Bulletin Board System Research Articles

An evaluation of alternative distance tutoring models for at-risk elementary school children

Two programs for providing distance tutoring for at-risk elementary school children were implemented and evaluated in successive years. Each program employed 10 college education students as tutors for approximately 25 sixth-grade children. Tutoring exercises were oriented around writing and language skills development. Program 1 was restricted to electronic mail exchanges via a local bulletin board system, whereas Program 2 permitted both electronic mail and teleconferencing via a national network. Results showed moderate to extensive use of both systems by two-thirds of the students. Students' reactions were somewhat negative about Program 1, but positive about Program 2, seemingly because of the greater flexibility of the latter system and stronger relationships established with their tutors. Additional findings and discussion concern the types of communications made, tutor experiences and reactions, advantages and disadvantages of each system, and recommendations for future program design.

Teaching Political Science with a Bulletin Board System/ Danny M. Adkinson, Oklahoma State University

Teaching Political Science with a Bulletin Board System/ Danny M. Adkinson, Oklahoma State University

Computer Consult: Moving from Corkboard to an Electronic Bulletin Board for Nursing

Ss director of the Learning Center at the University of Texas at Austin School of Nursing, one of my primary tasks is to develop new ways to incorporate computer content into the existing curriculum. One tool that seems to hold much promise for intriguing the learner as well as for meeting real faculty/ student needs is the electronic bulletin board. Simply put, an electronic bulletin board system (BBS) is a way to exchange information through the use of a personal computer. Our bulletin board system is called SON*NET and is run by OPUS Communication Software@* which allows a user to go on-line with bulletin boards and networks around the country and even around the world. By dialing 512471-7584 and using a personal computer with telecommunication software and a modem, users can take advantage of the bulletin board's features. For instance, the message section of the BBS has several public forums, one of which is called Abled. Nurses (and lay persons) can call the BBS, and by menu selection, connect to this conference to ask questions of or discuss issues with other bulletin board users around the country regarding

Minimizing information overload: the ranking of electronic messages

The decision to examine a message at a particular point in time should be made rationally and economically if the mes sage recipient is to operate efficiently. Electronic message distribution systems, electronic bulletin board systems, and telephone systems capable of leaving digitized voice messages can contribute to "information overload", defined as the eco nomic loss associated with the examination of a number of non- or less-relevant messages. Our model provides a formal method for minimizing expected information overload. The proposed adaptive model predicts the usefulness of a message based on the available message features and may be useful to rank messages by expected importance or economic worth. The assumptions of binary and two Poisson indepen dent probabilistic distributions of message feature frequencies are examined, and methods of incorporating these distributions into the ranking model are examined. Ways to incorporate user supplied relevance feedback are suggested. Analytic perfor mance measures are proposed to predict system quality. Other message handling models, including rule based expert systems, are seen as special cases of the model. The performance is given for a set of UNIX shell programs which rank USENET messages. Problems with the use of this formal model are examined, and areas for future research are suggested.

地域気象観測ネットワークシステムの開発

Agricultural information systems particularly for weather data are important for agricultural production, but they can not be said to have been developed fully.A local network system for weather observation at the production area of Japanese pears, Sekijou in Ibaraki has been developed on the basis of the personal computer network using public telephone lines.It consists of three robot observation points in addition to the computer network. At the main observation point, nine meteorological elements are measured, and only air temperature is at other two. Data measured at each point are sent to the main computer through the public telephone line once in a day. Growers can get the data through their own computers. The software to handle this system has been developed and added to the original one which was developed by Sekijou Agricultural Cooperative and serves as a bulletin board system (BBS) for local communication.

苫小牧高専教育メディア開発センターの発足と研究活動

The Education Media Center is composed of a computer room, library, language laboratory and other teaching materials. In this center, teaching materials are devised and produced in order to make use of various kinds of media for instruction.In the first half of this paper, the authors report the function of the Education Media Center and the peculiarity of the education system deviced by the authors. In the latter half, they report the teaching and research activities; the development of teaching materials and the application of BBS (electronic Bulletin Board System) to the education of the college.

An Inexpensive, Microcomputer-based Bulletin Board System for Extension Programs

Abstract A microcomputer-based bulletin board using the FIDO software package was established at the Univ. of Massachusetts for the distribution of information in the cooperative extension programs of home horticulture, fruits, vegetables, cranberries, and integrated pest management. System establishment costs were under $3000, and costs for the first year were about $200 for the maintenance of a telephone line. The system logged 4595 calls from university personnel, county extension staff, state agencies, and farmers during the first year of operation (July 1986 to June 1987). A total of 307 individual information files were uploaded to the system by both university and county extension staff, while 387 downloads occurred from the system.

Electronic bulletin board in a University Library — The University of Minnesota experience

For almost a decade, some libraries have offered access to electronic bulletin boards (Bulletin Board System, or BBS) for a variety of community service purposes. Public libraries, in particular, have been at the forefront of this development. Patrick Dewey has documented the BBS development he pioneered at the North‐Pulaski public library and other activity in this field.

AMIGO: Advanced messaging in groups — Interim report

The focus of the AMIGO Project in the framework of COST-11 ter is to explore group communication in the context of distributed office systems. As a more short term aspect the project tries to close the gap between the current standardisation efforts in distributed messaging (X.400) and the present-day centralized computer conferencing and bulletin board systems. One of the long term goals is also to support structured and more regulated communication in distributed systems. Piloting implementation of partial results and experiments are part of the project activities.

