The advent of technology has put a number of institutions in a state of reform (Wolcott, 1997). In fact, it was predicted that technology would completely transform higher education by the end of the twentieth century (Sculley, 1989). Aside from the demographic make-up of the majority of current students (Howe & Strauss, 2000), moving away from the traditional lecture-format to one with the integration of instructional technology can enhance the teaching/learning environment (Bolger & Sprow, 2002). However, instructional technology has still not been completely integrated into the higher education curriculum and students reported that only about 20 % of instructors were found to use technology effectively ("How Students Rate Instructors' Use of Information Technology in Courses", 2011). Educators continue to face a number of barriers to adoption and many institutions are still investigating ways to provide a more effective learning and teaching environment using efficient use of instructional technology. This research used the College of Engineering at Virginia Tech as a test bed and conducted a set of three studies following a mixed methodology. The first study elicited both quantitative and qualitative data from faculty members who used instructional technology in the classroom. Structural equation modeling was used to examine the relationships between organizational culture, usability, and instructional technology acceptance and found a significant, positive relationship between usability and instructional technology acceptance, and a positive relationship between organizational culture and instructional technology acceptance. The second study gained more insight into the relationship by collecting qualitative data in the form of focus group interviews. Results of Study 2 indicated that collaborative and innovative organizational cultures, coupled with instructional technologies that have low learnability, high efficiency, high effectiveness, and high satisfaction can facilitate instructional technology acceptance. Based on the results, a set of recommendations to facilitate instructional technology acceptance were developed. The third and final study consisted of a summative evaluation of the recommendations by a panel of experts using the Delphi technique. The overall outcome of this research effort was the development of recommendations and guidelines to facilitate instructional technology acceptance and the description of a comprehensive framework for effective instructional technology use. / Ph. D.

Organizations have recognized usability engineering as a needed step in the development process to ensure the success of any product. As is the case in all competitive settings areas for improvement are scouted and always welcomed. In the case of usability engineering a lot of time, money, equipment, and other resources are spent to gather usability data to identify and resolve usability problems in order to improve their product. The usability data gained from the expenditure of resources is often only applied to the development effort at hand and not reused across projects and across different development groups within the organization. More over, the usability data are often used at a level that forces the organization to only apply the data to that specific development effort. However, if usability data can be abstracted from the specific development effort and analyzed in relation to the process that created and identified the data; the data can then be used and applied over multiple development efforts. The User Action Framework (UAF) is a hierarchical framework of usability concepts that ensures consistency through completeness and precision. The UAF by its nature classifies usability problems at a high level. This high level classification affords usability engineers to not only apply the knowledge gained to the current development effort but to apply the knowledge across multiple development efforts. This author presents a mechanism and a process to allow usability engineers to find insights in their usability data to identify both strengths and weaknesses in their process. In return usability practitioners and companies can increase their return on investment by extending the usefulness of usability data over multiple development efforts. / Master of Science

In our knowledge based economy, demand for better and effective learning has led to innovative instructional technologies. However, the one-size-fit-all approach taken by many e-Learning systems is not adequate to the different requirements of people who have different goals, preferences, and previous knowledge about a subject. Many e-Learning systems have approached this problem with personalized and customized content. However, many of these systems are closely tied to one particular subject that they are trying to teach; authoring of courses on different subjects using the same framework is a difficult process. Adaptive Hypermedia is an approach in which content presentation and navigation assistance is personalized depending on the requirements of the user. The user requirements are represented using a user model, while the content is represented using a content model. By using a set of algorithms, an Adaptive Hypermedia based system is able to select the most appropriate content to be presented, as the user interacts with the system. The objective of AlcoZone is to educate all of the 5,000 freshman students of Virginia Tech about alcohol education using Adaptive Hypermedia technology, as part of the mandatory university requirement. The course presents different content to different students based on their drinking pattern. AlcoZone integrates Curriculum Sequencing, Multimedia and Interactivity, Alternate Content Explanation, and Navigational Assistance to make the course interesting for students. This research investigates the design & implementation of AlcoZone and its Adaptive Hypermedia based reusable framework for course creation and delivery. / Master of Science

