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Los Angeles ACM Chapter Meeting
Wednesday, May 6, 1998
Dr. Kathryn Alesandrini, Cal State Los Angeles
Dr. Warren Ashley, Cal State Dominguez Hills
Mr. Edward Manderfield, Vanguard Information Systems, Inc.
Inspired by the session on Teleteaching at IFIPS-96 in Canberra, Australia, the speeches will cover the rationale and reality, the delivery systems, TV, Internet, satellites, and videoconferencing of Distance Learning or Teleteaching. They will discuss the required preparation and production processes and the time requirements. They will also cover the subjects available today in California, particularly from the California State University System, and in Australia, particularly in primary and secondary education in which Australia was the World's pioneer and California is notably deficient.
Dr. Kathryn Alesandrini is Professor of Instructional Media in the Charter School of Education at Cal State Los Angeles. She is also a corporate Management Consultant. She has a B.S. from the University of Illinois, and a PhD from UCLA. Check the Web page at www.cliconline.com for more details. She is a nationally recognized expert on using visual brain power to improve human performance and the author of a widely used book "SURVIVE Information Overload".
Dr. Warren Ashley is Director of the Center for Mediated Instruction and Distance Learning at Cal State Dominguez Hills. He has a PhD in Education from the Clarement Graduate School. "In prior lives" he has been a Peace Corps volunteer, a high school teacher, a cab driver, a mental health therapist, and a television network censor. "He must be getting old" because he has had the same job for more than eight years. For more details see the Web page at www.csudh.edu/dominguezonline.
Mr. Ed Manderfield is a Consultant and Chief Instructor in Multimedia Authoring Systems at Vanguard Information Systems, Inc. In "prior lives" he was an Information Processing Manager at Continental Can, a programmer at CSC, NAA, Montgomery Ward (on the IBM 650), and Westinghouse Electric (on the 704). As Supervisor of Programming Research at Alwac Computer Division, he supervised the creation of ALWAC's first FORTRAN and ALGOL compilers. In the last ten years he has been a substitute teacher in math and computers at LAUSD. He is currently a producer of Interactive Multi-Media educational modules.
The meeting was inspired, according to Ed Manderfield who was the first speaker, by the IFIP (International Federation of Information Processing) 96 World Computer Congress in Canberra, Australia. Part of the conference was on Education and Distance Learning. Distance Learning uses telecommunications including TV, radio, the Internet, and satellite transmission. Tele-teaching 96 included a virtual conference in conjunction with an on-site conference with educational services provided by the University of Wollogon. Elementary distance communication is used for grades K-12 in the lightly populated Australian "Outback". They have been using tele-teaching since the 1920's with radio schools, moving on to more sophisticated services in the satellite era. Some schools now issue "back pack" computers with a modem and a satellite dish. A consortium of eight universities provides BA and BS degrees and there is also a consortium for graduate training. Over 97,000 people have registered for classes since 1993. Over 300 undergraduate units and 200 vocational units are offered. For more information on "Open Learning Australia" go to: http://www.ola.edu.au
Dr. Warren Ashley of Cal State Dominguez Hills, the second speaker, in his youth read Popular Mechanics magazine which had many articles on what was going to happen "tomorrow". He was always disappointed because he took the term "tomorrow" literally, when actually the predictions took years to be accomplished. However, "tomorrow" is now here and access to education has been created for every one. Dominguez Hills doesn't have a lot of things, but it does have distance learning. There are all kinds of television courses; Dominguez Hills broadcasts more than 40 hours of classes each week. You can get either a BA or a teaching credential and if you are in northern California it can be received through the CSU satellite. There is a program leading to a BA in Nursing that is taught nation-wide. Some people who have received degrees have shown up on campus for the first time for the graduation ceremonies! Dominguez Hills has Internet courses that are available worldwide and one such course is Quality Assurance. International students have to get a visitor visa if they wish to visit the campus! In addition to people enrolled in courses, Dr. Ashley frequently hears from non-enrolled students who are just on-line getting educated. For more information check their Web site at: http://www.csudh.edu/dominguezonline
The final speaker was Dr. Kathryn Alesandrini of Cal State Los Angeles. She has been teaching a master's program using video and computer based instruction. There are three perspectives, those of students, the faculty, and the institution. There was fear that students would not be well served at a distance because they were too far away and would feel disconnected. Actual data debunked this view; students loved the convenience. The big surprise was that students are satisfied and happy with the interactivity of the course. They are able to call in to get answers and they don't seem to have a sense of disconnect. The faculty has a problem because tele-courses require additional skills and are quite time-consuming. Some courses have been pre-prepared on videotape, but these pre-produced shows seemed very slow-paced. The better way is to go live when the proper equipment is available. They have integrated a Website into the courses. There is no solution for providing student labs other than holding them on campus. Dr. Alesandrini says she has spent about 100 hours preparing for each unit of instructions. She showed a short video clip of one of her courses, including telephone interaction from students. She tries to ask questions during her classes in order to instigate these telephone calls. She ended by saying that it is important to realize that computers have a "dazzle" factor, but it is important to engage each student's particular mind. For additional information check her Web page at: http://www.cliconline.com
During the question and answer period it was mentioned that both teachers and the university have joint copyrights on the material produced, and that intellectual property rights are a big issue. Distance learning is a coming thing, even though it is not well supported by the Cal State system.
