Enthusiasm For Technology Research Articles

Electric two-wheeler adoption in India – A discrete choice analysis of motivators and barriers affecting the potential electric two-wheeler buyers

An impetus towards the electrification of mobility is crucial for India. However, the adoption rates of electric two-wheelers remain low, and hence, for fruitful penetration of electric two-wheelers in India, this study analyses the factors affecting the adoption behaviour of electric two-wheelers using discrete choice models. This study uses data collected from 1375 potential electric two-wheeler buyers of Bengaluru, India, to study the influence of various vehicle attributes such as purchase price, operating cost, charging time, driving range, charging infrastructure and exhaust emissions on the intention to adopt electric two-wheelers. In addition, the impact of important policies such as free and reserved parking, access to priority lanes and toll tax exemption for electric two-wheeler owners is also analysed and discussed in this study. Apart from the vehicle attributes, this study also studies the effect of socio-demographic variables, travel variables and certain attitudinal latent variables such as environmental enthusiasm, technological enthusiasm, and perceived social image on the electric two-wheeler adoption behaviour. The results reveal purchase price, operating cost and charging time to have a significant negative impact and driving range and density of the charging infrastructure network to have a significant positive impact on the intention to adopt electric two-wheelers.

Malaysian Science Teachers’ Tech-infused Instruction and Assessment Strategies

Science education consistently displays unique traits shaped by evolving educational landscapes, as well as global trends and developments. Despite global enthusiasm for technology in education, there is a notable dearth of studies on Malaysian science teachers' skills in integrating instructional technology. Studies in this region seldom delve deeply into the use of specific Information and Communication Technology (ICT) tools and web platforms in teaching and assessment, indicating a significant gap in the literature on technology integration in Malaysian science classrooms. This paper presents a study carried out involving a survey of 36 science teachers across 16 secondary schools in a district in Kelantan, one of the eastern states in Malaysia. It aimed to achieve the following research objectives: 1) To examine science teachers’ use of digital tools and technology in lesson planning and the development of educational materials; 2) To investigate science teachers’ incorporation of technology into their science instruction; and 3) To determine how technology is integrated into the science assessment and reporting process. The findings reveal a high level of digital resourcefulness among teachers, contrasting with prior studies that indicated minimal technological integration in Malaysian classrooms. Teachers predominantly relied on web resources like YouTube and online textbooks for lesson planning, while Microsoft PowerPoint and Google Slides were frequently used in instruction. Google Classroom and Quizizz were identified as the most common platforms in science assessments. The findings highlight a significant shift in technology usage, advocating for continued professional development, collaborative networks, and policy reforms to further integrate technology into science education. It also suggests that future studies should focus on more specific aspects of technology use, aiming to enhance its impact on teaching methodologies and curriculum alignment, thus making a significant contribution to the discourse on instructional technology in Malaysian science education.

Who will buy electric vehicles? Segmenting the young Indian buyers using cluster analysis

Market segmentation is an essential tool that can be used for the effective and extensive adoption of emerging innovations such as electric vehicles. This study uses a multi-item questionnaire to collect data from young educated Indian students, which is used to understand the factors that affect the adoption of electric vehicles among potential vehicle buyers. Confirmatory factor analysis revealed ten latent variables that impact the adoption of electric vehicles, out of which eight variables, viz. social image, social influence, anxiety (or perceived risks), perceived environmental benefits, performance expectancy, effort expectancy, facilitating conditions, and attitude, are used for segmenting and profiling potential vehicle buyers into clusters, and the other two latent factors viz. environmental enthusiasm and technological enthusiasm are used to measure and analyse the differences in personality traits across the different clusters. Segmentation technique, based on k-means clustering, revealed three clusters in the respondents which are found to show positive, neutral (slightly positive), and negative perceptions towards all clustering variables and are subsequently labelled as “innovation adoption leads”, “innovation adoption indifferents”, and “innovation adoption idlers” respectively. The findings from this research provide better knowledge and understanding to decision-makers and can help accelerate the widespread acceptance of electric vehicles.

