Brent Auernheimer

Physiological data feedback for application in distance education

This paper describes initial experiments collecting physiological data from subjects performing computer tasks. A prototype realtime Emotion Mouse collected skin temperature, galvanic skin response (GSR), and heartbeat data. Possible applications to distance education, and a second-generation system are discussed.

Biometric Authentication for Web-Based Couse Examinations

The paper discusses design considerations and a prototype for a biometrics (fingerprint) based identification and authentication system to support web-based course examinations. The goal of the resulting system is to be acceptable to the university culture and minimally disruptive to university procedures and processes.

Visual Depiction of Decision Statements: What is Best forProgrammers and Non-Programmers?

This paper reports the results of two experiments investigating differences in comprehensibility of textual and graphical notations for representing decision statements. The first experiment was a replication of a prior experiment that found textual notations to be better than particular graphical notations. After replicating this study, two other hypotheses were investigated in a second experiment. Our first claim is that graphics may be better for technical, non-programmers than they are for programmers because of the great amount of experience that programmers have with textual notations in programming languages. The second is that modifications to graphical forms may improve their usefulness. The results support both of these hypotheses.

Guidelines for designing evaluations of Web-based instructional materials

This paper is are overview of central issues for effective evaluation of Web-based instructional materials. It describes relevant issues from the perspectives of practitioners in the fields of computer science, educational psychology, and teacher education. In addition, it describes educator concerns, reviews relevant aspects of HCI, usability, and educational research, and provides an overview of usability evaluation.

A TCP/IP network facsimile system built from publicly available software

A network desktop facsimile system was developed from inexpensive hardware and publicly available software. This system allows users on a TCP/IP network to develop documents and have them FAXed without printing out the document and using a manual FAX machine. The desktop facsimile system also receives FAXes. Schemes for electronic routing of incoming FAXes are outlined. The system is written in C and uses TCP/IP network protocols. Existing standards, system development and integration of publicly available software are discussed.

An environment for incremental development of distributed extensible asynchronous real-time systems

Incremental, parallel development of distributed real-time systems is difficult. Architectural techniques and software tools developed at the Jet Propulsion Laboratorys (JPLs) Flight System Testbed (FST) make feasible the integration of complex systems in various stages of development. In particular, two techniques are used: a strict layering architecture for organization of independent subsystems, and a distributed, low-overhead, asynchronous messaging system. These techniques were developed in a few user-months and have proven their usefulness in a spacecraft integration test and simulation environment.

Automated categorization of real-time newswire stories. Hooked on lexiconics: how I taught my Sun to read

Modern international trade activities rely heavily on thousands of daily information artifacts reporting the state of the worlds trading blocks. These information artifacts often require handling by human operators for indexing, sorting, and categorization. Intervention by human operators costs precious hours in the dissemination of these artifacts to end users. The paper describes the information recognition capability that the California Agricultural Technology Institute (CATI) developed as part of its Advanced Technologies Information Network (ATI-Net). The capability includes software using statistical analysis of previously human-recognized documents in order to seed information recognition databases. The recognition databases are used by automated recognition software to classify and store information artifacts without human intervention. This software is discussed with reference to two ATI-Net projects: automatic storage of newspaper articles into categories of interest to the public, and the assignment of Department of Commerce industry codes to international trade lead reports. Each of these projects takes advantage of several years of previously human-recognized information artifacts in order to automate the recognition process.

Themes and tapestries: a diversity of approaches to computer science for liberal arts students

In May 1993, 80 CS faculty horn around the country participated in an NSF-funded workshop at Brooklyn College to consider a particular theme-based approach in a non-traditional computer literacy course. The goal of the workshop was, first, to explain the approach to the participants and, second, to ask the participants for their reactions to and suggestions about our course. We also hoped to hear about other approaches to teaching such a course.

Validating video analytics in mission critical applications

Video Analytics (VA) automates and aids intelligent decision making in video surveillance applications. A video security system combines sophisticated video analytics with the oversight and judgment of human operators to save lives and critical resources. The complexity of the user experience and the range of deployments of VA make testing particularly challenging. Trade-offs between functional tests and focused usability tests are used to build a case for trustworthiness. This paper describes a method for validating video analytics for use in mission critical applications.

Bravo/TeleTrend: user interface and time estimate study

A new system Bravo/TeleTrend, was developed to allow critical care personnel easy access to patient information over the Internet. Data that would normally be restricted to the hospital could be accessed through a Web browser. A pilot usability study was conducted to investigate the use of secondary tasks to hide long loading times. Since large amounts of data take a long time to load over the Internet, this shortcoming can be disguised. This gives users the impression that the system is responding faster than in actuality.