A Qualitative Study of the Assistive Technology Decision-Making Process in Four Pennsylvania School Districts

The purpose of this study was to gain an understanding of the Assistive Technology decision making process at four regional school districts in Pennsylvania. A qualitative case study research method involving the triangulation of data sources was implemented to collect and analyze data. Through an analysis of the data, three major topics emerged that will be addressed in the body of this paper: (a) the procedure for determining assistive technology needs and the dynamics of the decision-making process, b) the cohesiveness of Special Education and General Education programs, and c) major concerns that impact the delivery of assistive technology services.

The computer paradigm in vocational guidance

The technological advances in last decades have transformed the external resources of Vocational Counseling, Occupational Information and assessment of clients. Most computer systems follow a behaviorist-cognitive approach. However, the use of vocational counseling software is not exclusive to one conceptual approach. Computers are introduced in education from primary school; counselors and other educators are expected to use those systems. The attitude of counselors ranges from enthusiastic acceptance to complete refusal. Many counselors fear that computers will replace them. An underlying theory holds that counseling is based on the counselor-client interaction. A computer- client interaction cannot be considered vocational counseling. Counseling has five basic aims: prevention, assistance, education and development, service of diverse groups and research. The most relevant trends in computer-based counseling are: tests and questionnaires based on computers, adaptive development, computarized information, vocational counseling systems and research. Basic aims and the potential role of computers in achieving them are discussed. Present vocational counselors can use the technology of computers to link the past of our profession to its promising future. In view of these premises we have developed two computer systems that assist the vocational counseling process: "Professional Interests Questionnaire, Computer Version", and "Computer-based System of Vocational Counseling".

The computer paradigm in vocational guidance

The technological advances in last decades have transformed the external resources of Vocational Counseling, Occupational Information and assessment of clients. Most computer systems follow a behaviorist-cognitive approach. However, the use of vocational counseling software is not exclusive to one conceptual approach. Computers are introduced in education from primary school; counselors and other educators are expected to use those systems. The attitude of counselors ranges from enthusiastic acceptance to complete refusal. Many counselors fear that computers will replace them. An underlying theory holds that counseling is based on the counselor-client interaction. A computer- client interaction cannot be considered vocational counseling. Counseling has five basic aims: prevention, assistance, education and development, service of diverse groups and research. The most relevant trends in computer-based counseling are: tests and questionnaires based on computers, adaptive development, computarized information, vocational counseling systems and research. Basic aims and the potential role of computers in achieving them are discussed. Present vocational counselors can use the technology of computers to link the past of our profession to its promising future. In view of these premises we have developed two computer systems that assist the vocational counseling process: "Professional Interests Questionnaire, Computer Version", and "Computer-based System of Vocational Counseling".

The computer paradigm in vocational guidance

The technological advances in last decades have transformed the external resources of Vocational Counseling, Occupational Information and assessment of clients. Most computer systems follow a behaviorist-cognitive approach. However, the use of vocational counseling software is not exclusive to one conceptual approach. Computers are introduced in education from primary school; counselors and other educators are expected to use those systems. The attitude of counselors ranges from enthusiastic acceptance to complete refusal. Many counselors fear that computers will replace them. An underlying theory holds that counseling is based on the counselor-client interaction. A computer- client interaction cannot be considered vocational counseling. Counseling has five basic aims: prevention, assistance, education and development, service of diverse groups and research. The most relevant trends in computer-based counseling are: tests and questionnaires based on computers, adaptive development, computarized information, vocational counseling systems and research. Basic aims and the potential role of computers in achieving them are discussed. Present vocational counselors can use the technology of computers to link the past of our profession to its promising future. In view of these premises we have developed two computer systems that assist the vocational counseling process: "Professional Interests Questionnaire, Computer Version", and "Computer-based System of Vocational Counseling".

