An online writing platform for language learners
Author: HAZMAN
The purpose of this paper is to describe one module in a highly integrated language learning environment. The module described is an asynchronous interactive online environment for EFL writing which integrates the potential of computers, Internet, and linguistic analysis to address the highly specific needs of second language composition classes. The system accommodates learners, teachers, and researchers. A crucial consequence of the interactive nature of this system is that users actually create information through their use, and this information enables the system to improve with use. In addition to the tools provided for teachers to mark essays and automatically track the feedback they have given each learner, the system supports the automated capture of a learner corpus of written English in the process. The essays written by users and the comments given by teachers are archived in a searchable online database. Learners can retrieve this information to examine their own recurring problems in the target language. Teachers can do the same in order to discover these problem areas for individual learners and for a class as a whole. The modular system provides interfaces with functions to facilitate an array of user tasks such as teachers' correction of essays and learners' writing and revision processes. Error analysis of learner essays has led to content creation for automated online help. One sort of help feature can detect certain errors automatically and offer appropriate help pages. Another type of help feature can track the number of times a teacher has marked the same error type in one learner's writing and, when this number reaches a threshold, automatically offer help on this error to this learner.
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This study investigated the potential impacts of integrating the Internet into an English as a second language class in a vocational senior high school in Taiwan. Twenty-nine students and a young male English teacher were involved. It was found that the students overall had a positive perception toward using Internet tools. This study indicated that the integration of information communication technology on the Internet with English facilitated the creation of a virtual environment that transformed learning from a traditional passive experience to one of discovery, exploration, and excitement in a less stressful setting. The study revealed that a computer-mediated communication environment could lower students' psychological barriers to enable them to express their opinions freely and to communicate actively on the Internet and that it could also enhance their critical thinking, problem-solving and communication skills through online activities or class homepage construction. An individual case study further revealed that a task-oriented English tutoring strategy in association with email communication could motivate the student's writing competence but the student's language proficiency and grammatical accuracy did not improve. Finally, based on the findings, recommendations for future studies are made.
With the recent technological developments, an opportunity has emerged to introduce more efficient instruction into the classroom. The traditional blackboard approach is gradually giving way to more interaction between the instructor and students. Multimedia can be defined to be multiple forms of media (text, graphics, images, animation, audio and video) that work together. It is unparalleled in its ability to disseminate information quickly and accurately. Before the digital era, multimedia was delivered using one-way communication technologies such as books, magazines, radio and television. The invention of the personal computer and the Internet, however, has introduced interactivity and created an engaging learning environment. Literature on learning and technology contains evidence that multimedia has the potential to transform every aspect of academic endeavor from instruction and learning to research and dissemination of knowledge. In this paper, we will discuss why multimedia should be employed as the centerpiece for an emerging pattern of instruction. It can promote independent and cooperative learning, improve performance of low achievers and special student populations, while heightening interest in learning, writing and research.
A Computer Tutor for Writers (CTW) was designed to provide procedural facilitation to high school students while they learn the skills and knowledge associated with composition writing. Four previous year-long studies helped identify how to facilitate specific elements of the writing process. The CTW was designed to combine lessons learned from these previous studies, and provide a comprehensive support system in which students could complete classroom writing assignments. Additional factors influencing the design of the CTW were field input from high school English teachers, cognitive research into the writing process, and the cognitive apprenticeship instructional strategy. A test and evaluation of the CTW conducted during a full school-year with regular writing classes produced writing achievement gains of up to one letter grade above control groups (N = 471). Teachers and students reported that the CTW appeared to improve both the ability of students to follow a complete writing process and their ability to achieve related learning objectives.
The impact of laptop use on student achievement
Author: HAZMAN
Rapid technological advances in the last decade have sparked educational practitioners' interest in utilizing laptops as an instructional tool to improve student learning. There is substantial evidence that using technology as an instructional tool enhances student learning and educational outcomes. Past research suggests that compared to their non-laptop counterparts, students in classrooms that provide all students with their own laptops spend more time involved in collaborative work, participate in more project-based instruction, produce writing of higher quality and greater length, gain increased access to information, improve research analysis skills, and spend more time doing homework on computers. Research has also shown that these students direct their own learning, report a greater reliance on active learning strategies, readily engage in problem solving and critical thinking, and consistently show deeper and more flexible uses of technology than students without individual laptops. The study presented here examined the impact of participation in a laptop program on student achievement. A total of 259 middle school students were followed via cohorts. The data collection measures included students' over-all cumulative grade point averages (GPAs), end-of-course grades, writing test scores, and state-mandated norm- and criterion-referenced standardized test scores. The baseline data for all measures showed that there was no statistically significant difference in English language arts, mathematics, writing, and overall grade point average achievement between laptop and non-laptop students prior to enrollment in the program. However, laptop students showed significantly higher achievement in nearly all measures after one year in the program. Cross-sectional analyses in Year 2 and Year 3 concurred with the results from the Year 1. Longitudinal analysis also proved to be an independent verification of the substantial impact of laptop use on student learning outcomes.
computers in respiratory care.