Uncovering untapped potentials: diversifying business may yield profitable earnings, yet it remains an overlooked strategy among beekeepers

Beekeeping is a rewarding business that offers numerous opportunities beyond just honey production. While most beekeepers are solely focused on honey production, this approach can be limiting due to the fluctuation of weather and market conditions. Therefore, it is essential to diversify your business by exploring other honey bee products and services. Our research investigated the beekeeping practices of 100 beekeepers from seven regions in southern Brazil to identify the most common practices and potential opportunities for diversification. Our study focused on ten major beekeeping practices, including products or services as honey, queen rearing, swarm, propolis, pollen, beeswax, royal jelly, sanitary control activity, digital technology enthusiasm, and migratory beekeeping. We used a semi-structured questionnaire consisting of 86 questions that were analysed with generalized Procrustes analysis and clustered heatmap. Overall, we found that honey production, digital technology enthusiasm, and migratory beekeeping are the most common beekeeping practices among beekeepers, regionally. Conversely, the exploitation of beeswax, pollen, swarm, and royal jelly production were relatively rare, creating opportunities for beekeepers looking to diversify their earnings and reduce competition. Additionally, our research revealed that certain regions have adopted specific beekeeping practices better than others, which suggests that there are possibilities for improvement and growth in the beekeeping industry. Finally, our research demonstrates the potential for beekeepers to diversify their business beyond just honey production. By exploring other honey bee products and services, beekeepers can reduce the impact of market limitations caused by weather and market fluctuations, ultimately creating a more resilient and profitable business.

Digital health applications in the self-management of epilepsy-A survey on patients' perspective.

Digital health applications can be prescribed since 2019 in Germany, which is likely to facilitate a broad use of epilepsy self-management applications, possibly directly connected to clinical systems via telematics infrastructures. This article reports on patients' interest in digital support for epilepsy self-management, influencing factors and patients' knowledge about digitization of health care in Germany. This work is based on self-reported data from 115 people with epilepsy participating in an anonymous online survey with a total of 54 questions covering several topics, including sociodemographics and epilepsy manifestation, use of technology in general and for treatment support, training programs, affinity for technology, knowledge on the digital infrastructure in Germany, and self-efficacy in dealing with chronic illness. The self-constructed questionnaire uses existing instruments like TA-EG, SES6G, and Hoffmeyer-Zlotnik sociodemographic questionnaire. To analyze the knowledge about digitalization in health care, a combination of self-assessment and knowledge quiz was used. The analysis was performed using descriptive methods and inferential statistics (t-test, reliability analysis, and correlations). Participants were most interested in seizure alerting and documentation with the possibility to share documentation with physicians. The analysis of technology affinity showed medium enthusiasm, with positively perceived consequences being rated higher than the negatively perceived consequences of technology use. Knowledge on national health infrastructures was mediocre and training on this was judged to be essential and desired. Furthermore, a significant correlation was found between interest in use and affinity for technology (enthusiasm for technology [r = 0.29; P = 0.00]) and positively perceived consequences of technology (r = 0.33; P = 0.00). Our results underline the high relevance of digital solutions for patients and the importance of individual training opportunities in digital health literacy, thereby enabling patients to decide competently for or against offered digital solutions.

Innovative dashboard for optimising emergency obstetric care geographical accessibility in Nigeria: Qualitative study with technocrats

ObjectiveTo explore perspectives of public sector technocrats on the role of and considerations needed for implementing an innovative dashboard that leverages geographic information systems (GIS) in supporting optimisation of emergency obstetric care (EmOC) geographical accessibility in Nigeria. MethodsTwenty-three semi-structured interviews were conducted in person or virtually with six policymakers and 17 senior civil servants in Nigeria. Braun and Clarke's six-step approach to thematic analysis, which involved data familiarisation, initial code generation, searching for themes, reviewing themes, defining themes, and producing the report, was applied. ResultsDespite recognising the ideal of data-driven needs assessment, in reality, factors such as political pressure, persistent community advocacy, and donor funding drive decisions on siting EmOC facilities. Irregular short-term political cycles and exigencies in health systems prevent new facilities from being established or motivate a focus on facility quality over quantity. There was a strong appetite for using GIS-enabled dashboards to support planning, with enthusiasm for such technology more apparent where innovation was already part of government's philosophy. A digital dashboard that is dynamic, reflective of reality, inclusive of public and private providers, incorporates facility characteristics, and can test accessibility scenarios, was deemed particularly valuable. Its value proposition extended beyond EmOC and provider type. However, its success as a policy tool will depend on the veracity and currency of the data informing it. ConclusionsTechnocrats welcome dynamic GIS-enabled dashboards as it offers a significant step-change compared to the current practice for EmOC service planning. Value-for-money of such innovations must be considered if implemented. Public Interest SummaryPlanning and siting of emergency services used by pregnant women (EmOC) in many low-resource countries are mostly haphazard. However, there is increasing recognition that technology can refine this process. In this study, we explored perspectives of public sector technocrats in Nigeria on the role of and considerations needed for implementing an innovative digital dashboard that leverages geographic information systems in optimising EmOC geographical accessibility. We found that current planning is mainly driven by political pressure, community advocacy, and donor funding. However, there is a strong appetite in government for using GIS-enabled dashboards to inform service planning, with enthusiasm for such technology appearing to be more grounded in states where innovation was already part of the government's philosophy. Yet, concerns about data accuracy were expressed. Broadly, dashboards that are dynamic, reflective of reality, inclusive of public and private providers, incorporate facility characteristics, and can test access scenarios, were deemed particularly valuable.

