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This study investigated whether reading comprehension would differ when the texts are studied and tested on screen or on paper. Participants were 69 college students who were attending a college in midwestern United States. Participants read two expository texts each, under comparable paper and screen conditions and answered comprehension questions. Test forms and the order of the conditions were counterbalanced. The correlations between reading outcomes and reader characteristics were examined. Participants also completed a survey on their views on the two media (paper or screen). The results did not indicate a significant difference on students' reading comprehension as a function of medium and reader characteristics. However, students reported preferring paper-based reading for complex material. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Integration of evolving technology into the flight surgeon's daily practice offers revolutionary opportunities to improve professional effectiveness. The productivity of those involved in the practice of aerospace medicine will be enhanced through the use of information systems, including word processors, communications equipment, graphics displays, and computers. The use of these systems will eliminate "paper work" and add efficiency to the flight surgeon's office environment. The practice of medicine is changing with increasing emphasis on credentialing, activity tracking, incident reporting, and occurrence screening. These quality assurance measures are being followed through data base management. The implications regarding medical records management, productivity indicators, continuing medical education, preventive medicine and direct patient care are great. The ability to communicate electronically leads to potential consultant networks, allowing real-time advice on complex cases regardless of geography. Military physicians should also be mindful of the command, control, communications, and intelligence advantages offered by these systems. Although microcomputers exist in most flight surgeons' offices and new technical applications are planned, integrators and champions are needed.

In recent years, computer-based testing (CBT) has grown in popularity, is increasingly being implemented across the United States, and will likely become the primary mode for delivering tests in the future. Although CBT offers many advantages over traditional paper-and-pencil testing, assessment experts, researchers, practitioners, and users have expressed concern about the comparability of scores between the two test administration modes. To help provide an answer to this issue, a meta-analysis was conducted to synthesize the administration mode effects of CBTs and paper-and-pencil tests on K-12 student reading assessments. Findings indicate that the administration mode had no statistically significant effect on K-12 student reading achievement scores. Four moderator variables—study design, sample size, computer delivery algorithm, and computer practice—made statistically significant contributions to predicting effect size. Three moderator variables—grade level, type of test, and computer delivery method—did not affect the differences in reading scores between test modes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Are computer science papers extended after they are published? We have surveyed 200 computer science publications, 100 journal articles, and 100 conference papers, using self-citations to identify potential and actual continuations. We are interested in determining the proportion of papers that do indeed continue, how and when the continuation takes place, and whether any distinctions are found between the journal and conference populations. Despite the implicit assumption of a research line behind each paper, manifest in the ubiquitous 'future research' notes that close many of them, we find that more than 70% of the papers are never continued. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Inspired by pandemic-transformed instruction, this paper examines the digital accessibility of five tech tools used in information literacy sessions, specifically for students who use assistive technologies such as screen readers. The tools are Kahoot!, Mentimeter, Padlet, Jamboard, and Poll Everywhere. First, we provide an overview of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) and digital accessibility definitions, descriptions of screen reading assistive technology, and the current use of tech tools in information literacy instruction for student engagement. Second, we examine accessibility testing assessments of the five tech tools selected for this paper. Our data show that the tools had severe, significant, and minor levels of digital accessibility problems, and while there were some shared issues, most problems were unique to the individual tools. We explore the implications of tech tools' unique environments as well as the importance of best practices and shared vocabularies. We also argue that digital accessibility benefits all users. Finally, we provide recommendations for teaching librarians to collaborate with campus offices to assess and advance the use of accessible tech tools in information literacy instruction, thereby enhancing an equitable learning environment for all students. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The reasons for moving from paper coupons to delivering food stamps electronically include potential reduction in the cost of administering the system and in fraud, theft and abuse of the system. Furthermore, the use of EBT is believed o reduce social stigma and embarrassment felt by recipients when using paper coupon. Therefore, using survey data collected from College Students participating in the Food Stamp Program in Alabama, the purpose of this study is to ascertain empirically if the use of EBT card for delivering food stamp benefits reduces food stamp fraud, theft, and embarrassment associated with the paper coupon. Results of descriptive analysis indicate that as expected, EBT card reduces fraud, theft, and embarrassment or social stigma associated with paper coupon. There was a common perception among these college students that the EBT system is a good way to receive food stamp benefits. Implications of the findings are discussed.

This paper empirically examines the impact of academic research on high-tech manufacturing growth of 28 Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) and emerging countries over the 1991-2005 period. A standard research and development (R&D) expenditure based measure is found to be too general to capture the input in high-tech research. To overcome this problem, a novel proxy for high-tech research investment--the supercomputer capacity--is proposed. Empirical evidence strongly supports this choice of variable. It is also found that academic R&D exerts a larger growth effect on high-tech output than its industry and government counterparts, but only the impact differential between academic and government R&D is statistically significant.

This research paper reports the findings from an international survey of fieldwork practitioners on their use of technology to enhance fieldwork teaching and learning. It was found that there was high information technology usage before and after time in the field, but some were also using portable devices such as smartphones and global positioning system whilst out in the field. The main pedagogic reasons cited for the use of technology were the need for efficient data processing and to develop students' technological skills. The influencing factors and barriers to the use of technology as well as the importance of emerging technologies are discussed.

