Animated pedagogical agents (APAs) have the potential to provide one-on-one, just-in-time instruction, guidance or mentoring in classrooms where such individualized human interactions may be infeasible. Much current APA research focuses on a wide range of design variables tested with small samples or in laboratory settings, while overlooking…

A study was conducted to determine who, within a target user group, used and benefitted from a videotex system. The subjects were large-scale farmers who agreed to have videotex terminals installed in their homes to receive a wide range of informational and commercial transaction services provided by a bank holding company. At the end of an…

Arguing that user studies and performance measures provide two major approaches to evaluating the effectiveness of library services, this occasional paper presents an overview of the literature, examines the goals and approaches in user studies and performance measures, and provides suggestions for increasing the potential benefits of both by…

In response to 1986 state legislation calling for improvements in college effectiveness and accountability, the California Community Colleges began various efforts to promote the evaluation of matriculation. One effort, the Matriculation Local Research Options Project, was formed in 1989 to develop models for local evaluation of matriculation and…

An attempt was made to determine predictors of service need, use, and outcome among chronically impaired adults and aged who were living in the community and using the home-based, long term care services of the Chronic Illness Center (CIC) of the Cuyahoga County Hospitals (Ohio). Randomly selected consumer service records (N=200) were coded for…

This document reports the results of a study undertaken to determine if teaching a 2-week unit on library usage to 7th graders would increase their use of the library. From three non-ability grouped 7th grade classes, two classes of 26 students each were randomly selected for the study. One class was randomly assigned as the experimental group and…

This paper examines how, why, and by whom technology is being used in schools. Educational technology is defined as the systematic design and use of hardware and software to achieve specific objectives. Recent studies indicate that the most frequent location of computers in schools is in the administrative office; second is in the library media…