Using Speech Recognition Software to Increase Writing Fluency for Individuals with Physical Disabilities

Writing is an important skill that is necessary throughout school and life. Many students with physical disabilities, however, have difficulty with writing skills due to disability-specific factors, such as motor coordination problems. Due to the difficulties these individuals have with writing, assistive technology is often utilized. One piece of assistive technology, speech recognition software, may help remove the motor demand of writing and help students become more fluent writers. Past research on the use of speech recognition software, however, reveals little information regarding its impact on individuals with physical disabilities. Therefore, this study involved students of high school age with physical disabilities that affected hand use. Using an alternating treatments design to compare the use of word processing with the use of speech recognition software, this study analyzed first-draft writing samples in the areas of fluency, accuracy, type of word errors, recall of intended meaning, and length. Data on fluency, calculated in words correct per minute (wcpm) indicated that all participants wrote much faster with speech recognition compared to word processing. However, accuracy, calculated as percent correct, was much lower when participants used speech recognition compared to word processing. Word errors and recall of intended meaning were coded based on type and varied across participants. In terms of length, all participants wrote longer drafts when using speech recognition software, primarily because their fluency was higher, and they were able, therefore, to write more words. Although the results of this study indicated that participants wrote more fluently with speech recognition, because their accuracy was low, it is difficult to determine whether or not speech recognition is a viable solution for all individuals with physical disabilities. Therefore, additional research is needed that takes into consideration the editing and error correction time when using speech recognition software

The Sabah Oral Literature Project

George N. Appell, M.B.A., A.M. (Harvard), Ph.D. (Australian National University) is a social anthropologist. He has done fieldwork, assisted by his wife Laura W.R. Appell, among the Dogrib Indians of the Northwest Territories of Canada, the Rungus of Sabah, Malaysia, and the Bulusu’ of Indonesian Borneo. They began working with the Rungus in 1959 to record their social organization, language, religion and cultural ecology. They continue to work with the Rungus and are compiling ‘The Rungus Cultural Dictionary’ as well as managing the Sabah Oral Literature Project. This project continues to collect the oral literature of the Rungus and other peoples of the Kudat Peninsula. Dr Appell is cofounder and president of the Borneo Research Council, founder and president of the Firebird Foundation for Anthropological Research, founder of the Anthropologists’ Fund for Urgent Anthropological Research, and is Senior Visiting Scholar in the Department of Anthropology, Brandeis University. He is currently finishing a monograph on culture-free methods to determine rights over resource tenure and other property interests that are faithful to the local distinctions. Other information on the publications of the Appells can be found at: www.gnappell.orgGeorge and Laura Appell were prevented by the Sabah government from continuing their research among the Rungus, which had begun in 1959-1963. But in 1986 they were permitted to return to the Rungus and visit their friends. By then little of the traditional Rungus social organization and culture remained unchanged, except for their oral literature. Consequently, George and Laura Appell formed the Sabah Oral Literature Project to collect the various genre from the Rungus and related ethnic groups. The project was so constructed as to be run by the Rungus for the Rungus, with the Appells providing equipment, direction and training. It was hoped that this project would form a model for ethnic groups in other areas of Sabah and in other regions of the world to begin collecting their own oral literature. This article covers the various genre of Rungus oral literature from the extensive religious poems performed by priestesses to cure illness and promote fertility, to the prayers for the rice spirits, to historical narratives, songs, and word play. It discusses the selection of personnel to collect texts, their training, the equipment used, the payment of performers, the transcription of texts, the archiving of the recordings and problems in translating the texts. Translation and exegesis requires a detailed knowledge of the culture, which may necessitate study and analysis by scholars outside the society.World Oral Literature Project and the Firebird Foundation for Anthropological Research

Physician Practice Variation in Electronic Health Record Documentation.

Adoption of electronic health records (EHRs) was motivated by the expectation that they would improve quality and decrease costs of care. EHRs’ value, however, depends on how they are used, which likely explains the heterogeneous benefits observed in the literature. This dissertation uses mixed methods to explore a critical component of EHR use in primary care: variation in EHR documentation, defined as differences in how users record or remove information. The first chapter delineates a conceptual framework of variation in EHR documentation that includes five different forms of variation and five levels where the forms may materialize. This chapter focuses on potentially harmful variation by detailing how non-patient factors foster variation that interferes with clinical decision support, care coordination, and population health management, jeopardizing the efficient delivery of high-quality healthcare. The second chapter measures variation in one form of variation, completion of documentation, in a national sample of primary care practices. Using data from a major EHR vendor, this chapter finds differences in how variably providers complete fifteen different clinical documentation categories and identifies patient’s problems, the provider’s assessment and diagnosis, the social history, the review of systems, and communication about lab and test results as the most varied. The majority of variation exists across providers in the same practice, suggesting providers are making different decisions about documentation for comparable patients. The final chapter explores the context of this variation with semi-structured interviews, finding that variation in EHR documentation is perceived as a commonplace phenomenon resulting from a flexible EHR design that allows users to develop different documentation styles. Variation reportedly introduced inefficiencies into care delivery and created patient safety and care quality risks from missed or misinterpreted information. Respondents identified additional training, ongoing meetings, and improvements in EHR design as effective strategies to prevent harm. Widespread variation in EHR documentation can interfere with care delivery by obscuring the location and meaning of patient information. In order to realize gains from adopting EHRs, practices, vendors, and policymakers must collaboratively develop better interfaces and clearer guidelines to support their effective use.PHDHealth Services Organization & PolicyUniversity of Michigan, Horace H. Rackham School of Graduate Studieshttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/135900/1/grcohen_1.pd

Natural Language Processing and Computer Use in Social Work

Can computers do social work? Can social workers do computers? This article seeks to outline a text-oriented approach to answering these questions through an approach labeled Natural Language Processing

Methods to Facilitate the Capture, Use, and Reuse of Structured and Unstructured Clinical Data.

