The increasing popularity and rapid development of the Internet and specifically the World-Wide Web in recent years has led to an exponential growth of users around the world in many different application areas. Following this growing trend, many eager educators have also embraced this new technology and have begun to use it as a tool in delivering education. A plethora of applications has already been developed in an attempt to implement educational content in this way. A general concern for many researchers is that most of these applications are not efficient in delivering educational outcomes and fail to achieve their educational goal. In the present project we propose that the present failure to deliver educational outcomes in an efficient way has its origins in the lack of concern and focus of developers on modern learning theory. Therefore, in this work we establish the foundations in terms of an interdisciplinary contribution from areas such as, educational learning theory, human-computer interaction and web design guidelines for the design and implementation of web pages aimed at facilitating the teaching and tutoring of basic statistics concepts. As a result of this work, a specific set of learning theories were researched and analyzed, the basic ideas of Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) were explored and a set of appropriate principles from HCI were chosen. Furthermore, a selected group of Web design guidelines were researched, studied and selected to ensure that the final product contributes to the efficient delivery of subject content and effective achievement of learning outcomes. In addition, a number of parallels were formulated and discussed between the different areas of research. The establishment of a series of combined principles will not only contribute to the aims of the present project but also to further projects initiated by the Department of Econometrics at The University Sydney.

While emerging technologies such as interactive multimedia are increasingly being employed in computerised music instruction, understanding of participant music listening behaviours in interactive multimedia music instruction is currently very limited. With the aim of elucidating music listening behaviour, the central concern of this work is to identify and explain participant interactions with the audio components of interactive multimedia music instruction. The investigation employs a novel documentation procedure, which extends the application of digital audio recording technology, to provide a finely calibrated analysis of the audio activity of a sample of 20 undergraduate music education majors during individual sessions with two commercially-available interactive multimedia music instruction programs. Graphically-based Sound Activity Profiles, which the researcher developed specifically for the current investigation, characterise and summarise participant interactions with audio components, while an analysis of questionnaire responses and follow-up interview transcripts provides supplementary information that further explains participants' music listening behaviours. The results of the investigation show that music listening behaviours during the study sessions were highly variable. While extensive participant interaction with music examples occasionally reflected attentive music listening behaviours, many study sessions were characterised by brief, fragmentary music excerpts and lengthy periods of silence. Participants spent as little as five percent of their session time listening to music and as much as 88 percent of the session time in silence. A substantial number of the study cohort frequently interrupted the music examples they had activated. Participants' perceptions of the extent of their interaction with music examples were frequently inaccurate, as subjects often substantially overestimated the amount of session time they had spent listening to music. The study findings suggest that many interactive multimedia music instruction participants would benefit from interventions that elicit more extensive and prolonged interaction with music examples. Accordingly, recommendations include a call for research to develop and test software designs that incorporate automated monitoring of session audio activity so that dynamic on-screen information about music listening behaviour can be provided to interactive multimedia music instruction participants. Such information may encourage participants to modify inappropriate music listening behaviours.

Interactive video is a new method of instruction which has great potential. Already, the techniques developed are being used effectively by companies with training and information dissemination needs covering large and diverse organisations. This Field Study is an attempt to explore the possibilities interactive video has for education. Since the techniques are new and still developing quickly, it was necessary to spend a significant amount of time learning about the possibilities for the medium and developing new techniques for the particular application described in this Report. There are a number of facets to the development of a learning package which uses new technology and new techniques. All these facets must be explored to make sure the techniques incorporated in the package being developed fit together properly, to make the learner's experience an effective one. Video production, computer programming, computer assisted instruction and subject matter expertise are the major facets of interactive video, and all have had to be explored to some degree in this Study. For the writer, a media producer with mainly film and video production experience, video production on its own was not a great problem, but computer programming and computer assisted instruction techniques, and the integration of all the various elements of the package, was new ground. Subject matter expertise beyond the writer's skills was available from other sources. This Report covers the development of the Study from the investigation of interactive video as a new technology, through an exploration of the techniques required to produce materials for it, finally to the development of an experimental package designed to give the writer some practical skills in the use of interactive video, and insight into its usefulness as a medium of instruction in a practical setting.

