Even as weblogs, content management systems, and other forms of automated Web posting and journals are changing the way people create and place content on the Web, new Web pages mushroom overnight. However, many new Web designers produce Web pages that seem to ignore fundamental principles of "good design": full of colored backgrounds, animated…

As in other regions, development on many New England campuses over the past 30 years has tended to be more random than planned. Following the same patterns of sprawl that have defined most development in today's era, the placement of new campus buildings often separated them from the life of the university, while a hodgepodge of architectural…

This article describes the premises, principles, and processes for integrating TECH into instruction. TECH is an acronym designed for educators to more smoothly integrate technology into instructional activities. It includes four steps: (1) Target the students' needs and the learning outcome; (2) Examine the technology choices, then decide what to…

While the current debate in the evaluation community has concentrated on examining and explicating implications of the choice of methods for evaluating federal programs, the authors of this paper address the challenges faced by the government in the selection of funding mechanisms for supporting program evaluation efforts. The choice of funding…

This study explores the relationship between art object preferences and aesthetic attitudes of high school students. A corollary variable was socioeconomic status as determined by the National Opinion Research Center scale. A sample of 443 students, grades 8-12, in a Virginia high school, were studied. The 5-point Aesthetic Attitude Scale was used…

This paper addresses problems and issues that arise in electronic communications, and offers guidelines and etiquette. Topics covered include: (1) drafting an electronic message, including width of messages, abbreviations and smileys, salutation, name, author address, and responding to a message; (2) "Webtiquette" (i.e., guidelines for…

In order to discover reader reactions to color on a newspaper page, specifically eye movement and overall opinion of the paper, identical pages were created and printed by the "St. Petersburg Times" (Florida). The content of fifteen front pages, six lifestyles pages, and three sports front pages were nearly identical, differing only in the kind…

Using data from a previous study, this study investigated the adoption of modern graphic design techniques by daily newspapers. A scale of modern design was constructed from available literature and tested for internal validity by determining what design practices were included in sample papers. The scale was then used to test assumptions about…

Many typographers have already decided that sans serif type is more pleasing to readers and more functional than traditional roman type. The findings of this study, which was designed to assess the readability of, and reader preference for, these two styles, lead to the opposite conclusion. To determine preferences, 200 subjects of various ages…

This speech discusses the evaluation and selection of competitive products for schools, and recommends that user specifications be written to include user requirements. The author maintains that product evaluation would be easier if specifications writers would use more performance tests to interpret the user requirements and anticipated…

Presents a technique for assessing elderly residents' priorities and desired environmental characteristics for in-unit activities. Considered three components in design priority for activities: time spent, unit adequacy, and importance. Residents' high priority activites were sleeping, watching television, preparing food, resting, and eating. (NRB)

Argues that factors that create a feeling of interactivity in the human situation--response time, spontaneity, lack of distractors--should be included as prime elements in the design of human/machine systems, e.g., computer assisted instruction and interactive video. A computer/videodisc learning system for cardio-pulmonary resuscitation and its…

This book is a guide for educators on planning an educational World Wide Web site. The book contains the following chapters: (1) "Why Create School & Educational Web Sites?" including community connections, partnerships with parents, linking to learners and learning, and engaging educators; (2) "How To Get from Idea to Web Site:…

This paper discusses the need for and the design requirements of generic chatroom software that is readily configurable to particular domains and that is also extensible. The architecture of a client/server chatroom generation system, ChatterBox, implemented in Java, is presented. The following components of ChatterBox are described: (1) the basic…

This paper presents a research project conducted by the Department of Information Science in cooperation with the Saarland Museum, the art museum of the Federal State of Saarland, Germany. The study had two aims. The first was to evaluate some methods of usability engineering for the Web, and the second was to evaluate the usability of the…