Low-cost personal computers, wireless access technologies, the Internet, and computer-equipped classrooms allow the design of novel and complementary methodologies for teaching digital information security in electrical engineering curricula. The challenges of the current digital information era require experts who are effectively able to counteract piracy, forgery, copyright infringement, and so on. Digital watermarking is one possible technique for fighting piracy, which consists of the insertion of invisible but robust information to protect the data. In this paper, a new teaching approach, designed for testing student skills and progressing in multimedia data protection, is presented. This consists of a distributed security game where students compete by first using the developed watermarking techniques and then attacking each other's methods, thus verifying their robustness. Groups of students from different universities and countries play against each other, trying to compromise other teams' hiding systems while protecting their own data from attacks. The proposed methodology can be considered as an appealing approach for stimulating learning, cooperation, and team competition. The effectiveness of the teaching method is verified by a student survey and their academic results. (Contains 4 tables and 2 figures.)

The article discusses electronic voting machines, particularly the direct recording electronic (DRE) devices. The device translates a voter's choice into electronic data. Computer scientists Avi Rubin and Dan Wallach recommended that DRE systems should generate voter-verified audit trails on which a voter could check that his or her vote had been cast correctly. The DRE system was put in place in the May 2006 primary elections in Ohio. However, it was not a great success and a Ohio study showed that almost 10% of the paper records were useless or absent because the printers jammed, ran out of paper or overprinted.

Since the mid-1980s, the percentage of the population in the United States owning a personal computer has grown from just over 8% to well over 50%, and nearly 60% of the population uses a computer at work. At the end of 2004, there were over 820 million personal computers in active use worldwide, and projections indicate that the number will surpass one billion by 2007. What was traditionally a data processing tool has increasingly become a hub of multimedia entertainment, commerce and communication. The catalyst for this continuing evolution is software, which is the interpreter that speaks to the computer on the user's behalf, and also returns visual and textual messages on behalf of the hardware. Quality software is essential, and the continued innovation of software is vital for nearly every industry and personal endeavor that has come to rely upon personal computers. Alarmingly, abuses of intellectual property laws have put software innovation in jeopardy. In the United States, the phenomenon of "software patents" has caused an increasing shift in the software industry away from an environment of rapid advances and creativity, toward a minefield of litigation, anti-competitive behavior and questionable ethics. The topic of software patents touches on a wide range of subjects including law, information and communication technology, economics, computer science and personal and professional ethics. Although the focus of this paper is the ethical issues raised by software patents, a brief background on the topics of software development, intellectual property and ethical frameworks will be presented to provide a context for the argument.

The impact of computers on society and education will be dependent on the effectiveness of the battle for people's minds. Educators play a key role in motivating and leading students. Computer-oriented business education programs are available that keep the teacher central in the instructional program. (JOW)

School-based risk behavior surveys traditionally have been administered via paper-and-pencil. This study assessed the feasibility of conducting in-class online surveys in US high schools. A paper-and-pencil questionnaire assessing computer availability and perceptions of online surveys was mailed to a nationally representative sample of public and private high school principals in fall 2008. Completed surveys were returned by principals from 580 of 704 selected schools. Prevalence and 95% confidence intervals were computed. Most high schools have at least 1 computer lab, most computers in computer labs are connected to the Internet, and just under half of schools with a stationary computer lab had a sufficient number of computers to accommodate an in-class online survey administration. The 2 most common problems associated with online surveys were logistics of providing enough computers for an entire class and rotating classes into computer labs. Nearly two thirds of principals preferred online to paper-and-pencil surveys when administered to 4 randomly selected classes that met at different times during the school day, but less than half reported this preference when administered to 4 randomly selected classes that met at the same time during the school day. Many schools do not have sufficient computer capacity to participate in a voluntary in-class online survey. An online survey could impose significant perceived and actual burden on schools and therefore could result in unacceptably low school participation rates. Online administration for in-class surveys of students in US high schools are not recommended. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The use of computers to assist in learning situations is reviewed on an international basis, evaluation studies and costs are examined, and critical issues are analyzed as they pertain to hardware, software, and courseware development. Recommendations are offered for educationally cost-effective uses of computer-assisted instruction. A 67-item bibliography is included. (CHC)

Although the association between industrial agglomeration and productivity has been widely examined and documented, little work has explored the possibility that these ‘external’ productivity shifts are the product of more advanced technologies. This paper offers a look at this hypothesis using data on individual-level computer usage across a sample of U.S. metropolitan areas over the years 1984, 1989, 1993 and 1997. The results indicate that, for a wide array of industries at the two, three, and four digit SIC level, an industry's scale within a metropolitan area is positively associated with the frequency of computer use by its workers. However, in spite of these observable differences in workplace technology, I also find that estimated localization effects on wages are largely not explained by computer usage. Even after controlling for computer use, there remain significant own-industry scale effects in labour earnings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]