The Internet has become one of the most widely used forms of communication available. Many applications used on the Internet require the user to interact constantly with the network. For example web browsing where the user will expect the browser to respond quickly, to finish loading pages quickly and to do all of this at an equal level for all users. The network's performance is dependant on the protocols it uses and how the resources of the network are distributed. This is why TCP (Transmission Control Protocol) is one of the most important protocols, because it controls the amount of data entering the network and provides reliability to most interactive applications. The thesis starts by introducing a basic TCP model which is later extended to model the effects of burstiness produced by TCP. Burstiness can cause a routers buffer to unnecessarily overflow. These overflows cause TCP connections to under-utilise link bandwidth because of unnecessary packet retransmissions. A model to define a quantitative measure of both burstiness and throughput of a system of TCP connections is introduced. The model gives insight into how the TCP protocol causes burstiness and can be used to find scenarios where burstiness is decreased. This helps to improve the utilization of links by reducing the burstiness of protocols. An important performance metric for interactive traffic is user perceived delay, the delay that an end user would encounter when using an application. An example of user perceived delay is the time a user waits before a HTML web page starts loading. The retransmission delays are the most important type of delay for interactive traffic because they are usually very large. A dynamic priority RED Queue (DPRQ) is introduced which changes the priority of the queues based on the goodput (throughput of succesfully transmitted packets) threshold of the interactive traffic. Using dynamic priority allows packet loss to be reduced by up to eight times for interactive traffic, which intern reduces retransmission delay. Fairness measures how equally network resources are allocated amongst different connections. When a link with TCP connections is overloaded each connection on the link will reduce its throughput to allow all the connections to have approximately equal load. This does not take into account that other links may be under utilized. The fairness issue is addressed by introducing Multipath TCP (MATCP) which allows path selection to occur at the TCP layer. This allows each unique flow to take a different path, instead of all the flows of one source using the same path. Using MATCP, a finer grain of load-balancing can be achieved and the complexity and state required in the network is greatly reduced. Two analytic models are provided in chapters three and four, which investigate slow start and TCP burstiness. In chapter five the DPRQ queue is introduced to reduce user perceived delay. An analytic model of the DPRQ is provided and verified through experimental simulation. In chapter six an analytic model of Multipath TCP is provided, which is also verified by simulation.

The work in progress, Pick Up Styx, investigates re-sensing and extra-sensing of the world. It is an exploration of communications with reference to quantum theory which challenges current sense perceptions, while engaging and exploring the notion of communications as signals. The methodology is a winding, coiling motion between research and creative practice based on the way my grandmother used to wind wool from a skein into a ball. The project investigates the game as a tool to examine the ciphers of perfumes that have been designed for love and happiness since 2001. The project aims to develop aesthetic pleasure in game play beyond the industry focus on games technology. Picking up the sticks and experiencing the perfumes in them is procedural to encountering the War on Terror, and the perfumes that have accompanied its progression over the last 8 years. In a materialist culture where technologies are enabling psycho kinesis, via the transmission of information signals, and where thought can influence matter in a variety of ways, we are training ourselves out of separatist thinking and fixation on the Western scientific paradigm. This project has grown from my curiosity regarding anomalous forms of cognition and paranormal perception, motivated by the need to address current issues of human relationship and environmental concerns.

<p>E-utbildning är en relativt ny form av distansutbildning och har utvecklats markant under de senaste åren. Dessvärre har den pedagogiska biten av lärandet i många fall försummats till fördel för de tekniska aspekterna. Eftersom interaktiva självstudier kan erbjuda ett mer riktat informationsflöde bör man ta vara på detta och erbjuda användaren olika möjligheter att ta till sig och bearbeta informationen. Alla människor har olika inlärningsstilar, det vill säga man lär sig via olika faktorer. Vissa personer tycker om att lyssna på informationen medan andra gärna vill ha det förklarat i bilder och med figurer, samtidigt som somliga gärna vill prova teorin i praktiken.</p><p>För att skapa en bra designad e-utbildning är det viktigt att först lära känna målgruppen. Genom att ta reda på vilken inlärningsstil och datorvana de har ökar man möjligheten att utforma en e-utbildning som tilltalar målgruppen. Svårigheten ligger i att presentera all information på ett begripligt och lättillgängligt sätt för användaren.</p><p>Syftet med den här rapporten är att ta reda på hur informationen till Volvo Construction Equipments (i fortsättningen kallat Volvo CE) interaktiva utbildningar ska presenteras på bästa sätt. Fokus ligger på pedagogik och användarvänlighet. Genom att ta reda på användarnas inlärningsstil och datorvana kan Volvo CE erbjuda användarna ett mer riktat informationsflöde. Den befintliga e-utbildningen utvärderades av användarna och ändringar som ansågs nödvändiga utfördes. För att vara säker på att ändringarna var korrekta fick användarna åter utvärdera utbildningen och säga sin mening. Resultatet visade på en ökad användbarhet och mer interaktivitet som gynnade såväl inlärningseffekten som motivationen.</p>