Computer‐based communications

Three major forms of communication are publishing papers, books and the like; participating in conferences; and informal, usually verbal, contacts. Electronic or computer‐based communication, which is an effective method of maintaining interpersonal contacts, can be included in this latter category, although it can, in fact, be considered to cut across all three categories. For example, the formal submission, refereeing, editing and publishing of scholarly papers can be carried out via computer networks (eg Blend); and the posting of notices on electronic bulletin board systems can be considered akin to the placing of notices in the small ads columns of newspapers. Meeting and conference participation can be effected by teleconferencing systems (eg Adonis — a Soviet system, not the CD‐ROM journal document delivery system) or by joining, for example, the computer conferences which exist on say The Source or EuroKom; and, of course, electronic mail (such as DataMail or Telecom Gold) can be used for the informal communications.

RE: Views

An electronic bulletin board is a computer‐hosted facility for exchange of messages, programs, and data files among a group of computer users. This book offers advice to the prospective SYSOP (SYStem OPerator) There are chapters explaining the potential uses and users of bulletin board systems (BBSs), hardware and software necessary to operate a BBS, content and management of BBS systems, and sample printouts from representative bulletin boards. A comprehensive list of available bulletin board software and vendors of BBS software is also included.

?Anonymity is part of the magic?: Individual manipulation of computer-mediated communication contexts

This study looks at the behavior of self-selected users of an electronic bulletin board system (BBS). Its goal is to investigate the reported lack of social context cues in computer mediated communication contexts. Using participant observation methods, the study demonstrates how BBS users establish online identities. The study also identifies communication “leaders” who maintain their identities and leadership roles through manipulation of the BBS social context. These findings appear to contradict perspectives that characterize computer-mediated communications as “deindividuated” (Kiesler et al, 1984).

SfAA Announces the Anthropologists’ Electronic Bulletin Board System

The Society for Applied Anthropology and Portland State University are now sponsoring an electronic bulletin board for use by all anthropologists. ABBS (Anthropologists' Bulletin Board System) is open to members of all professional anthropological societies including those serving archaeology and physical anthropology. The phone number is (503) 229-3912.

Distributed computer conferencing

By computer conferencing is meant a kind of computer-mediated message system with special kinds of advanced support for group communication. By the word “bulletin board system” is known systems with similar capabilities. Computer conference systems usually also provide more advanced database support for messaging than other message systems. This paper first defines the basic functionality in a single-host stand-alone computer conference system, summarizing the functions of several well-known systems. The paper then discusses how the same functionality can be made available in a distributed OSI environment, in particular based on current CCITT/ISO thinking in the X.400/MOTIS standards. The paper has been developed within the COST-11-ter AMIGO (Advanced Messaging in Groups) project.

Information infrastructure

INFORMATION. More than data, less than knowledge, information surrounds us in manifold forms. It arrives in cascades of text, sound and imagery by way of books, newspapers, magazines, journals, reports, memoranda, television, telephone and radio. In the last decade or so, electronic information media have emerged from the research world and begun their inexorable spread to the business and residential sectors. Electronic messaging, conferencing and bulletin board systems are available in public and private forms. The cost of personal computer and workstation technology is falling within reach of all sectors of the economy. Networking, in almost zoological variety, is available in local, wide-area, public and private, shared and dedicated forms. Protocols and standards abound, forming a kind of primordial soup (to borrow a phrase from Julia Child) out of which one hopes will evolve a lingua digitalis vulgaris, or common digital language.

TAXACOM (BUF), an electronic bulletin board system

TAXACOM (BUF), an electronic bulletin board system

Uses of political computer bulletin boards

Research was conducted to investigate electorate motivations for using political computer bulletin board systems (BBSs) and the satisfactions obtained from use. Results from a telephone survey of 117 political BBS users indicated that surveillance and curiosity were the most commonly mentioned motivations for political BBS use. Overall political BBS use was motivated equally by surveillance, personal identity, and diversion motives. The BBS was evaluated most highly for satisfying surveillance needs.

Research networks, scientific communication, and the personal computer

Personal-computer-based communications media-electronic mail, bulletin boards, and computer conferencing-have great potential for integrating scholarly and scientific research networks. Research networks, or information organizations of faculty who share an interest in a research area, are central to scholarly and scientific progress. They have been critized, however, for their exclusion of young researchers and of faculty at isolated or low prestige institutions. Studies show that computer networking opens network access by obliterating social barriers and status distinctions. It has often been argued that, if used as a medium for research network communication, computer networking could democratize research networks. Personal computer information services designed for personal computer uses, as well as personal-computer-based bulletin board systems, represent the most promising avenue for research network communication owing to their low cost, flexibility, and egalitarian ethos.

Microcomputer applications: An electronic bulletin board system for the sales profession-a review and proposal

Microcomputer applications: An electronic bulletin board system for the sales profession-a review and proposal

Book Reviews : The Complete Handbook of Personal Computer Communications

Glossbrenner provides a foundation for telecommunications, with all a beginner needs to go online. Services and systems discussed included The Source, CompuServe, The Dow ~ones News/Retrieval Service, DIALOG, BRS, ORBIT, The Information Bank, and NewsNet. Additional features include information on bulletin-board systems, tips on how to download software, computerized conferencing, electronic shopping, how to interface with your office from home, electronic mail, and a good glossary.