού φακέλου με την αξιοποίηση τεχνολογιών βάσεων δεδομένων και Διαδικτύου. / The electronic medical file of each citizen of country is constituted by medical information that is produced for him, in any institution of benefit of services of health. In each Centre of Health is installed complete infrastructure for the observation and briefing of elements of electronic medical file and for the access in elements which are observed in other institutions of benefit of services of health of all residents that be governed in this. The familial and personal doctor is compelled to inform the electronic medical files secured that have selected him with the information that is produced by the himself. The citizen - patient will be supposed has also the possibility receives in electronic form a personal medical file which will facilitate him in his access in the services of health of country and in the direct guarantee of benefit of necessary information and given relative with his health.The personal electronic medical file can contain also other personal information that impresses analytically the most recent situation of patient (eg after extraordinary import or visit in doctor), that might be also modified from himself. The diplomatic work aims at as the growth of such personal electronic medical file with the exploitation of technologies of bases of data and Internet.

Several years of my experiences in the use of real-time experiments are now upgraded in order to enhance also the teaching of mathematics. The motion sensor device enables us to get real time x(t) and v(t) graphs of a moving object or person. We can productively use these graphs to introduce differentiation on visual level as well as to show the integration procedure. The students are fully involved in the teaching as they are invited to walk in front of the sensor. This approach motivates them by the realistic aspects of mathematical structures. The method could help to fulfill the credo of teaching: comprehension before computation. The steps of such an approach are explained and discussed in further detail below.

The field of digital forensics is concerned with finding and presenting evidence sourced from digital devices, such as computers and mobile phones. The complexity of such digital evidence is constantly increasing, as is the volume of data which might contain evidence. Current approaches to interpreting and assuring digital evidence rely implicitly on the use of tools and representations made by experts in addressing the concerns of juries and courts. Current forensics tools are best characterised as not easily verifiable, lacking in ease of interoperability, and burdensome on human process. The tool-centric focus of current digital forensics practise impedes access to and transparency of the information represented within digital evidence as much as it assists, by nature of the tight binding between a particular tool and the information that it conveys. We hypothesise that a general and formal representational approach will benefit digital forensics by enabling higher degrees of machine interpretation, facilitating improvements in tool interoperability and validation. Additionally, such an approach will increase human readability. This dissertation summarises research which examines at a fundamental level the nature of digital evidence and digital investigation, in order that improved techniques which address investigation efficiency and assurance of evidence might be identified. The work follows three themes related to this: representation, analysis techniques, and information assurance. The first set of results describes the application of a general purpose representational formalism towards representing diverse information implicit in event based evidence, as well as domain knowledge, and investigator hypotheses. This representational approach is used as the foundation of a novel analysis technique which uses a knowledge based approach to correlate related events into higher level events, which correspond to situations of forensic interest. The second set of results explores how digital forensic acquisition tools scale and interoperate, while assuring evidence quality. An improved architecture is proposed for storing digital evidence, analysis results and investigation documentation in a manner that supports arbitrary composition into a larger corpus of evidence. The final set of results focus on assuring the reliability of evidence. In particular, these results focus on assuring that timestamps, which are pervasive in digital evidence, can be reliably interpreted to a real world time. Empirical results are presented which demonstrate how simple assumptions cannot be made about computer clock behaviour. A novel analysis technique for inferring the temporal behaviour of a computer clock is proposed and evaluated.

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A quantitative, descriptive research study was conducted at a nursing college to investigate the nature of nursing learners' exposure to computer assisted instruction and computer-based learning, the perceived benefits of this exposure, and the problems that they had encountered. Learners, who had been exposed to computer assisted instruction and computer-based learning, participated. A self-administered, structured questionnaire was administered to collect data. The research results revealed that the learners had limited exposure to educational computer packages, and computer-based learning activities. They encountered numerous problems. Although the learners derived many benefits from computer assisted instruction, this did not result in effective learning. They indicated that they preferred computer assisted instruction more than traditional teaching methods. This study contributed towards recommendations on improving learners' access to the necessary facilities, equipment and educational computer software. The researcher also recommended strategies to ensure that computer assisted instruction is based on sound educational principles. / Health Studies / M.A. (Health Studies)

There has recently been an increased emphasis on the importance of learning programming languages, not only in higher education but also in secondary schools. Students of a variety of departments such as physics, mathematics and engineering have also started learning programming languages as part of their academic courses. Assessment of students programming solutions is therefore important for developing their programming skills. Many Computer Based Assessment (CBA) systems utilise multiple-choice questions (MCQ) to evaluate students performance. However, MCQs lack the ability to comprehensively assess students knowledge. Thus, other forms of programming solutions are required to assess students knowledge. This research aims to develop a semi-automated assessment framework for novice programmers, utilising a computer to support the marking process. The research also focuses on ensuring the consistency of feedback. A novel marking process model is developed based on the semi-automated assessment approach which supports a new way of marking, termed segmented marking . A study is carried out to investigate and demonstrate the feasibility of the segmented marking technique. In addition, the new marking process model is developed based on the results of the feasibility study, and two novel marking process models are presented based on segmented marking, namely the full-marking and partial-marking process models. The Case-Based Reasoning (CBR) cycle is adopted in the marking process models in order to ensure the consistency of feedback. User interfaces of the prototype marking tools (full and partial) are designed and developed based on the marking process models and the user interface design requirements. The experimental results show that the full and partial marking techniques are feasible for use in formative assessment. Furthermore, the results also highlight that the tools are capable of providing consistent and personalised feedback and that they considerably reduce markers workload.