Using Evaluation to Foster NYCETP Goals: Case Studies and Intercampsus Collaboration

This article describes the use of case studies as part of the formative evaluation conducted for the New York Collaborative for Excellence in Teacher Preparation (NYCETP). While case studies are often conducted for evaluations by outside experts, consultants, or evaluators themselves, we developed a strategy for case studies that used NYCETP faculty to case-study each other. This strategy involved cross-campus collaboration and cross-discipline (Arts & Science and Education) collaboration, and thus actively supported one of the NYCETP goals. The case study strategy also included the development of a faculty (peer) review form for evaluation of documentation of new and revised courses. Procedures for case studies and examples of case study benefits for faculty and evaluators are also described

A cognitive architecture for emergency response

Plan recognition, cognitive workload estimation and human assistance have been extensively studied in the AI and human factors communities, resulting in many techniques being applied to domains of various levels of realism. These techniques have seldom been integrated and evaluated as complete systems. In this paper, we report on the development of an assistant agent architecture that integrates plan recognition, current and future user information needs, workload estimation and adaptive information presentation to aid an emergency response manager in making high quality decisions under time stress, while avoiding cognitive overload. We describe the main components of a full implementation of this architecture as well as a simulation developed to evaluate the system. Our evaluation consists of simulating various possible executions of the emergency response plans used in the real world and measuring the expected time taken by an unaided human user, as well as one that receives information assistance from our system. In the experimental condition of agent assistance, we also examine the effects of different error rates in the agent's estimation of user's stat or information needs

Potable Water Leakage Prediction and Detection using Geospatial Analysis

Due to increasing water treatment costs and conservation needs, traditional water loss analysis and acoustic leak detection methods are becoming heavily scrutinized by water utilities. This study explores water loss in Johnson City, Tennessee and how geospatial data analysis techniques improve water loss mitigation. This project uses sample water system pressure data and ordinary kriging spatial interpolation methods to identify leakage areas for further investigation. Analysis of existing geographic information system (GIS) water utility datasets with interpolated hydraulic grade values at sample water pressure points produce manageable survey areas that pinpoint areas with possible water leakage. Field detection methods, including ground-penetrating radar (GPR) and traditional acoustic methods, are employed to verify leakage predictions. Ten leakage areas are identified and verified using traditional acoustic detection methods, work order research, and GPR. The resulting data show that spatial analysis coupled with geospatial analysis of field pressure information improves water loss mitigation

Women and Illegal Activities: Gender Differences and Women's Willingness to Comply Over Time

In recent years the topics of illegal activities such as corruption or tax evasion have attracted a great deal of attention. However, there is still a lack of substantial empirical evidence about the determinants of compliance. The aim of this paper is to investigate empirically whether women are more willing to be compliant than men and whether we observe (among women and in general) differences in attitudes among similar age groups in different time periods (cohort effect) or changing attitudes of the same cohorts over time (age effect) using data from eight Western European countries from the World Values Survey and the European Values Survey that span the period from 1981 to 1999. The results reveal higher willingness to comply among women and an age rather than a cohort effect. Working Paper 06-5