Author: HAZMAN
Computers and data management in respiratory care reflect the larger practices of hospital information systems: the diversity of conference topics provides evidence. Respiratory care computing has shown a steady, slow progression from writing programs that calculate shunt equations to departmental management systems. Wider acceptance and utilization have been stifled by costs, both initial and on-going. Several authors pointed out the savings that were realized from information systems exceeded the costs of implementation and maintenance. The most significant finding from one of the presentations was that no other structure or skilled personnel could provide respiratory care more efficiently or cost-effectively than respiratory therapists. Online information resources have increased, in forms ranging from peer-reviewed journals to corporate-sponsored advertising posing as authoritative treatment regimens. Practitioners and patients need to know how to use these resources as well as how to judge the value of information they present. Departments are using computers for training on a schedule that is more convenient for the staff, providing information in a timely manner and potentially in more useful formats. Portable devices, such as personal digital assistants (PDAs) have improved the ability not only to share data to dispersed locations, but also to collect data at the point of care, thus greatly improving data capture. Ventilators are changing from simple automated bellows to complex systems collecting numerous respiratory parameters and offering feedback to improve ventilation. Clinical databases routinely collect information from a wide variety of resources and can be used for analysis to improve patient outcomes. What could possibly go wrong?
Although scientific writing plays a central role in the communication of clinical research findings and consumes a significant amount of time from clinical researchers, few Web applications have been designed to systematically improve the writing process. This application had as its main objective the separation of the multiple tasks associated with scientific writing into smaller components. It was also aimed at providing a mechanism where sections of the manuscript (text blocks) could be assigned to different specialists. Manuscript Architect was built using Java language in conjunction with the classic lifecycle development method. The interface was designed for simplicity and economy of movements. Manuscripts are divided into multiple text blocks that can be assigned to different co-authors by the first author. Each text block contains notes to guide co-authors regarding the central focus of each text block, previous examples, and an additional field for translation when the initial text is written in a language different from the one used by the target journal. Usability was evaluated using formal usability tests and field observations. Results: The application presented excellent usability and integration with the regular writing habits of experienced researchers. Workshops were developed to train novice researchers, presenting an accelerated learning curve. The application has been used in over 20 different scientific articles and grant proposals. Conclusion: The current version of Manuscript Architect has proven to be very useful in the writing of multiple scientific texts, suggesting that virtual writing by interdisciplinary groups is an effective manner of scientific writing when interdisciplinary work is required.
Two instructional experiments used randomized, controlled designs to evaluate the effectiveness of writing instruction for students with carefully diagnosed dyslexia, which is both an oral reading and writing disorder, characterized by impaired word decoding, reading, and spelling. In Study 1 (4th to 6th grade sample and 7th to 9th grade sample), students were randomly assigned to orthographic or morphological spelling treatment but all students were taught strategies for planning, writing, and reviewing/revising narrative and expository texts. Both treatments resulted in improvement on three measures of spelling and one measure of composition. Morphological treatment resulted in better improvement in spelling pseudowords, whereas orthographic treatment resulted in better improvement in rate of reading pseudowords. In Study 2 (4th to 6th grade sample), students were randomly assigned to explicit language treatment (phonological working memory + phonological-orthographic spelling + science report writing training) or nonverbal problem solving treatment (virtual reality-based computer simulation, drawing maps, and building clay models). Both treatments used science content material and resulted in significant improvement in spelling and reading pseudowords (accuracy and rate). The surprising finding was that hands-on, engaging science problem solving led to more improvement in phonological working memory than did specialized phonological instruction. Only when spelling instruction emphasized orthography or morphology (Study 1) did real word spelling improve.
Towards a knowledge-aware office environment
Author: HAZMAN
The objective of the Semantic Web is to make the Web amenable to computer processing, and hence to improve the value that humans can obtain from it. One of the oft-touted user benefits is improved searching: better-described resources allow search engines to provide better-targeted search results. The aim of this paper is to investigate the way in which Semantic Web technologies can be applied to an office environment as the context in which people work and carry out day-to-day document tasks, focusing on the issues of creating and re-using knowledge-rich documents within that environment. To address these issues, we have analysed a business writing scenario and integrated an established commercial off-the-shelf office production environment with knowledge-aware services to assist the author in carrying out writing tasks within that scenario
Impacts of Information and Communication
Author: HAZMAN
2 Impacts of ICT on activity-travel behavior: literature review
In the past decades, a large body of literature on the transportation impacts of ICT
has been produced. Many studies focus on specific applications of ICT, such as
telecommuting (or teleworking), teleshopping (or e-shopping), teleconferencing, etc.