Electronic health records (EHRs) have great potential to improve quality of care and to support clinical and translational research. While EHRs are being increasingly implemented in U.S. hospitals and clinics, their anticipated benefits have been largely unachieved or underachieved. Among many factors, tedious documentation requirements and the lack of effective information retrieval tools to access and reuse data are two key reasons accounting for this deficiency. In this dissertation, I describe my research on developing novel methods to facilitate the capture, use, and reuse of both structured and unstructured clinical data. Specifically, I develop a framework to investigate potential issues in this research topic, with a focus on three significant challenges. The first challenge is structured data entry (SDE), which can be facilitated by four effective strategies based on my systematic review. I further propose a multi-strategy model to guide the development of future SDE applications. In the follow-up study, I focus on workflow integration and evaluate the feasibility of using EHR audit trail logs for clinical workflow analysis. The second challenge is the use of clinical narratives, which can be supported by my innovative information retrieval (IR) technique called “semantically-based query recommendation (SBQR)”. My user experiment shows that SBQR can help improve the perceived performance of a medical IR system, and may work better on search tasks with average difficulty. The third challenge involves reusing EHR data as a reference standard to benchmark the quality of other health-related information. My study assesses the readability of trial descriptions on ClinicalTrials.gov and found that trial descriptions are very hard to read, even harder than clinical notes. My dissertation has several contributions. First, it conducts pioneer studies with innovative methods to improve the capture, use, and reuse of clinical data. Second, my dissertation provides successful examples for investigators who would like to conduct interdisciplinary research in the field of health informatics. Third, the framework of my research can be a great tool to generate future research agenda in clinical documentation and EHRs. I will continue exploring innovative and effective methods to maximize the value of EHRs.PHDInformationUniversity of Michigan, Horace H. Rackham School of Graduate Studieshttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/135845/1/tzuyu_1.pd

Collaborative Audio Transcription and Repair as a Method for Novice Pilots to Learn Approach Briefing Crew Resource Management (CRM) Skills

The growth of aviation in scope, scale, and complexity increases the demands for student learning, including crew resource management (CRM) skills. Instructor facilitated methods have proven effective for CRM skill learning. This study investigated a method of collaborative audio transcription and repair based learning (CTRBL) offering the potential for reduced demand upon instructor resources for CRM learning. The theorybased CTRBL method was used in this study as a way for novice pilots to learn the CRM skill of conducting a crew approach briefing with a focus on risk mitigation. Learning methods used to develop the CTRBL method were drawn from facilitated scenario-based training in aviation, instructional methods in language learning, and discourse analysis in aviation. The CTRBL method effectiveness was evaluated by a quasi-experimental method using 42 participants formed into 21 dyadic groups. The results suggest that CTRBL is a manageable, independent student activity that is perceived by learners to be nearly as enjoyable as comparable ground-based CRM learning methods. Participants self-rated their post-treatment crew briefings higher than their pre-treatment briefings, and subject matter experts rated post-treatment crew briefings higher than pre-treatment briefings, suggesting the CTRBL method resulted in learning. Recommendations are made for future applications and research of CTRBL

Identifying skills needed by office information systems graduates in the changing work environment: perceptions of administrative support occupations workers

This study sought to identify the skills that need to be taught in an associate degree program for office information systems. Specifically, the researcher sought to determine the importance of skills needed by office information systems/ administration graduates with implications for curricular revision. One hundred and fifty-seven members of the International Association of Administrative Professionals in the states of Louisiana, Mississippi, and East Texas including the Houston, Texas area participated in this study. Findings indicated that the participants perceived 109 (85%) of the job skill items to be important, very important, or extremely important in the performance of their jobs. Only 19 (15%) of the job skill items were perceived to be somewhat important in the performance of their jobs. Almost all of the participants were women and the average number of years in the administrative support occupation field was almost 22 years. Almost three-fourths of the participants had completed some type of post-secondary type of education. The participants reported 70 job titles with the most frequently reported job titles of administrative assistant or executive assistant. Over one-third of the participants were employed in the service industry and one-third reported the scope of the organization as international. Almost one-third of the participants reported the size of the office where they worked as large and over half reported the type of community as large. The participants reported using most frequently Microsoft Office software packages to perform their jobs. To perform their jobs, over half of the participants reported using: copier; calculator; fax machine; computer printer; multi-line telephone systems; personal computer; typewriter; local area network; scanner; and voice mail via telephone. Using the perceived importance of the nine job skill categories’ summated scores and selected personal and professional demographic characteristics, the researcher calculated stepwise multiple on nine separate regression equations. This procedure returned four statistically significant models. However, these models did not explain a large portion of the variance. Recommendations and implications were given for Office Information Systems curriculum associate degree programs. Also, recommendations and implications were provided for future research and studies