James Watt

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Papers by James Watt

Distance Education During the COVID-19 Shutdown: A Process Model of Online Learner Readiness, Experiences and Feelings of Learning

Proceedings of the ACM on human-computer interaction, Nov 7, 2022

The COVID-19 pandemic that forced the closure of campuses in the spring of 2020 accelerated the d... more The COVID-19 pandemic that forced the closure of campuses in the spring of 2020 accelerated the diffusion of distance education in Universities worldwide. The need to shift to distance education without time to prepare or train teachers or students led to what has been called a crisis learning situation in what was far from a seamless transition. This article surveyed 200 students at a large university in the United States at the end of the spring semester in 2020 about their online learner readiness including access to technological infrastructure (computers and highspeed Internet access), computer self-efficacy, computer anxiety, and how that influenced positive and negative learning experiences and feelings about distance education and learning. A four-stage Structural Equation Model shows a detailed picture of the distance education process and suggests intervention points to improve its outcomes. Results suggest that access to technological infrastructure are necessary but not sufficient for successful distance education experiences and point to the critical importance of computer self-efficacy and anxiety in predicting positive (or negative) learning experiences, which lead to increased feelings of learning and the likelihood that students will choose distance education in the future.

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Self-Reported Copresence Measure

An Exploratory Study of Factors Affecting Usage of an On-Line Computer-Based Bibliographic Retrieval Service

The situational and personal factors affecting the usage of a computer based information service ... more The situational and personal factors affecting the usage of a computer based information service by health care professionals are described. Of 166 health care professionals who were iientified as potential users of MEDLIN' at the University of Connecticut, 126 carried out one or more online searches. Pre-use and post-use questionnaires were administered to solicit information in the following areas: job profile, information needs, current use of information sources, satisfaction with information sources, experience with automated information systems, beliefs about computers and automated information systems, physical difficulty in using the system, and type of =LINE training received. It was concluded that the relevance of the information available to the immediate job-related problems of the user is the major determinant of the first use of the service. Total information needs, dissatisfaction with other sources of information, and beliefs about the satisfying nature of computer interaction and the reliability of computer machinery are predictive of more frequent use. This report is part of a National Institutes of Health (NIH) project carried out at five locations in the United States. (Author/THC)

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Remembrance of Coverage Past: Agenda-Setting Effects of Television News Coverage and the Effects Decay Curve

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The Influence of Visual Complexity on Children's Attention to and Learning from "Sesame Street

A study was conducted to examine the influence of visual complexity in a televised pretentation o... more A study was conducted to examine the influence of visual complexity in a televised pretentation on attention and learning among young children. (Visual complexity is defined as a composite variable that assesses the number of perceptual elements in a visual display and accounts for the extent of movement or activity in a scene.) Forty-eight preschool children were exposed to half-hour segments, of "Sesame Street" programs in an environment that contained toys and other sources of distraction. Each child's visual attention to the television program was recorded by an unseen observer. Following the exposure, each child was asked a number of specific recall and recognition questions about the program. Results indicated a slight negative relationship between visual complexity and attention and a strong negative relationship between visual complexity and recall. Attention was found to be positively associated with recognition but not with recall. The findings suggest that visual attention was related to the learning of visually presented information but not necessarily to the learning of aurally presented information. :Author /FL)

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Associations Between Interactants Personality Traits and Their Feelings of Rapport in Interactions With Virtual Humans

This study explored associations between the personality traits of human subjects and their feeli... more This study explored associations between the personality traits of human subjects and their feelings of rapport when they interacted with either a virtual agent or a real human. The animated graphical agent, the Responsive Agent, responded to real human subjects' storytelling behavior, using appropriately timed nonverbal (contingent) feedback. Interactants' personality factors of Extroversion, Agreeableness, Conscientiousness, and Openness were related to three self-reported components of rapport: Positivity, Attentiveness, and Coordination; and to three behavioral indications of rapport: Meaningful Words, Disfluency, and Prolonged Words. The results revealed that subjects who scored higher on Conscientiousness reported higher rapport when interacting with another human, while subjects who scored higher on Agreeableness reported higher rapport while interacting with a virtual agent. The effects of these personality variables differed significantly across the two experimental groups. The conclusions provide a step toward further development of rapport theory that contributes to enhancing the interactional fidelity of virtual humans.