Enactive mastery experience improves attitudes towards digital technology via self-efficacy – a pre-registered quasi-experiment

ABSTRACT The purpose of this research is to improve attitudes towards digital technology. To this end, we compared two ways of introducing technology: an enactive mastery versus a vicarious experience. The former aimed at improving employees’ self-efficacy to use a robotic technology and, thereby, their attitudes towards it. We examined three attitude dimensions that are relevant when implementing new technology: (1) technology enthusiasm, (2) resistance to change, and (3) job insecurity. We also tested for self-efficacy as mediator between experience and attitudes. The results of the pre-registered quasi-experiment with operators working in the automotive sector (N = 106) supported our hypothesis: Enactive mastery experience, in which workers actively engaged with the technology, led to a higher technology enthusiasm as compared to vicarious experience. This effect was explained by an increase in self-efficacy. Additional analyses revealed that enactive mastery experience also led to lower resistance to change, but not to lower job insecurity. The findings highlight how organisations can apply a simple, yet effective strategy to successfully implement technology at work and motivate employees to use it. They also reveal self-efficacy as the underlying psychological mechanism of enactive mastery, thereby providing an important starting point for designing interventions in organisations.

Five-factor model, technology enthusiasm and technology anxiety.

Older adults need to participate in the digital society, as societal and personal changes and what they do with the remaining time that they have in their older years has an undeniable effect on motivation, cognition and emotion. Changes in personality traits were investigated in older adults over the period 2019-2021. Technology enthusiasm and technology anxiety are attitudes that affect the relationship to the technology used. The changes in the score of technology enthusiasm and technology anxiety were the dependent variables. They were investigated with personality traits, age, gender, education, whether someone lives alone, cognitive function, digital social participation (DSP) and health literacy as predictors of the outcome. The Edwards-Nunnally index and logistic regression were used. The results indicated that DSP, lower age, lower neuroticism and higher education were indicative of less technology anxiety. High DSP and high extraversion are indicative of technology enthusiasm. DSP and attitude towards technology seem to be key in getting older adults to stay active online.

“Ecologically camping, eating, drinking wine.” Material and knowledge flows in the Minimum Cost Housing Group’s ECOL Operation, 1971-76

For approximately fifty years, McGill University’s Minimum Cost Housing Group (MCHG) has undertaken research on the “human settlement problems of the poor.” This paper focuses on the group’s activities from 1970 to1976, and more specifically the “ECOL Operation” initiated by the group’s first director, Colombian architect and UN consultant Alvaro Ortega. The story of the ECOL Operation gives insight into some unanticipated feedback loops associated with the foreign-aid-funded knowledge economy. The ECOL Operation was pitched as a technical and material research program to develop self-help housing solutions for the “Third World.” In practice, it was an improvised mix of international development aspiration, Appropriate Technology enthusiasm, industrial research and development, and ecological design rhetoric. The paper argues that the MCHG’s efforts became most compelling as a blueprint for a set of designers and activists rethinking the consumerist lifestyles and material flows of the Global North. This highlights a more complex background to the counterculturally-inflected ventures of 1970s ecological design. The scene was more closely connected to the Cold War complex of intergovernmental organizations, development agendas, and industrial capitalism than its participants may have imagined.

Using Drosophila Oogenesis in the Classroom to Increase Student Participation in Biomedical Research.