Hamer et al (1991) studied the impact of teleworking on the travel behavior of
telecommuters and their family members. They found that teleworking resulted in
significant decreases in the total number of trips made by teleworkers (17%) and
peak-hour traffic by car (26%). Pendyala et al (1991) investigated the impact of
telecommuting on spatial and temporal patterns of household travel. They found
that the trip making and the total distance traveled by telecommuters were significantly
reduced. Balepur et al (1998) found that person-miles and vehicle-miles
traveled by center-based telecommuters were significantly fewer on telecommuting
days than on non-telecommuting days. While these studies show that telecommuting
leads to net reduction of trips and distance traveled, others argue that the impact of
telecommuting is rather complex in its nature and magnitude. Salomon and Salomon
(1984) suggested that the journey to work acts as a desired buffer between home and
work and thus the complete replacement of commuting trips may not be desired.
Harvey and Taylor (2000) suggested that there were clear differences in the levels of
social interaction between those who work at home and at conventional work place,
and there was a tendency for persons with low social interaction to travel more. They
argued that working at home might not diminish travel but rather simply change itspurpose. Mokhtarian and Salomon (2002) argued that the reported net impact of
substitution of telecommuting might be less if the induced demand, latent demand,
and long-term residential relocation effects were taken into account.
Different from that of telecommuting studies, findings of teleshopping (or
e-shopping) research seem less optimistic on the substitution effects, though
empirical evidence was not available until recently. Mokhtarian (2004) suggested
that ICT leads to the fragmentation and recombination of the basic elements of the
shopping process. She argued that there are many factors influencing the interaction
between e-shopping and travel: some result in reduced travel while others lead to
increased travel. As a result, the combined outcome may be negative (i.e. more
travel may be generated). Farag et al (2004) found that e-shoppers were people who
like to shop in general, suggesting that e-shopping might not lead to the reduction of
shopping trips. Douma et al (2004) revealed that e-shopping had little substitution
effects, rather, the Internet was used to modify shopping behavior by gathering
information of products or making trip more efficient. Visser and Lanzendorf (2004)
argued that business-to-consumer (b2c) e-commerce might increase the average trip
length and car use for shopping trips, because b2c e-commerce enhanced the current
process of decentralization and suburbanization of distribution systems. Farag et al
(2007) studied the interactions between e-shopping and in-store shopping and found
that searching online increases shopping trips, which in turn increases buying online,
suggesting complementarity effects between different shopping modes. Though only
a few, the reported studies on the impacts of teleconferencing on travel also suggest
limited substitution effects at best, and some complementarity (Mokhtarian and
Salomon 2002).
The studies on specific applications of ICT have contributed a great deal to our
knowledge about the direct impacts of ICT on physical travel. Nevertheless, by
focusing on specific application, these studies fail to recognize the interrelationships
among different forms of communication and are not able to reveal the combined
and system wide effects of such relationships (Mokhtarian and Salomon 2002). Thus,
instead of focusing on a particular type of ICT application, a number of studies adopt
the comprehensive approach by looking at all forms of communication and trying to
unveil the relationship between transportation and telecommunications in a broad
context. Selvanathan and Selvanathan (1994) adopted the aggregate approach to
analyze the relationships in consumer demand for private transportation, public
transportation and communication. They found that at consumer level the demands
for private transportation, public transportation and communication were pairwise
substitutes and the exponential growth in communication was at the expense of the
two types of transportation. Also taking the aggregate approach but from the
industry’s perspective, Plaut (1997) studied the relationships in industrial demand
for transportation and communication and found that the demand for transportation
and communication at industrial level was of complementarity. A similar aggregate
approach (only using activity indicators rather than monetary ones, in contrast to the
preceding two studies) was taken by Choo and Mokhtarian (2005) who examined at
the national level the causal relationships between telecommunications and travel,
considering supply, demand and costs and controlling factors on economy activities
and socio-demographics. The study found that the net effects of telecommunications
on travel were complementarity rather than substitution. Mokhtarian and Meenakshisundaram
(1999) studied at disaggregate level the interactions between three
types of communications, namely personal meetings, surface mails and electronicmails (phone, fax, e-mail). They found lagged complementarity effects across different
types of communication but no relationships between electronic forms of
communication and personal meetings or trips. Hjorthol (2002) examined the relations
between the different uses of home computers (for private purpose as well as
for paid work) and daily travel in Norway. The study found that the access to and use
of home computers had no significant substitution effects on travel; people who
owned home computer made less work trips, but they re-scheduled their activity and
as a result the total number of daily trips did not change.