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Evaluating Causal Models

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Authentication technologies for the blind or visually impaired

USENIX conference on Hot topics in security, Aug 11, 2009

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The Influence of Synchrony and Sensory Modality on the Person Perception Process in Computer-Mediated Groups

Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, Jun 23, 2006

This study examined the effects of synchrony and the number of cues on the person perception proc... more

Computer mediated teamwork and the efficiency framework: Exploring the influence of synchrony and cues on media satisfaction and outcome success

Computers in Human Behavior, Sep 1, 2009

The Efficiency Framework holds that despite users' reported preferences for media requiring less ... more The Efficiency Framework holds that despite users' reported preferences for media requiring less effort and time, the expenditure of effort predicts outcome success. It maintains that there is an important distinction between media satisfaction and the perceived and actual success of interactions. This project tests these predictions, and extends the model by comparing synchronous to asynchronous media. One hundred and forty-two participants in groups of 3 or 4 engaged in collaboration over a 5 week period. Groups were assigned to either interact face-toface, or to one of four media conditions. The results support the need to distinguish media perception from outcome success. There were no significant main effects on success, but there was greater perceived group effectiveness for synchronous text and face-to-face interactions. Exploratory structural equation analysis showed that media characteristics predict copresence, which increase perceptions of group effectiveness, which in turn predict success. Results are discussed with respect to their pertinence for some theoretical and measurement biases in computer-mediated communication research. Computer mediated teamwork, p. 3 Computer networked collaboration systems have facilitated people's ability to work together remotely. However, there has been much debate about how to determine and measure satisfaction and what satisfaction levels portend for media's ability to facilitate successful interactions. Instrumentally speaking, people are able to adapt their communication behaviors to successfully utilize almost any medium regardless of media features or capabilities . However, being able to make something work does not mean it is the most efficient way to do it. Therefore, the Efficiency Framework Walther, in press; argues that even though people can use any medium to fulfill their interaction goals, some media facilitate communication more efficiently, with less effort, than others. Further, it recognizes that a lack of efficiency may lead to a reduction in satisfaction with a medium, but that neither satisfaction nor efficiency predict outcome quality or success. In other words, satisfaction with a medium may neither be necessary nor sufficient for an instrumentally successful interaction and behavior adaptation may require more effort and reduce efficiency and satisfaction. In this sense, the Efficiency Framework resembles media richness theory which, in its original form , argued that very lean media could be employed to address equivocal tasks. However, the Efficiency Framework argues that using less efficient, or more effortful media use is not necessarily a bad thing. In fact, it argues that the application of greater effort, as in behavior adaptation, yields greater investment and outcomes from the interaction. In several studies and theoretical positions including Social Presence and Media Richness, media success and efficiency have been judged in terms of people's self-reported satisfaction with the medium, or the interaction. Media comparisons following media richness or Computer mediated teamwork, p. 4 social presence models have typically focused on the influence of the number and type of cues, a medium provides for the interaction . Cues in this context refer to the nonverbal signals that are present in face to face interactions including those coming from voice (tone, inflection, etc) as well as visual information (eye gaze, facial expression, and even physical appearance). These cues generally communicate social status, dominance, attention, and even identity. When comparing media on this metric, researchers discuss the number of the communication cue systems a medium can convey as compared to the number of cues available in face to face interactions, or comparing media to each other. For example researchers may compare text based systems to video systems, or to unmediated face to face interactions. The general assumption is that media with fewer cues provide less satisfactory interactions and participants are generally asked how appropriate they thought the medium was, or how satisfied they were with the medium they used (see Walther & Parks, 2002 for a discussion). The Efficiency Framework maintains that efficiency, satisfaction, and success are separate constructs and should be treated as such. This project explicitly tests the predictions of the Efficiency Framework by comparing group projects done using unmediated face-to-face settings, high cue (audio video) synchronous, high cue asynchronous, low cue (text based) synchronous, and low cue asynchronous media and revealing how the different computer media used while preparing a final work product influenced objective final outcome success, people's perceived effectiveness, sense of copresence, and media satisfaction. A variety of theoretical perspectives and fields of study have tried to explain how different features of media (audio, video, text only) influence people's success, satisfaction with,

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Asynchronous videoconferencing: a hybrid communication prototype

This report introduces a hybrid asynchronous, distributed audio/video group conferencing system. ... more This report introduces a hybrid asynchronous, distributed audio/video group conferencing system. One of the chief benefits of Internet communication systems is that they allow communicators to write messages when they need to, and read messages when they can. Researchers, developers, and lay citizens are increasingly familiar with one of the benefits of e-mail and online text conferencing systems: the ability to use asynchronous, store-and-forward and retrieve-ondemand technologies for communication. However, most theories of interactive technologies suggest that users would achieve more accurate interpersonal perceptions and more effective and efficient work transactions if all visual and auditory non-verbal cues were available via desktop communication systems. Synchronous multimedia communication technologies achieve this, but forego the benefits of store-andforward and retrieve-on-demand. The technological barrier has been in wedding asynchronous communication to the storage, indexing, and retrieval of sound and video. This paper reviews the literature on the costs and benefits of synchronous and asynchronous interaction, and full-versus partial-cue messaging that prompted development of the system. It also discusses the technological basis of a working prototype asynchronous audio/video conferencing system, including its facility for a non-linear indexing system that allows users to access a/v messages by order, topic, time, or participant subset. Validation tests for the utility of asynchronous a/v that are being conducted are discussed. These address the affective, co-presence, satisfaction, and effectiveness outcomes such a system provides.