Usability-Oriented Software Development Process

Usability is the capability of the software product to be understood, learned, used and attractive to the user, when used under specified conditions. Many studies demonstrate the benefits of usability, yet to this day software products continue to exhibit consistently low levels of this quality attribute. Furthermore, poor usability in software systems contributes largely to software failing in actual use. One of the main disciplines involved in usability is that of Human-Computer Interaction (HCI). Over the past two decades the HCI community has proposed specific features that should be present in applications to improve their usability, yet incorporating them into software continues to be far from trivial for software developers. These difficulties are due to multiple factors, including the high level of abstraction at which these HCI recommendations are made and how far removed they are from actual software implementation. In order to bridge this gap, the Software Engineering community has long proposed software design solutions to help developers include usability features into software, however, the problem remains an open research question. This doctoral thesis addresses the problem of helping software developers include specific usability features into their applications by providing them with a structured and tangible guidance in the form of a process, which we have termed the Usability-Oriented Software Development Process. This process is supported by a set of Software Usability Guidelines that help developers to incorporate a set of eleven usability features with high impact on software design. After developing the Usability-oriented Software Development Process and the Software Usability Guidelines, they have been validated across multiple academic projects and proven to help software developers to include such usability features into their software applications. In doing so, their use significantly reduced development time and improved the quality of the resulting designs of these projects. Furthermore, in this work we propose a software tool to automate the application of the proposed process. In sum, this work contributes to the integration of the Software Engineering and HCI disciplines providing a framework that helps software developers to create usable applications in an efficient way.

Interactive Graphic Simulation: An Advanced Methodology to Improve the Teaching-Learning Process in Nuclear Engineering Education and Training

Nowadays, computer simulators are becoming basic tools for education and training in many engineering fields. In the nuclear industry, the role of simulation for training of operators of nuclear power plants is also recognized of the utmost relevance. As an example, the International Atomic Energy Agency sponsors the development of nuclear reactor simulators for education, and arranges the supply of such simulation programs. Aware of this, in 2008 Gas Natural Fenosa, a Spanish gas and electric utility that owns and operate nuclear power plants and promotes university education in the nuclear technology field, provided the Department of Nuclear Engineering of Universidad Politécnica de Madrid with the Interactive Graphic Simulator (IGS) of “José Cabrera” (Zorita) nuclear power plant, an industrial facility whose commercial operation ceased definitively in April 2006. It is a state-of-the-art full-scope real-time simulator that was used for training and qualification of the operators of the plant control room, as well as to understand and analyses the plant dynamics, and to develop, qualify and validate its emergency operating procedures.

Usability Planner: A Tool to Support the Process of Selecting Usability Methods

There is increasing pressure on developers to produce usable systems, which requires the use of appropriate methods to support user centred design during development. There is currently no consistent advice on which methods are appropriate in which circumstances, so the selection of methods relies on individual experience and expertise. Considerable effort is required to collate information from various sources and to understand the applicability of each method in a particular situation. Usability Planner is a tool aimed to support the selection of the most appropriate methods depending on project and organizational constraints. Many of the rules employed are derived from ISO standards, complemented with rules from the authors’ experience.

Integrated learning of computer applications for production engineering

A high productivity rate in Engineering is related to an efficient management of the flow of the large quantities of information and associated decision making activities that are consubstantial to the Engineering processes both in design and production contexts. Dealing with such problems from an integrated point of view and mimicking real scenarios is not given much attention in Engineering degrees. In the context of Engineering Education, there are a number of courses designed for developing specific competencies, as required by the academic curricula, but not that many in which integration competencies are the main target. In this paper, a course devoted to that aim is discussed. The course is taught in a Marine Engineering degree but the philosophy could be used in any Engineering field. All the lessons are given in a computer room in which every student can use each all the treated software applications. The first part of the course is dedicated to Project Management: the students acquire skills in defining, using Ms-PROJECT, the work breakdown structure (WBS), and the organization breakdown structure (OBS) in Engineering projects, through a series of examples of increasing complexity, ending up with the case of vessel construction. The second part of the course is dedicated to the use of a database manager, Ms-ACCESS, for managing production related information. A series of increasing complexity examples is treated ending up with the management of the pipe database of a real vessel. This database consists of a few thousand of pipes, for which a production timing frame is defined, which connects this part of the course with the first one. Finally, the third part of the course is devoted to the work with FORAN, an Engineering Production package of widespread use in the shipbuilding industry. With this package, the frames and plates where all the outfitting will be carried out are defined through cooperative work by the studens, working simultaneously in the same 3D model. In the paper, specific details about the learning process are given. Surveys have been posed to the students in order to get feed-back from their experience as well as to assess their satisfaction with the learning process. Results from these surveys are discussed in the paper

Co-evolutionary and Reinforcement Learning Techniques Applied to Computer Go players

