Human-machine communication for educational systems design

This book contains the papers presented at the NATO Advanced Study Institute (ASI) on the Basics of man-machine communication for the design of educational systems, held August 16-26, 1993, in Eindhoven, The Netherland

Exploring medical device design and use through layers of distributed cognition: How a glucometer is coupled with its context

cmtheme: cmoutput: journalcmtheme: cmoutput: journalThis work was supported by the UK Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council [EP/G059063/1]

Real-world categories don't allow uniform feature spaces - not just across categories but within categories also [Open peer commentary on Schyns, P.G., Goldstone, R.L., & Thibaut, J. The development of features in object concepts] [Letter]

The Schyns et al. target article demonstrates that different classifications entail different representations, implying “flexible space learning.” We argue that flexibility is required even at the within-category level

Practice, principles, and theory in the design of instructional text

This study is concerned with an analysis of the research arising from three quite different perspectives on instructional text - the `physical characteristics' research (legibility, layout, and readability), the `improvement of text' research (visual illustrations, adjunct aids, and typographical cueing), and the `learning theories' research (representation of knowledge, human memory, and quality of learning). From this analysis there is synthesised principles for the design of instructional text against which heuristic practice in text design is evaluated and from which a nascent theory of instructional text design is evolved. The principles derived from the various research perspectives provide a basis for the manipulation of text design elements in order to ensure that (a) existing knowledge in the reader can be activated, and (b) new knowledge can be assimilated in a manner facilitative of comprehension by (i) presentation in a structured and organised way, and (ii) appropriately highlighted through verbal and typographic cueing supported, as required, by verbal illustration and organisation. The emerging theory of instructional text design suggests: a topical analysis to determine the heirarchic relationship of ideas within the topic and the desired learning outcomes or objectives; a consideration of the linguistic aspects of the text; a consideration of the role of visual illustrations; and a consideration of the physical parameters of the text. These activities are concerned, respectively, with the design areas of structure and organisation, readability, visual illustration, and legibility, and are summed up in the acronym SORVIL

Problem solving from textbook examples

There has been a great deal of research into students' use of examples when solving problems in textbooks. Much of this work has been within the framework of analogical problem solving (APS). Indeed many researchers believe they can build adequate models of how students learn and solve exercise problems by analogy to worked examples. In the first part of this thesis I argue that this view of problem solving from examples is inappropriate and often misleading. Most students learning a subject for the first time tend to imitate examples. Imitative Problem Solving UPS)is a weak form of analogical problem solving. APS accounts assume that a solver has a representation of an earlier problem in memory. The difficulties involved are accessing that source problem and adapting it to solve the current one. WS does not assume t at the source is represented in memory, and even when the source example is available( as in textbook examples), the student may not understand it well enough to be able to adapt it to new situations.The second part of the thesis presents an interpretation theory for analysing both texts and the behaviour of solvers using those texts to solve exercise problems.The third part applies the interpretation theory to the solution explanation of a simple algebra word problem. Where an example problem fails to map directly onto an exercise problem, or where inferences have to be made to understand it, the solver win be unable to imitate the example and hence will have difficulties in proportion to the mapping inequalities between the two problems. That is, the interpretation theory allows us to predict precisely where solvers will have difficulty using an example to solve an exercise problem of the same type.The final part presents experimental tests of these predictions. The results confirm that the interpretation theory analysis can correctly identify possible areas of difficulty for the student due to a) the way an example problem is structured, and b) the nature of the transfer task

The ups and downs of working in telesales: An analysis of the development of prosodic style in a Scottish call centre

This study examines the prosodic style of workers in a Scottish outbound call centre during telesales call openings. I describe the conversational structure and accompanying intonational patterns of a corpus of scripted call centre telephone openings, and investigate if this provides evidence to suggest the emergence of patterns of prosodic style or 'tone of voice' used by workers in the call centre during telephone sales encounters. I investigate how and why workers come to adopt ways of speaking via data collected during long-term ethnographic fieldwork in the call centre, paying particular attention to the training and prescriptive processes to which new employees are exposed. Examination of the classroom training period and other methods put in place by the call centre, such as scripting and managerial surveillance, reveals that prosodic style is not overtly prescribed in the same way as other aspects of the agents' linguistic performance. It emerges that the on-the-job period of training known as 'nesting' is where most managerial prescription of style takes place, at a point when workers are making the transition from apprentice to expert via increasing participation in local practices. It is during this transitional phase of apprenticeship that individual speakers begin construction of a new, activity-based persona, of which their prosodic style is a defining part

The ups & downs of working in telesales: an analysis of the development of prosodic style in a Scottish call centre

This study examines the prosodic style of workers in a Scottish outbound call centre during telesales call openings. I describe the conversational structure and accompanying intonational patterns of a corpus of scripted call centre telephone openings, and investigate if this provides evidence to suggest the emergence of patterns of prosodic style or 'tone of voice' used by workers in the call centre during telephone sales encounters. I investigate how and why workers come to adopt ways of speaking via data collected during long-term ethnographic fieldwork in the call centre, paying particular attention to the training and prescriptive processes to which new employees are exposed. Examination of the classroom training period and other methods put in place by the call centre, such as scripting and managerial surveillance, reveals that prosodic style is not overtly prescribed in the same way as other aspects of the agents' linguistic performance. It emerges that the on-the-job period of training known as 'nesting' is where most managerial prescription of style takes place, at a point when workers are making the transition from apprentice to expert via increasing participation in local practices. It is during this transitional phase of apprenticeship that individual speakers begin construction of a new, activity-based persona, of which their prosodic style is a defining part