Students that participate in undergraduate research benefit in multiple ways, including improved learning outcomes, increased enthusiasm for science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) fields, and increased likelihood of continuation into a STEM career. These benefits are even more pronounced for students that are traditionally under-represented in STEM, although these students often face barriers to participation in traditional apprenticeship-style research experiences. Course-based undergraduate research experiences (CUREs) are a promising and increasingly popular approach to increase undergraduate participation in research in a way that is inclusive of all students. Here, we describe how Drosophila oogenesis can be used as the basis for CUREs in a wide variety of courses. We provide an overview of our own oogenesis-based CURE, as well as suggestions for how this CURE could be adapted to accommodate a variety of schedules, course sizes, and institution types. Our goal is to simplify the process for CURE implementation in the hopes that a greater number of instructors choose to implement a CURE in their own courses.

Role played by social factors and privacy concerns in autonomous vehicle adoption

This study aims to test additional AV adoption factors by considering social factors and privacy concerns in the AV era while relying on earlier adoption models and the AV adoption literature. Unlike in most previous studies, the focus is on millennials, namely a group of potential AV adopters with distinct characteristics that must be studied separately. Moreover, fully AVs are considered, i.e., level 5, a more distant and controversial phenomenon of much greater concern for most people. The data were collected in an online questionnaire distributed to a sample of university students and the proposed model was tested with structural equation modelling (SEM). The results show that privacy concerns in the AV era together with perceived safety have a significant effect on general concerns. Alongside general concerns, technological enthusiasm, social factors, perceived benefits, and facilitating conditions affect attitude to AVs. Finally, a more positive attitude to AV, perceived safety, and facilitating conditions is shown to lead to a stronger intention to adopt an AV. Apart from these theoretical contributions, practical contributions include new perspectives for policymakers while designing future AV development strategies. Namely, car manufacturers should strongly emphasize and demonstrate the safety features of their AVs, promote them through technology enthusiasts and focus on forming positive attitude to AVs through different aspects of AVs. Governments should also do their part by establishing support infrastructures that encourage individuals to choose an AV.

Part of the Conversation: Workforce Professionals' Perspectives on the Roles and Impacts of Workforce Technologies

Amidst recent enthusiasm for data-driven technologies in workforce development, prior HCI research has explored job seekers' perspectives to inform the design of new technologies that could support their job search. However, in practice, the process of looking for work is often embedded in local workforce development ecosystems, where networks of organizations provide a range of services, from employment consulting, to resume workshops, to job skills training programs. Although prior CSCW work has explored the role of algorithms in social services, there has been little work investigating how algorithmic systems may shape workforce development professionals' interactions with clients and how they might be better designed to complement these professionals' work and responsibilities. To begin to address this gap, we conducted an interview study with five workforce development professionals in the US in both management and client-facing roles. Our findings contribute to research on how algorithmic systems are shaping workforce development, shedding light on the importance of the relationship building work that workforce professionals engage in with clients, the difficulty in maintaining boundaries in the face of resource and information challenges, and the ways that workforce development technologies are shaping the work of workforce development.

Quantitative Monitoring Practice Change: Reply.

