Bob Dylan and American Folk Music: The Pigeonhole Effect

This article tracks Bob Dylan\u27s early musical career and his relation to the American Folk music movement of the late 1950s into the early 1960s. The author grapples with the question of why Bob Dylan went electric and explores some of the stories around the seminal event in American Folk Music history. The author mainly uses Bob Dylan\u27s personal interviews and songs to draw conclusions

Facilitating teacher participation in intelligent computer tutor design : tools and design methods.

This work addresses the widening gap between research in intelligent tutoring systems (ITSs) and practical use of this technology by the educational community. In order to ensure that ITSs are effective, teachers must be involved in their design and evaluation. We have followed a user participatory design process to build a set of ITS knowledge acquisition tools that facilitate rapid prototyping and testing of curriculum, and are tailored for usability by teachers. The system (called KAFITS) also serves as a test-bed for experimentation with multiple tutoring strategies. The design includes novel methodologies for tutoring strategy representation (Parameterized Action Networks) and overlay student modeling (a layered student model), and incorporates considerations from instructional design theory. It also allows for considerable student control over the content and style of the information presented. Highly interactive graphics-based tools were built to facilitate design, inspection, and modification of curriculum and tutoring strategies, and to monitor the progress of the tutoring session. Evaluation of the system includes a sixteen-month case study of three educators (one being the domain expert) using the system to build a tutor for statics (forty topics representing about four hours of on-line instruction), testing the tutor on a dozen students, and using test results to iteratively improve the tutor. Detailed throughput analysis indicates that the amount of effort to build the statics tutor was, surprisingly, comparable to similar figures for building (non-intelligent) conventional computer aided instructional systems. Few ITS projects focus on educator participation and this work is the first to empirically study knowledge acquisition for ITSs. Results of the study also include: a recommended design process for building ITSs with educator participation; guidelines for training educators; recommendations for conducting knowledge acquisition sessions; and design tradeoffs for knowledge representation architectures and knowledge acquisition interfaces

Testing Raised Foot Lines in Virginia\u27s Striped Bass Fishery: A Gear Based Method of Reducing Sturgeon Interactions in Anchored Gillnets

Working with commercial fishermen and scientists, the project evaluated the efficacy of altering net designs to achieve reductions in incidental contacts with protected species while maintaining harvest efficiency. In addition project participants assisted in the transfer of the new gear technology to industry as a gear-based method to reduce sturgeon interactions in gillnets targeting striped bass. The intent was to raise the effective fishing depth (webbing) of anchored gillnets interactions with protected Atlantic sturgeon while not impacting direct harvest of striped bass, the target species. The gear was shown to not impact Catch Per Unit Effort (CPUE) of the directed species