Streaming media and interactive television viewing experiences are becoming more commonplace with the introduction of services such as Netflix Streaming, the Apple TV, and Google TV aided by the increase adoption of broadband internet. As these services make their way into the living room, and developers struggle to accommodate more complex interaction requirements, new input methods and interfaces need to be developed. Current interfaces for controlling interactive TV and media management have typically been designed for the desktop and laptop experience, using conventional input devices like a trackpad, mouse and keyboard. These techniques are difficult to reconcile with the typical TV viewing experience. We designed an experiment to test a representative interactive TV interface with a number of emerging input technologies like the Nintendo Wiimote, Microsoft Kinect and tablet applications. We measured user performance with these devices while encumbered by a beverage and plate of food in order to simulate a living room experience. We found that while most of these technologies are suitable for navigating an Interactive TV experience, their use challenges us to rethink the user experience, and places limitations on things like button size and placement, as well as the types of UI widgets we can use. We hope these guidelines and heuristics will help in the design of future interactive TV experiences, as well as the development of novel interaction techniques for the TV viewing experience. / Graduation date: 2012 / Access restricted to the OSU Community at author's request from June 19, 2012 - June 19, 2013

This paper builds on a technical report written by Carl Hewitt and Henry Baker called "Actors and Continuous Functionals". What is called a "goal-oriented activity" in that paper will be referred to in this paper as a "transaction". The word "transaction" brings to mind an object closer in function to what we wish to present than does the word "activity". This memo, therefore, presents the definitions of a reply and a transaction as given in Hewitt and Baker's paper and points out some discrepancies in their definitions. That is, that the properties of transactions and replies as they were defined did not correspond with our intuitions, and thus the definitions should be changed. The issues of what should constitute a transaction are discussed, and a new definition is presented which eliminates the discrepancies caused by the original definitions. Some properties of the newly defined transactions are discussed, and it is shown that the results of Hewitt and Baker's paper still hold given the new definitions.

M.S. / Computer Science & Engineering / The tasks associated with designing and. implementing parallel programs involve effectively partitioning the problem, defining an efficient. control strategy and mapping the design to a particular system. The task then becomes one of analyzing the program for correctness and stepwise refinement of its performance. New tools are needed to assist the programmer with these last two stages. Metrics and methods of instrumentation are needed to help with behavior analysis (debugging) and performance analysis. First, current tools and analysis methods are reviewed, and then a set of models is proposed for analyzing parallel programs. The design of IPPM, based on these models, is then presented. IPPM is an interactive, parallel program monitor for the Intel iPSC. It gives a post-mortem view of an iPSC program based on a script of events collected during execution. A user can observe changes in program state and synchronization, select statistics, interactively filter events and time critical sequences.

E-utbildning är en relativt ny form av distansutbildning och har utvecklats markant under de senaste åren. Dessvärre har den pedagogiska biten av lärandet i många fall försummats till fördel för de tekniska aspekterna. Eftersom interaktiva självstudier kan erbjuda ett mer riktat informationsflöde bör man ta vara på detta och erbjuda användaren olika möjligheter att ta till sig och bearbeta informationen. Alla människor har olika inlärningsstilar, det vill säga man lär sig via olika faktorer. Vissa personer tycker om att lyssna på informationen medan andra gärna vill ha det förklarat i bilder och med figurer, samtidigt som somliga gärna vill prova teorin i praktiken. För att skapa en bra designad e-utbildning är det viktigt att först lära känna målgruppen. Genom att ta reda på vilken inlärningsstil och datorvana de har ökar man möjligheten att utforma en e-utbildning som tilltalar målgruppen. Svårigheten ligger i att presentera all information på ett begripligt och lättillgängligt sätt för användaren. Syftet med den här rapporten är att ta reda på hur informationen till Volvo Construction Equipments (i fortsättningen kallat Volvo CE) interaktiva utbildningar ska presenteras på bästa sätt. Fokus ligger på pedagogik och användarvänlighet. Genom att ta reda på användarnas inlärningsstil och datorvana kan Volvo CE erbjuda användarna ett mer riktat informationsflöde. Den befintliga e-utbildningen utvärderades av användarna och ändringar som ansågs nödvändiga utfördes. För att vara säker på att ändringarna var korrekta fick användarna åter utvärdera utbildningen och säga sin mening. Resultatet visade på en ökad användbarhet och mer interaktivitet som gynnade såväl inlärningseffekten som motivationen.