We thank Dr. Bowdle et al.1 for their interest in our article showing how quantitative monitoring can be incorporated into clinical practice.2 We fear they may have missed the major lesson of this work, however, which was modifying clinician behavior so that the vast majority of our patients benefitted from quantitative monitoring of neuromuscular blockade.Bowdle et al. assert that we used acceleromyography only to save money, at the cost of patient safety, and that we claimed device technologies were interchangeable. To the contrary, our primary focus has always been patient safety, and we discussed technology differences multiple times in our article. In our methods and discussion, we recommended acceleromyography ratio greater than1.0 and further explicitly stated that acceleromyography ratios 0.9 to 1.0 may represent incomplete reversal. Supplemental Digital Content figure 2 stated that the acceleromyography train-of-four ratio goal should be greater than 1. We recognized the differences. Bowdle et al. discount acceleromyography technology on the basis of baseline train-of-four ratios. A better approach may be to look at studies measuring the train-of-four ratio measurement biases for the two technologies compared to the reference standard, mechanomyography. The mechanomyography–electromyography train-of-four bias has been reported as 4.7%, suggesting that electromyography overestimates the train-of-four ratio by about 0.04 compared to mechanomyography.3 The mechanomyography-acceleromyography train-of-four biases range from –8.1 to 9.8%, suggesting that acceleromyography may overestimate the train-of-four ratio by as much as 0.09 compared to mechanomyography.3–5 Both technologies overestimate train-of-four ratios compared to the reference standard according to the research. Insight about these technologies can also be found in 25 studies from 1992 to 2018 that documented many patient benefits associated with recovery from neuromuscular blockade, including improved swallowing, pharyngeal function, airway patency, vision, speech, muscle strength, breathing mechanics, and airway patency. Thirteen of these studies used nonnormalized acceleromyography of which 9 studies cited 0.9 as the train-of-four ratio cutoff for improved patient outcomes. We still believe in attaining an acceleromyography ratio greater than 1, although this evidence suggests it may not be necessary. In our professional practice change, we set the train-of-four ratio goal at 0.9 despite our mixed practice of electromyography and acceleromyography for simplicity in messaging. Additionally, our anesthesia records do not specify the type of quantitative monitor used, eliminating our ability to parse out our patient data based on the technology used. However, table 3 reflected our practice of using acceleromyography with a target train-of-four ratio greater than 1, which showed that postimplementation average train-of-four ratios were greater than 1 for all reversal groups. In summary, we chose to use acceleromyography not just to save $20 to $25 per patient (cost of proprietary electromyography sensor array), but, more importantly, because it is a well-studied, reliable way to monitor neuromuscular function.Bowdle et al. question the validity of our findings due to manual data entry by our physicians and Certified Registered Nurse Anesthetists. Research staff data collection represents a more robust study design, but it is simply unattainable in a process improvement project involving all patients given a nondepolarizing neuromuscular blocker (24 hours/day, 7 days/week, 365 days/year). We would have preferred automatic electronic data entry, which we stated in our article. The suggestion by Bowdle et al. that our providers falsified train-of-four ratios, however, would not be entirely addressed by electronic data entry because manual override would be possible.Bowdle et al. advocate for subjective tactile twitch counting. Our practice uses quantitative monitoring.Bowdle et al. claim that TwitchView array failures are rare, citing controlled observational studies. It appears we cannot reproduce this level of reliability in our clinical practice. Our article describes a real-life application of two technologies present and functional for use by all providers. There is enthusiasm for both technologies at our institution, but our providers consistently report more TwitchView equipment failures. An observation of 100 consecutive uses of the TwitchView by Dr. Michael Todd, M.D. (University of Minnesota School of Medicine, Minneapolis, Minnesota; written communication, August 12 and 16, 2022) demonstrated 84% success without corrective measures, 10% success after corrective maneuvers, and 6% failure rate due either to device or cable problems, electrode failures, or uncorrectable electrode dislodgement. These data come from an experienced provider who observed that skin preparation and reinforced array taping (including application of benzoin) increased success rates. In our article, we reported the experiences of our providers that may be improved with meticulous application and troubleshooting of the TwitchView equipment.Understanding the equipment used in anesthesia care is important. We believe there is more than one acceptable technology to attain quantitative neuromuscular measurements. We recognize there are idiosyncrasies of acceleromyography technology. However, acceleromyography is an accepted and useful method for monitoring neuromuscular blockade, especially when the hand is accessible. We appreciate the excellent functionality of the TwitchView and Stimpod and will continue using both devices.The authors declare no competing interests.

Technology anxiety and technology enthusiasm vs digital ageism

Technology anxiety and technology enthusiasm vs digital ageism

Methods Used in Digital Citizenship: A Systematic Literature Review

Digital citizenship attempts to assist the younger generation in making prudent and acceptable decisions in various digital contexts. Society’s disregard for digital citizenship has negative consequences, including cyberbullying and other crimes. Therefore, this study investigates the approaches and methodologies utilized in digital citizenship by conducting a thorough literature review. The research analyzed three academic databases comprising papers from some of the most esteemed periodicals. Each search engine was provided with the keywords “digital citizenship”, “digital literacy”, “digital native,” and “digital citizenship-related approaches.” The search was limited to articles having “digital citizenship” and “citizenships” in the title, abstract, and body. To ensure that individual results were extracted from each database, duplicate articles were manually removed in a cascade fashion from one database to the next. Digital citizenship encompasses a far more extensive set of skills than computer or media literacy. This is due to citizens’ enthusiasm for digital technologies in industrialized nations such as the United States, the United Kingdom, and China. Problem-solving, security, information processing and innovation, and content communication are related to digital citizenship. Despite its value, this appraisal has a few drawbacks. According to the findings, implementing digital citizenship solutions proved challenging. Future research should employ mixed method approaches to understand better digital citizenship acceptance and uptake based on the findings of this study.

