Interviews with 12 older (ages 60 to 78) and 12 younger (ages 38 to 53) administrators showed that they had similar perceptions of the physical features and privacy issues in the workplace that facilitate or impede work. Structural accommodations may not be necessary for older workers, but attention to design and privacy issues is necessary for…

Outlines the need for and role of undergraduate human factors education, including evidence that students are unfamiliar with, but interested in, human factors issues. Describes several activities found to be successful in teaching human factors and identifies benefits students associated with a course on the topic. (DSK)

Discusses school furniture flexibility that can accommodate changing instructional styles, a diverse student characteristics, and classroom technology demands. Characteristics to look for that can enhance a chair's ergonomics are highlighted along with tips for better furniture budgeting.(GR)

This study found that the provision of ergonomic workstations for 12 older persons with age-related macular degeneration who used low vision devices significantly increased the participants' reading speed and decreased their discomfort when reading.

Eleven computer terminal operators participated in an experiment that assessed effects of several interventions aimed at increasing safe ergonomic performance. All participants received ergonomics training and performance feedback while six of them collected observations of safe behavior among the remaining five participants. Effects of…

Colleges and universities and commercial firms have demonstrated great progress in realizing the vision proffered for "Open Source 2007," and 2010 will mark even greater progress. Although much work remains in refining open source for higher education applications, the signals are now clear: the collaborative development of software can provide…

For most of the past decade, IT leaders in higher education felt on top of things. Challenges were usually comprehensible and addressable, doing reasonable things yielded reasonable results, and for the most part, IT was a substantial contributor to institutional progress. But these days, IT leaders rarely feel on top of things. Instead, some days…

This AARP Public Policy Institute Issue Paper seeks to (1) summarize what is currently known about an important aspect of work and employment, namely training and retraining, that involves the ability of older adults to learn new skills and adapt to new environments; (2) highlight issues and questions that need to be addressed to promote healthy…

The core purpose of this paper is to describe a new educational paradigm as well as possible directions and tasks for education reform in the 21st century. The present-day education system has failed to nurture the kind of creative people who can play leading roles in development or to produce citizens of a good character and democratic…

A literature review and two major studies discovered four approaches to job design, each geared toward different sets of outcomes for individual employees and organizations. The motivational approach tries to design jobs to provide the worker with autonomy and the opportunity to make decisions about how or in what order tasks are done. The…

The discipline of software engineering can be extended in a natural way to deal with the issues raised by a systematic approach to the design of human-machine interfaces. The user should be treated as part of the system being designed and projects should be organized to take into account the current lack of a priori knowledge of user interface…

Urges that biology teachers include the study of genetic anomolies, some very simple aspects of pedigree analysis, and related problems in order to produce citizens who are aware of the impact of science on their lives. (PEB)

The relationship of ergonomics (the study of man in relation to his working environment) and training is examined in the context of physical stress, training time required, man-machine systems, skill and job performance analysis, and training effectiveness. (AG)

Explores the idea that both the design and the use of buildings are part of a general human learning process concerned with the use of space. Argues that researchers face the need to bridge the gap between designers and users on the one hand and "objective" observers on the other. Gives a critique of some current methods of research in buildings…

In the late 1960s and early 1970s, college students expressed their feelings toward impersonal, highrise, linoleum-and-formica residence halls by moving off campus in droves. Now, colleges are building more varied and flexible lowrise student housing in an effort to better accommodate students' housing preferences. (JG)