The objective of this thesis is model some processes from the nature as evolution and co-evolution, and proposing some techniques that can ensure that these learning process really happens and useful to solve some complex problems as Go game. The Go game is ancient and very complex game with simple rules which still is a challenge for the Artificial Intelligence. This dissertation cover some approaches that were applied to solve this problem, proposing solve this problem using competitive and cooperative co-evolutionary learning methods and other techniques proposed by the author. To study, implement and prove these methods were used some neural networks structures, a framework free available and coded many programs. The techniques proposed were coded by the author, performed many experiments to find the best configuration to ensure that co-evolution is progressing and discussed the results. Using co-evolutionary learning processes can be observed some pathologies which could impact co-evolution progress. In this dissertation is introduced some techniques to solve pathologies as loss of gradients, cycling dynamics and forgetting. According to some authors, one solution to solve these co-evolution pathologies is introduce more diversity in populations that are evolving. In this thesis is proposed some techniques to introduce more diversity and some diversity measurements for neural networks structures to monitor diversity during co-evolution. The genotype diversity evolved were analyzed in terms of its impact to global fitness of the strategies evolved and their generalization. Additionally, it was introduced a memory mechanism in the network neural structures to reinforce some strategies in the genes of the neurons evolved with the intention that some good strategies learned are not forgotten. In this dissertation is presented some works from other authors in which cooperative and competitive co-evolution has been applied. The Go board size used in this thesis was 9x9, but can be easily escalated to more bigger boards.The author believe that programs coded and techniques introduced in this dissertation can be used for other domains.

Discernment of bee pollen loads using computer vision and one-class classification techniques

In this paper, we propose a system for authenticating local bee pollen against fraudulent samples using image processing and classification techniques. Our system is based on the colour properties of bee pollen loads and the use of one-class classifiers to reject unknown pollen samples. The latter classification techniques allow us to tackle the major difficulty of the problem, the existence of many possible fraudulent pollen types. Also presented is a multi-classifier model with an ambiguity discovery process to fuse the output of the one-class classifiers. The method is validated by authenticating Spanish bee pollen types, the overall accuracy of the final system of being 94%. Therefore, the system is able to rapidly reject the non-local pollen samples with inexpensive hardware and without the need to send the product to the laboratory.

Outsource the software process improvement consulting service: An alternative solution for small-settings

The focus of this paper is to outline the main structure of an alternative solution to implement a Software Process Improvement program in Small-Settings using the outsourcing infrastructure. This solution takes the advantages of the traditional outsourcing models and applies its structure to propose an alternative solution to make available a Software Process Improvement program for Small-Settings. With this outsourcing solution it is possible share the resources between several Small-Settings.

Experiences in the assessment of the requirement management process

The focus of this paper is to outline the practical experiences and the lessons learned derived from the assessment of the requirements management process in two industrial case studies. Furthermore this paper explains the main structure of an alternative assessment approach that has been used in the appraisal of the two case studies. The assessment approach helped us to know the current state of the organizational requirement management process. We have to point out that these practical experiences and the lessons learned can be helpful to reduce risks and costs of the on-site assessment process.

A cybernetic theory about computer interfaces and human factors within a framework of technological innovation

This paper is based on the following postulates taken from a book recently published by this author (Sáez-Vacas, 1990(1)): a) technological innovation in a company is understood to be the process and set of changes that the company undergoes as a result of a specific type of technology; b) the incorporation of technology in the company does not necessarily result in innovation, modernization and progress; c) the very words "modernization" and "progress" are completely bereft of any meaning if isolated from the concept of complexity in its broadest sense, including the human factor. Turning to office technology in specific, the problem of managing office technology for business innovation purposes can be likened to the problem of managing third level complexity, following the guidelines of a three-level complexity model proposed by the author some years ago

Guidance for the development of accessibility evaluation tools following the Unified Software Development Process

Automated and semi-automated accessibility evaluation tools are key to streamline the process of accessibility assessment, and ultimately ensure that software products, contents, and services meet accessibility requirements. Different evaluation tools may better fit different needs and concerns, accounting for a variety of corporate and external policies, content types, invocation methods, deployment contexts, exploitation models, intended audiences and goals; and the specific overall process where they are introduced. This has led to the proliferation of many evaluation tools tailored to specific contexts. However, tool creators, who may be not familiar with the realm of accessibility and may be part of a larger project, lack any systematic guidance when facing the implementation of accessibility evaluation functionalities. Herein we present a systematic approach to the development of accessibility evaluation tools, leveraging the different artifacts and activities of a standardized development process model (the Unified Software Development Process), and providing templates of these artifacts tailored to accessibility evaluation tools. The work presented specially considers the work in progress in this area by the W3C/WAI Evaluation and Report Working Group (ERT WG)

Workshop on engaging the human-computer interaction community with public policymaking internationally

There is an increasing interest in the intersection of human-computer interaction and public policy. This day-long workshop will examine successes and challenges related to public policy and human computer interaction, in order to provide a forum to create a baseline of examples and to start the process of writing a white paper on the topic.