Through innovations in sensors and storage, event-based data collection has increased significantly in recent years. Personal security cameras allow users to collect event data in their homes, Google Maps allows users to view places they have been throughout the day, and web browsers collect a history of the sites users visit. Despite the innovations in event-based data collection, the Graphical User Interfaces (GUIs) designed for these systems have not changed for years. Many applications stick to a linear timeline to display the events, leading to large downtime gaps when sparse events occur throughout the day. However, linear timelines create a natural sense of temporal perception since users can easily tell what time of day certain events occur. Our project seeks to find a balance between the natural temporal perception that linear timelines offer and improving the usability of visualizing event-based data using timelines. Through our design, users will be able to leverage the simple temporal perception that a linear timeline provides and avoid unnecessary searching to locate specific events. By seamlessly integrating a linear timeline with density visualizations and a timeline of events, we aim to allow users to search and view events easily. To evaluate our interface, we conducted two usability studies, first with specialists who view security camera information often and then with all individuals. Our findings inform the design of future event-based timeline visualizations. / Master of Science / Through innovations in sensors and storage, event-based data collection has increased significantly in recent years. Personal security cameras allow users to collect event data in their homes, Google Maps allows users to view places they have been throughout the day, and web browsers collect a history of the sites users visit. Despite the innovations in event-based data collection, the Graphical User Interfaces (GUIs) designed for these systems have not changed for years. Many applications stick to a linear timeline to display the events, leading to large downtime gaps when sparse events occur throughout the day. However, linear timelines create a natural sense of temporal perception since users can easily tell what time of day certain events occur. Our project seeks to find a balance between the natural temporal perception that linear timelines offer and improving the usability of visualizing event-based data using timelines. Through our design, users will be able to leverage the simple temporal perception that a linear timeline provides and avoid unnecessary searching to locate specific events. By seamlessly integrating a linear timeline with density visualizations and a timeline of events, we aim to allow users to search and view events easily. To evaluate our interface, we conducted two usability studies, first with specialists who view security camera information often and then with all individuals. Our findings inform the design of future event-based timeline visualizations.

Yes / Since the UK’s 2001 Special Educational Needs and Disability Act (SENDA, 2001), academic libraries have had a legal duty to provide all students with information in a form accessible to them, an obligation strengthened by the 2010 Equality Act (c15). Crucially, the latter duty covered readers with all kinds of impairments, not just visual impairment, and thus covers a huge range of needs for an enormous number of individuals. Libraries have put a huge amount of time and effort into providing documents in accessible format (alt-format) but obviously it is preferable for both libraries and readers if the documents are accessible as supplied from the publisher. Electronic resources have the potential to address many of the accessibility needs of our readers, but concerns have been growing in the HE sector (see, for instance, JISCTechdis, 2013) that the way in which e-resources are delivered actually renders them, in some cases, less accessible. This paper describes a project undertaken by the University of Bradford library to systematically assess the accessibility of our electronic resources, and gives recommendations for others wishing to do the same.

Yes / Government legislation and calls for greater levels of oversight and transparency are leading public bodies to publish their raw datasets online. Policy makers and elected officials anticipate that the accessibility of open data through online Government portals for citizens will enable public engagement in policy making through increased levels of fact based content elicited from open data. The usability and benefits of such open data are being argued as contributing positively towards public sector reforms, which are under extreme pressures driven by extended periods of austerity. However, there is very limited scholarly studies that have attempted to empirically evaluate the performance of government open data websites and the acceptance and use of these data from a citizen perspective. Given this research void, an adjusted diffusion of innovation model based on Rogers’ diffusion of innovations theory (DOI) is proposed and used in this paper to empirically determine the predictors influencing the use of public sector open data. A good understanding of these predictors affecting the acceptance and use of open data will likely assist policy makers and public administrations in determining the policy instruments that can increase the acceptance and use of open data through an active promotion campaign to engage-contribute-use.

There are very few software packages for model-building and visualization in electromagnetic geophysics, particularly when compared to other geophysical disciplines, such as seismology. The purpose of this thesis is to design, develop, and test a geophysical model-building interface that allows users to parameterize the 2D magnetotellurics problem. Through the evaluation of this interface, feedback was collected from a usability specialist and a group of geophysics graduate students to study the steps users take to work through the 2D forward-modeling problem, and to analyze usability errors encountered while working with the interface to gain a better understanding of how to build a more effective interface. Similar work has been conducted on interface design in other fields, such as medicine and consumer websites. Usability Engineering is the application of a systematic set of methods to the design and development of software with the goal of making the software more learnable, easy to use, and accessible. Two different Usability Engineering techniques — Heuristic Evaluation and Thinking Aloud Protocol — were involved in the evaluation of the interface designed in this study (FEM2DGUI). Heuristic Evaluation is a usability inspection method that employs a usability specialist to detect errors based on a known set of guidelines and personal experience. Thinking Aloud Protocol is a usability evaluation method where potential end-users are observed as they verbalize their every step as they work through specific scenarios with an interface. These Usability Engineering methods were combined in a effort to understand how the first prototype of FEM2DGUI could be refined to make it more usable and to understand how end-users work through the forward-modeling problem. The Usability Engineering methods employed in this project uncovered multiple usability errors that were corrected through a refinement of the interface. Discovery of these errors helped with refining the system to become more robust and usable, which is believed to aid users in more efficient model-building. Because geophysical model-building is inherently a difficult task, it is possible that other model-building graphical user interfaces could benefit from the application of Usability Engineering methods, such as those presented in this research.â / Master of Science

