1995 Working Papers
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Item Video support for shared work-space interaction – an empirical study(Working Paper, Department of Computer Science, The University of Waikato, 1995) Masoodian, Masood; Apperley, Mark; Frederikson, LesleyA study has been carried out to identify the effects of different human-to-human communication modes on dyadic computer supported group work. A pilot study evaluated an available shared work-space software system, supplemented by face-to-face, telephone-based, and text-based communication modes between two users. The findings from this study were then used to design an extensive experiment to explore the relative impact of face-to-face, full motion video, slow motion video, and audio only communication modes when used in conjunction with the type of CSCW system. This paper describes the experiments, and examines the findings of this empirical study with the aim of establishing the importance of co-presence in CSCW, and the effectiveness of these various communication modes in achieving it.Item How Maui captured the sun: using a MUD for educational simulation(Working Paper, University of Waikato, Department of Computer Science, 1995-12) Cunningham, Sally Jo; Williams, WarrenMUDs (Multi-User Dungeons) are text-based, multi-user communication and modelling programs. This paper investigates the potential of a popular extensible MUD, the LambdaMOO system, as a tool for second language training and for educational simulation gaming.Item Information retrieval programs on the Internet: tools for teaching IR(Working Paper, University of Waikato, Department of Computer Science, 1995-11) Cunningham, Sally JoThe theory of information retrieval has generally been taught in theory: it has been difficult to provide students with hands-on experience with retrieval engines incorporating many IR topics such as relevance ranking, fuzzy queries, etc. Recently, however, a number of retrieval programs have become freely available for interactive use over the Internet. These programs can be useful in the classroom, by permitting students to examine a variety of implementations of IR algorithms over different document collections. Moreover, many of the document collections are in themselves valuable subject resources, and are well worth exploring from the point of view of development familiarity with them as reference materials.Item Character-less programming II: the spreadsheet(Working Paper, University of Waikato, Department of Computer Science, 1995-11) Barbour, Robert H.The spreadsheet is a commonly used, yet under-researched, application tool. Hendry and Green (1994) report fewer than ten entries about spreadsheets in the HCI community literature between 1984 and 1991. The 1993 Human Computer Interaction Proceedings of a Conference on Applications and Case Studies does not list the word 'spreadsheet' in the index whereas databases and wordprocessor are both referenced. The current situation in 1996 is not significantly different. For Polytechnic and University communities, many of whom are involved in teaching about application software, this situation means that the widespread teaching of the tool is simply not being reported in the research literature. The unanswered but researchable question raised in the Hendry and Green (1994) indicate the breadth of the field. Following a summary of these questions, the even more neglected issue of providing culturally appropriate spreadsheet software is raised. A set of constructs for thinking about multicultural software is presented. A model of a procedure for generating an elementary spreadsheet is provided, exemplified and demonstrated for the Maori Language in New Zealand.Item Towards the digital music library: tune retrieval from acoustic input(Working Paper, University of Waikato, Department of Computer Science, 1995-10) McNab, Rodger J.; Smith, Lloyd A.; Witten, Ian H.; Henderson, Clare L.; Cunningham, Sally JoMusic is traditionally retrieved by title, composer or subject classification. It is possible, with current technology, to retrieve music from a database on the basis of a few notes sung or hummed into a microphone. This paper describes the implementation of such a system, and discusses several issues pertaining to music retrieval. We first describe an interface that transcribes acoustic input into standard music notation. We then analyze string matching requirements from ranked retrieval of music and present the results of an experiment which tests how accurately people sing well known melodies. The performance of several string matching criteria are analyzed using two folk song databases. Finally, we describe a prototype system which has been developed for retrieval of tunes from acoustic input.