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Assessing General Education Outcomes: An Institution-Specific Approach. Final Report

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Avatars and Expectations: Influencing Perceptions in an Online Consumer Setting

Arousal Model Components in Television Programming: Form Activity and Violent Content

In research reported in this paper, an attempt was made to isolate arousal components due to the ... more In research reported in this paper, an attempt was made to isolate arousal components due to the "form" of a television program from arousal components due to the "content" of the program. The following hypotheses were formulated: (1) emotional arousal will take place in programing segments depicting violent acts, (2) arousal due to the cognitive task of decoding complex program form will take place in highly active programing segments, and (3) these two components of arousal occur independently of one another. The subjets in this study were upper-level undergraduates,in a mass, med,ie'course. Hypotheses one and three were confirmed,\,while hypothesis two was not. the results of the study are presented in both narrative and table format. (RB) p,

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Television Program Complexity and Ratings

This paper applied findings from studies using the kind of viewing measures used by social scient... more This paper applied findings from studies using the kind of viewing measures used by social scientists, to the relationship between programing and viewership when Viewership is measured by means used by producers. Total aggregate viewership and the relationship of viewers' ages to Viewership was concentrated on. Effects of competing programs on aggregate viewership (the issue of counter-programing) was not dealt with. The relationship of program form complexity to viewership as measured by ratings was also examined. The expected preference for middle program complexity aalues in general on the part of viewers failed to appear. Age was found to be strongly related to the amount of viewing,. and the degree of program complexity seemed to be moderately related to the age of 4' viewers. Changes in program complexity aPpeared to cancel one another out. Programs high in complexity were attractive to young adults; however, these individuals did not watch much television. The net effect appeared to be a rather flat response of total audience 'size to changes in program complexity. Noncommercial programs appeared to be less complex in form than commercial programs and their ratings suffered as 'a result. Also, program complexity was likely to be related to production'cost. (HB) a

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Serious Game, Serious Results: A Case Study with Evidence

Bilgisayar oyunları ve iletişim, Apr 20, 2016

This article describes the process used to design and development of a serious game to teach a di... more This article describes the process used to design and development of a serious game to teach a difficult topic, statistics. It describes specific decisions made at each stage by answering 12 general questions of game design and evaluation. These questions can be used by game designers to facilitate choices made at decision points and are applicable to any tutorial game development project. The resulting game was tested for learning efficacy in a formal quantitative experiment. The game was found to produce significantly better learning than conventional classroom instruction. However, student acceptance of learning from the game was mixed. Analysis of player responses to open ended questions about their experience suggest some specific reasons for this lack of acceptance that are worthy of further study. Of note, the single largest negative experience reported by players of the game was the lack of communication with the instructor and other students during game play. Suggestions for iterative improvement of the game derived from student comments are described. This article describes, in a case study format, a two-year project to develop a serious pedagogical game. The stages of the design process are presented as a series of questions designed to be used as a template for the game design process relevant to any pedagogical game. This paper describes what happened at each stage in the design of a specific game teaching statistics.

Perceived Group Effectiveness Measure

PsycTESTS Dataset, 2009

Outcome Success/Group Success Measure

PsycTESTS Dataset, 2009

Avatars and Expectations: Influencing Perceptions of Trustworthiness in an Online Consumer Setting

Psychnology Journal, 2014

This study investigates how individuals process an online product review when an avatar is includ... more This study investigates how individuals process an online product review when an avatar is included to represent the peer reviewer. The researchers predicted that both perceived avatar and textual credibility would have a positive influence on perceptions of source trustworthiness and the data supported this prediction. Expectancy violations theory also predicted that discrepancies between the perceived avatar and textual credibility would produce violations. Violations were statistically captured using a residual analysis. The results of this research ultimately demonstrated that discrepancies in perceived avatar and textual credibility can have a significant impact on perceptions of source trustworthiness. These findings suggest that predicting perceived source trustworthiness in an online consumer review setting goes beyond the linear effects of avatar and textual credibility.

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Social Presence/Media Satisfaction Measure

PsycTESTS Dataset, 2009

James Watt

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