Toyohiko Hirota

A web-based classroom environment for enhanced residential college education

In this paper, we describe a web based virtual classroom environment, called WTS (Web-based Teaching Support), to enhance classroom based residential teaching and learning. WTS implements an online view of physical classrooms with the “desks” and “seats”. Teaching information associated with “classrooms” is managed by a database system. WTS also includes such capabilities as online attendance check, personalized notification for course participants, as well as a variety of tools to facilitate lecture preparation and post-lecture processing for teachers. We discuss the main design issues and the implementation details. We also evaluate its usefulness by analysis of real-world teaching data.

Special Section on Knowledge-Based Software Engineering

A novel synthetic yarn is disclosed which comprises fibers of different lengths (as specified). At least three groups of synthetic fibers are present in the yarn, with the synthetic fibers within each group being substantially uniform in length. The substantially uniform length of each group of synthetic fibers present in the yarn differs from the substantially uniform length of the synthetic fibers in the other groups. The use of such mixtures of fiber lengths in a synthetic yarn enables the yarn to exhibit physical characteristics such as high bulk which more closely resemble the characteristics of natural fiber-containing yarns. Fabrics having improved physical characteristics may also be produced from the novel synthetic yarns disclosed.