Best friend or broken tool? Exploring the co‐existence of humans and artificial intelligence in the workplace ecosystem

AbstractArtificial intelligence (AI) has become an important topic in business literature and strategy talk. Yet, much of this literature is normative and conceptual in nature. How organizational members perceive AI and the job role changes that come with it is, so far, largely unknown territory for both HR scholars and practitioners. We sought to investigate the relationship between humans and AI and conducted an in‐depth exploratory study into the co‐existence of humans and two early‐stage AI‐solutions, one for “low‐status” automation and another for “high‐status”; augmentation. We suggest that different organizational groups may engage in distinctly different sensemaking processes regarding AI, an important insight for successful HRM strategies when AI is being introduced into the workplace. Moreover, contrary to recent conceptual work, our findings indicate that AI‐enabled automation and augmentation solutions may not be detached from nor exist in tension with each other. They are deeply embedded in organizational processes and workflows for which people who co‐exist with the technologies must take ownership. Our findings, in part, go against discussions on AI “taking over” jobs or deskilling humans. We describe a more nuanced version of reality fluctuating around the various ways different organizational groups encounter different AI‐solutions in their daily work. Finally, our study warns against unconditional technological enthusiasm, managerial ignorance of the nature of work that employees undertake in different organizational groups, and a neglect of the time and effort required to successfully implement AI‐solutions that affect not only the home organization but also members of the broader ecosystem.

PeaceTech

In recent years, the world’s enthusiasm for new technology has been accompanied by growing concern over the harmful social, environmental, and economic impacts of these same technologies. In response to what is often referred to as a “techlash” <xref ref-type="bibr" rid="ref1" xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">[1]</xref> , a new focus on “tech for good” can be found in the private sector as well as in higher education and the realm of governments. For example, Communitech, an organization dedicated to supporting tech startups in the region of Waterloo, ON, Canada, rebranded its annual tech summit around the theme of tech for good in 2018 <xref ref-type="bibr" rid="ref2" xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">[2]</xref> . This included the development and launch of the Canadian Tech for Good Declaration, an effort to build the commitment of companies to a set of six principles, including things like “leave no one behind” and “think inclusively at every stage” <xref ref-type="bibr" rid="ref3" xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">[3]</xref> .

Patient Perceptions of Wearable and Smartphone Technologies for Remote Outcome Monitoring in Total Knee Arthroplasties.

While there is enthusiasm for wearables and smartphone technologies in evaluating clinical outcomes among clinicians, less is known about the willingness of patients who have osteoarthritis (OA) to consent for remote outcome monitoring. We developed an Institutional Review Board-approved questionnaire to assess patient perceptions of remote monitoring technologies in a high-volume orthopaedic clinical center. Fifty total knee arthroplasty (TKA) patients (56% female; mean age: 61 years, range: 23-89) and fifty nonoperative OA knee patients (54% female; mean age: 58 years, range: 25-89) routinely consulted in the clinic as part of their OA treatment and consented to participate in the study. Patient perceptions were compared using Pearson's chi-square analyses with a significance threshold of p < 0.05. We found that TKA patients were more receptive to the use of smartphone apps (84 vs. 60%, p = 0.008) and wearable sensors (80 vs. 48%, p < 0.001) and learning to use custom wearables (72 vs. 38%, p = 0.002) than nonoperative OA knee patients as part of their treatment. Likewise, the majority of TKA patients were willing to use the global positioning system in their postoperative technology (54 vs. 18%, p < 0.001), especially if they were only active during certain circumstances (62 vs. 24%, p < 0.001). TKA patients also expressed willingness to have their body movement (68%), balance (70%), sleep (76%), and cardiac output (80%) tracked using remote technologies. Overall, we found that TKA patients were highly receptive to using wearable technology in their treatments, whereas nonoperative OA knee patients were generally unreceptive. Our study challenges the concept that current wearable technology approaches will be generally effective as a tool to remotely monitor all patients across the OA severity landscape.

Teaching Machines: The History of Personalized Learning by Audrey Watters (review).