Apart from defining ICT application in a broad way, findings of the studies on
single ICT application may be further enriched by adopting the holistic approach
and broadening the scope of investigation from single trip purpose to activity and
time use patterns. ‘The analysis of total human activity may lead to different conclusions
from the analyses of single trip purpose’ (Salomon 1985). As argued by
Vilhelmson and Thulin (2001), activities motivate travel and the effects of ICT on
travel are channeled through changing or facilitating activity participation and time
use. On the one hand, ICT may replace travel through substituting physical activities
(e.g., a banking activity at the bank) by ICT-based activities (e.g., e-banking). The
replacement leads not only to the direct substitution effects, but also indirect generation
or modification effects. On the other hand, ICT may facilitate physical travel
by providing real-time traffic information to help trip makers decide on departure
time, route and transport mode, etc. It is therefore difficult, if not impossible, to have
a thorough understanding about these possible transportation impacts of ICT, if we
do not analyze how ICT changes and facilitates individuals’ activity participation and
time allocation. The activity-based framework should thus be used to capture the
ICT and travel interactions (Golob and Regan 2001). In recent years, few attempts
have been made along this line. Kim and Goulias (2004) studied the effects of
changes in the availability and access to ICT on activity, travel and modal split.
Srinivasan and Athuru (2004) studied the adoption of ICT, participation in physical
and virtual activities and their impacts on travel patterns. The study, however, did
not simultaneously model the interrelationship between ICT usage, activity participation
and travel pattern. Consequently, the complex causal relationships between
ICT usage, time use and travel behavior could not be identified.
Despite of the drawbacks, these recent attempts have demonstrated that the
holistic approach of studying the interactions between ICT and transportation is a
promising avenue towards a better understanding of the transportation impacts of
ICT. More complete models that examine the relationships between ICT, activity,
travel and socio-economics should be developed. Such models should help identify
the complex causalities in terms of direct and indirect effects between ICT and
travel, controlling the confounding factors (Mokhtarian 2003).
Impacts of Information and Communication
Author: HAZMAN
1 Introduction
Information and Communications Technologies (ICT) provide people alternatives
to face-to-face communication and thus have the potentials to substitute physical
travel. These potentials are particularly appealing for policy makers and planners
who have been desperately looking for ways to mitigate traffic congestion. They
have also motivated a great number of studies on the transportation impacts of ICT.
These studies have greatly contributed to our understanding of the possible andpotential impacts of ICT on physical travel. However, as will be argued in the next
section, more empirical studies, which consider the interactions between activities
and travel, are needed to substantiate the complex direct and indirect effects of ICT
on travel (Mokhtarian 2003). The objective of this paper is to make such a contribution.
We shall apply the activity-based framework to probe into the impacts of
ICT on activity and travel behavior by identifying the causal relationships between
ICT usage, time allocation and travel behavior. Particularly, we will differentiate the
direct and indirect effects of ICT on trip generation and travel time. Further, we will
adopt the comprehensive approach, i.e., instead of focusing on specific ICT application
such as telecommuting or e-shopping, the study will define ICT in a broad
sense as the experience with the use of Internet, e-mail and videophone, etc. Specifically,
the following questions are investigated: (a) how does the use of ICT directly
affect travel behavior in terms of daily trip numbers and travel time? (b) what
are the indirect effects of ICT on travel through time allocation among subsistence,
maintenance and recreation activities? (c) how are the ICT users socio-economically
characterized? Are gender, income, age, and other socio-economic factors important
determinants of ICT usage? To answer these questions, it is important to consider
the interactions between activity participation and travel pattern. We therefore
employ the structural equations modeling framework. The sample is derived from
the 2002 travel characteristics survey of Hong Kong.
The rest of the paper is organized as follows. The next section will review the
studies on the transportation impacts of ICT. Section 3 explains the methodology
and data. Modeling results are presented and explained in Section 4. The final
section discusses the implications of findings and lists future research directions.
Impacts of Information and Communication
Author: HAZMAN
Impacts of Information and Communication
Abstract The objective of this paper is to contribute an empirical study to the
literature on transportation impacts of Information and Communications Technologies
(ICT). The structural equation model (SEM) is employed to analyze the
impacts of ICT usage on time use and travel behavior. The sample is derived from
the travel characteristic survey conducted in Hong Kong in 2002. The usage of ICT is
defined as the experience of using e-mail, Internet service, video conferencing and
videophone for either business or personal purposes. The results show that the use of
ICT generates additional time use for out-of-home recreation activities and travel
and increases trip-making propensity. Individuals at younger age or with higher
household income are found to be more likely ICT users. The findings of this study
provide further evidence on the complementarity effects of ICT on travel, suggesting
that the wide application of ICT probably leads to more, not less, travel. The study
also demonstrates the importance of considering the interactions between activity
and travel for better understanding of the nature and magnitude of the impacts of
ICT on time use and trip making behavior.