Stefano Ruggieri

The Effect of Prosocial Priming in the Presence of Bystanders

ABSTRACT This study investigated the influence of priming and bystander apathy on helping behavior. After priming prosociality through a scrambled sentences test, participants encountered a woman who dropped the books she was carrying. Helping behavior in bystander and no-bystander conditions was tested. The results showed that people in a prosocial-prime condition were more likely to help than people in a neutral-prime condition, and that the effect of priming persists even in the presence of bystanders.

Human-to-Human Interaction: the Killer Application of Ubiquitous Computing

Twenty-five years past the Weiser’s vision of Ubiquitous Computing, and there is not a clear understanding of what is or is not a pervasive system. Due to the loose boundaries of such paradigm, almost any kind of remotely accessible networked system is classified as a pervasive system. We think that is mainly due to the lack of killer applications that could make this vision clearer. Actually, we think that the most promising killer application is already here, but we are so used to it that we do not see it, as a perfect fitting of the Weiser’s vision: the Human-to-Human Interaction mediated by computers.

The assessment in distance education: a glimmer on the horizon

An analysis of the problem of evaluation of distance learning in three parts: the first purely theoretical, the second drawing on the theoretical model for the construction of an empirical assessment tool, and a third on the application thereof to a training project Distance.