Medical device usability directly impacts the practitioner's ability to perform their diagnostic task in an effective, efficient, and safe manner. A device with poor usability may frustrate the practitioner, increasing the worker's stress level in a high-stress work environment. In addition, a device with poor usability may facilitate operator error, increasing the patient's risk of injury. Designers of healthcare systems and devices face a unique conundrum that has been documented in the literature (Martin, Murphy, Crowe, & Norris, 2006; Martin, Norris, Murphy, & Crowe, 2007; Ward & Clarkson, 2007). Standards require the use of user research techniques, yet patient privacy standards prevent designers from observing users in context. The inability to observe users in their work environment impedes understanding the context-of-use. Since understanding context-of-use is required to ensure usability, further exploration into alternative methods for requirements gathering is needed. This study explored the storytelling as an elicitation method for medical device requirements by comparing the information elicited from nurses during requirements gathering for an infusion pump by two methods: focus groups followed by interviews (Group #1) and focus groups followed by storytelling sessions (Group #2). Results suggest further exploration of storytelling is warranted as Group #2 contributed similar quantity and breadth of information in significantly less time. Results also indicate potential support for the efficacy of storytelling within the healthcare domain as Group #2 participants contributed more distinct context-of-use information with an emphasis on the social context. Contributions of this study include a plan for mixed-method data analysis, a protocol for conducting a storytelling session, and a framework for defining requirements within the healthcare domain. / Master of Science

Linguistic annotation is an important means of adding information to corpora of spoken or written language. While some less complex annota- tion tasks can be performed automatically, a great number of annotation tasks require manual annotation, which is typically very time-consuming and tedious. As a consequence, tools for manual annotation tasks should provide a user-friendly interface that makes the annotation process as convenient and efficient as possible; in other words, usability should play an important role in the design of such tools. This article contributes to the field of “visual linguis- tics” by investigating the role of visualization in linguistic annotation tools with regard to good and bad usability practices. While there are several studies that are dedicated to visualizing linguistic results, visualization in the context of linguistic annotation has so far been largely neglected. Accordingly, a heuristic walkthrough evaluation study with 11 annotation tools was conducted to find out about typical usability problems. It showed that many of the usability issues identified during the evaluation are related to aspects of interaction design. However, there are also a large number of usability issues that are directly con- nected to aspects of visualization and visual design. These aspects of good and bad visualization are discussed by means of existing usability heuristics, which can be used to illustrate and explain how and why visualization influences the usability of linguistic annotation tools.

The unprecedented rise of IoT has revolutionized every business vertical enthralling people to embrace IoT applications in their day-to-day lives to accrue multifaceted benefits. It is absolutely fair to say that a day without connected IoT systems, such as smart devices, smart enterprises, smart homes or offices, etc., would hamper our conveniences, drastically. Many IoT applications for these connected systems are safety-critical, and any unauthorized access could have severe consequences to their consumers and society. In the overall IoT security spectrum, human-to-machine authentication for IoT applications is a critical and foremost challenge owing to highly prescriptive characteristics of conventional user authentication schemes, i.e., knowledge-based or token-based authentication schemes, currently used in them. Furthermore, studies have reported numerous users’ concerns, from both the security and usability perspectives, that users are facing in using available authentication schemes for IoT applications. Therefore, an impetus is required to upgrade user authentication schemes for new IoT age applications to address any unforeseen incidents or unintended consequences. This dissertation aims at designing next-generation user authentication schemes for IoT applications to secure connected systems, namely, smart devices, smart enterprises, smart homes, or offices. To accomplish my research objectives, I perform a thorough study of ways and types of user authentication mechanisms emphasizing their security and usability ramifications. Subsequently, based on the substantive findings of my studies, I design, prototype, and validate our proposed user authentication schemes. I exploit both physiological and behavioral biometrics to design novel schemes that provide implicit (frictionless), continuous (active) or risk-based (non-static) authentication for multi-user scenarios. Afterward, I present a comparative analysis of the proposed schemes in terms of accuracy against the available state-of-the-art user authentication solutions. Also, I conduct SUS surveys to evaluate the usability of user authentication schemes.