Towards a debugging tutor for object-oriented environments

Programming has provided a rich domain for Artificial Intelligence in Education and many systems have been developed to advise students about the bugs in their programs, either during program development or post-hoc. Surprisingly few systems have been developed specifically to teach debugging. Learning environment builders have assumed that either the student will be taught these elsewhere or thatthey will be learnt piecemeal without explicit advice.This paper reports on two experiments on Java debugging strategy by novice programmers and discusses their implications for the design of a debugging tutor for Java that pays particular attention to how students use the variety of program representations available. The experimental results are in agreement with research in the area that suggests that good debugging performance is associated with a balanced use ofthe available representations and a sophisticated use of the debugging step facility which enables programmers to detect and obtain information from critical momentsin the execution of the program. A balanced use of the available representations seemsto be fostered by providing representations with a higher degree of dynamic linkingas well as by explicit instruction about the representation formalism employed in the program visualisations

A methodology for the capture and analysis of hybrid data: a case study of program debugging

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Considering the Importance of User Profiles in Interface Design

User profile is a popular term widely employed during product design processes by industrial companies. Such a profile is normally intended to represent real users of a product. The ultimate purpose of a user profile is actually to help designers to recognize or learn about the real user by presenting them with a description of a real user’s attributes, for instance; the user’s gender, age, educational level, attitude, technical needs and skill level. The aim of this chapter is to provide information on the current knowledge and research about user profile issues, as well as to emphasize the importance of considering these issues in interface design. In this chapter, we mainly focus on how users’ difference in expertise affects their performance or activity in various interaction contexts. Considering the complex interaction situations in practice, novice and expert users’ interactions with medical user interfaces of different technical complexity will be analyzed as examples: one focuses on novice and expert users’ difference when interacting with simple medical interfaces, and the other focuses on differences when interacting with complex medical interfaces. Four issues will be analyzed and discussed: (1) how novice and expert users differ in terms of performance during the interaction; (2) how novice and expert users differ in the perspective of cognitive mental models during the interaction; (3) how novice and expert users should be defined in practice; and (4) what are the main differences between novice and expert users’ implications for interface design. Besides describing the effect of users’ expertise difference during the interface design process, we will also pinpoint some potential problems for the research on interface design, as well as some future challenges that academic researchers and industrial engineers should face in practice

Influence factors for local comprehensibility of process models

The main aim of this study is to investigate human understanding of process models and to develop an improved understanding of its relevant influence factors. Aided by assumptions from cognitive psychology, this article attempts to address specific deductive reasoning difficulties based on process models. The authors developed a research model to capture the influence of two effects on the cognitive difficulty of reasoning tasks: (i) the presence of different control-flow patterns (such as conditional or parallel execution) in a process model and (ii) the interactivity of model elements. Based on solutions to 61 different reasoning tasks by 155 modelers, the results from this study indicate that the presence of certain control-flow patterns influences the cognitive difficulty of reasoning tasks. In particular, sequence is relatively easy, while loops in a model proved difficult. Modelers with higher process modeling knowledge performed better and rated subjective difficulty of loops lower than modelers with lower process modeling knowledge. The findings additionally support the prediction that interactivity between model elements is positively related to the cognitive difficulty of reasoning. Our research contributes to both academic literature on the comprehension of process models and practitioner literature focusing on cognitive difficulties when using process models

Accounting Information Systems (AIS) in the hotel industry: A partial lease squares analysis

Accounting information guides the whole operation of an organisation by evaluating previous performance, controlling current operations and forecasting future operations and outcomes.The use of information technology (IT) improves the functions of recording, processing data, reporting and other aspects of accounting information through the accounting information systems (AIS). This research attempts to fill a knowledge gap by exploring the adoption of AIS and the factors that influence usage of and satisfaction with the AIS, as well as the relationship between satisfaction with the AIS and its organisational impact.The findings confirm the wide use of computerised accounting systems in three, four and five star rated hotels, although, the extent of the AIS use is relatively unsophisticated with the focus on basic accounting modules and fundamental accounting-based applications.This study uses an extension of the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) and adopts a triangulation approach combining both a survey and interviews.The data from the survey were collected through a postal questionnaire to senior accounting managers in three, four and five star rated hotels.The data were analysed using Partial Least Squares (PLS) which is the PLSGraph Beta Version 3.0. This study provides positive support for a relationship between satisfaction with the AIS and organisational impact

Bibliographie

Ahuja Jaspreet S. & Webster Jane, Perceived disorientation: an examination of a new measure to assess web design effectiveness, Interacting with Computers, 2001, vol. 14, n° 1, pp. 15-29. Akin Ömer & Lin Chengtah, Design protocol data and novel design decisions, Design Studies, 1995, vol. 16, pp. 211-236. Alexander Christopher, Notes on the ..

Boosting the preschooler memory for schema-inconsistent, gender-based information

For gender-related information, previous studies have shown that children of preschool age are more likely to remember schema-consistent information over schema-inconsistent information. In this study, an attempt was made to boost children's recognition for inconsistent information. In order to do this, children were presented with pictures of both gender-consistent and inconsistent content. Group one was presented with the pictures and an accompanying label. For group two, children were given a label and asked to describe only the pictures where an actor was performing counter-schematic behavior. The postulated mechanism responsible for the expected change in memory for group two involved an augmentation of the schematic structure. The children's description would encourage schematic growth, and the memory benefits that are derived from schematic organization would have been the result. Group three was added to test for the memory changes that may occur when describing consistent information as well. These children were asked to describe both consistent and inconsistent information. Overall results indicated that for children not describing the stimuli, previous research went unsupported and children did not have a better memory for either type of information. Children in group two also did not have a memory preference for either type of information. Children in the third group which described both inconsistent and consistent information, though, did have a memory preference for consistent information. The results are described in terms of social change and schematic complexity, and their effects on memory