Reviewed by: Teaching Machines: The History of Personalized Learning by Audrey Watters Victoria Cain (bio) Teaching Machines: The History of Personalized Learning By Audrey Watters. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2021. Pp. 328. Prior to the widespread exhaustion with online learning prompted by the pandemic, educational technology media coverage in the United States was a lesson in breathless excess. Blogs, trade journals, and national news platforms detailed how digital tools were "disrupting," "revolutionizing," and "transforming" American schools. Most of these articles lacked any historical context, or relegated it to illustrated sidebars featuring slates, film projectors, and other bygone classroom tools. In a lively new book, independent scholar Audrey Watters reminds us that nothing is new under the ed-tech sun. Watters's Teaching Machines uses the history of B. F. Skinner's teaching machine to explore the broader psychological, pedagogical, and economic history of programmed learning. Teaching Machines chronicles how Skinner's crude machine, designed to provide immediate feedback and allow students to work at their own pace, piqued the interest of psychologists and reporters and became the blueprint for future technologies. Watters makes clear that techno-optimism, efforts to use technology for social engineering, and the drive to prioritize financial profit over pedagogical value feature as prominently in the lifespan of earlier teaching machines as they do in educational technology today. While ed-tech entrepreneurs trumpet "personalized learning" as a brand-new idea, Teaching Machines makes clear that educators and engineers have been attempting to enable students to learn on their own since the 1920s. Teaching machines established many of the norms for digital technologies, breaking lessons down into small chunks of content, providing users with immediate results, and allowing students to move at their own speed. Mechanical education didn't have to be mechanistic, argued prewar developers of these machines, and automation and individualization [End Page 853] would go hand in hand. Instead, Watters argues, teaching and testing came to resemble one another, and by the 1960s such machines were eventually denounced as dehumanizing exercises in behaviorism. The last few years have seen something of a boom in histories of educational technology, as scholars like Katie Day Good, Morgan Ames, Joy Lisi Rankin, and Justin Reich have focused on the emergence (and often failure) of classroom tools and practices. Watters's most important contribution to this literature is to reframe corporations' role in the creation and dissemination of new technologies. She demonstrates how firms stonewalled education-oriented inventors and refused to invest in their products, preferring instead to repurpose existing technologies. The result, she argues, was a deeply conservative take on teaching and learning. Successive chapters detail these dynamics, describing Sidney Pressey's struggles to find a company that would bring his teaching machine to market in the 1920s, IBM's slow-walking purchase of Reynold Johnson's test-scoring "Markograph" in the 1930s, and Rheem Manufacturing's failures to produce a classroom-ready version of Skinner's machines in the 1950s. While historians have tended to focus on corporate enthusiasm for educational technology, Watters makes a convincing case that corporate resistance was equally important to consider. Taken together, her case studies offer a damning indictment of corporate capitalism's historical impact on classroom technologies. Historians of technology will find Watters's book illuminating, but she's not just speaking to scholars; rather, this book takes square aim at Silicon Valley. She delights in using archival research to puncture what she calls the "ed-tech imaginary," explaining how historical narratives peddled by tech entrepreneurs are lazy, inaccurate, and self-serving, and she concludes the book with warnings about technologies of behavioral control. Intended as a trade book, Teaching Machines is packed with entertaining details and detours. Readers learn about Pressey's excessive fondness for exclamation points, Eunice Shriver's personal interest in Skinner's Baby Box, and the career of Susan Meyer Markle, whose work writing programs for teaching machines was minimized by her male peers to the point that she became invisible in a field she had helped to found. In places, the book would benefit from more historical analysis and context, to help readers understand which of these details was most important. Her narrative also raises, but...

Vollgas voraus. Testläufe für die Faktografie (Tret’jakov, Gromov, Karmen)

Summary The Soviet documentary movement during the first decades after the October Revolution was characterized by a variety of genres. They all tried to convey reliable information based on experience. Journalism, photography, poster art, book and newspaper distribution reached a broader audience and involved more authors than ever before. Correspondents explored all branches of everyday life all over the country, among them new vehicles. The considered reports by Tretiakov, Gromov and Karmen on aerosledge tests do also test the principles of factography: They vividly apply their eye-witness experiences and intermedial techniques for a convincing narrative of a user-friendly vehicle though they might have hardly survived the races. Moreover, they praise the technical fact as a concern of literature as well as of Sovietization. By that, they develop factography from documentary towards an illustrative pattern of technological enthusiasm which is also confirmed by documentary movies of that time. This pattern relies on the picture-based narrative of the path towards Socialism. Thus, factographic reports bridge Avant-garde and Social Realism.