More -- Meetings of Affiliated Organizations
SIGGRAPH -- CINESITE on Creating
the Visual Effects for SPHERE
Tuesday, May 12th, 7:30 Program, Television Academy Theatre,
North Hollywood
SIGPLAN -- Wednesday, May 13, 7:30 PM -- Loyola Marymount University
TACART -- CAPES: Countrywide Automatic
Property Evaluation System
Wednesday, May 20, 7:30 PM -- Loyola Marymount University
TACNUM Joint Meeting with San Gabriel
Valley ACM Chapter
Earth Threatening Asteroids; Computation of Orbits
Thursday, May 21, 8:00 for Talk, Pepper Mill Restaurant,
Pasadena.
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CAPES: Countrywide Automatic Property Evaluation System
Dr. Ingemar Hulthage, Countrywide Home Loans
Wednesday, May 20, 7:30 PM
Loyola Marymount University, Pereira Hall 27 (LMU is on Loyola Blvd. at 80th Street in Westchester)
The purpose of CAPES is to estimate the market value of residential properties. CAPES differs from other property valuation systems by using heuristic search as the core of the evaluation engine. The main principle of appraising is to select a set of "comparable" properties that have recently sold in so-called "arms length" transactions. If the concept of comparable property were well defined, and if sufficient information to identify comparable properties were always available, there would be no need to search. The only thing needed would be a set of rules, or constraints, to classify properties as suitable or unsuitable for a specific appraisal. However, experience shows that when a fixed set of criteria are applied, in many cases either a too small or an unnecessarily large set of comparables is selected. This situation suggests searching for a set of comparables that optimizes the accuracy of an appraisal based on that set. The operators in the search select a subset of a given set. Because the true error is not known, the search must be guided by an estimate of the error, such as the standard deviation of the sales prices of the comp set. The accuracy of CAPES has been validated extensively on batches of properties by comparing its results to known sales prices.
Ingemar Hulthage is the director of the 'Countrywide Automatic Property Evaluation System' (CAPES) at Countrywide Home Loans. He joined Countrywide in February 1996. Prior to that, he was an independent consultant in the area of decision support systems, and developed a system for estimating losses from earthquakes and hurricanes to assist in pricing insurance. >From 1991 to 1994, he was a Research Associate Professor at USC, working on the ACTION project, which seeks to create a knowledge based decision support system that addresses optimized matching and coordination of technological and organizational features in support of business objectives. >From 1984 to 1991, he was a faculty member in the Robotics Institute at Carnegie-Mellon. From 1981 to 1984, he held postdoctoral positions in theoretical physics at SUNY at Stony Brook and at Carnegie-Mellon. He received his Ph.D. in theoretical physics from Stockholm University, Sweden, in 1981.
For additional info or directions, contact L. Andrew Campbell, campbell@aero.org, (310) 336-8642, or Barney Toma, tomab@ecn.com, (310) 323-8451, or see http://server.eng.lmu.edu/tacart/.
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Joint Meeting LA ACM TACNUM and San Gabriel Valley ACM Chapter
Earth Threatening Asteroids; Computation of Orbits Dr. Paul Chodas, JPL
Thursday, May 21, 6:30 Social, 7:00 Dinner, 8:00 Talk Pepper Mill Restaurant, 795 E. Walnut St., Pasadena.
Recently, the whole world was frightened by the potential impact of a mile diameter asteroid early in the next century. Such an impact is believed to be responsible for the extinction of the dinosaurs . Dr. Chodas will discuss prediction of close encounters with asteroids and computational and observational requirements for accurate early warning.
Dinner will be ordered from the menu (cost $10-$20); the talk is free. Please make reservations with John Radbill at (818) 354-3873 (or radbill@1stNetUSA.com) by Monday, May 18.
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CINESITE on Creating the Visual Effects for SPHERE
Tuesday, May 12th, 6:30 Social, 7:30 Program
Television Academy Theatre, 5730 Lankershim, North Hollywood
For Barry Levinson's SPHERE, Cinesite Digital Studios was called on to create a complete universe. SPHERE's fully-realized underwater environment used a combination of miniatures, modeling and particle animation to produce the effect of a multi-dimensional world. Please join us for a panel discussion as we take you on an extra-worldly journey examining the integration of effects into filmed elements, from conception to completion.
In addition to the SPHERE presentation, a Kodak technical representative will discuss the new film stocks developed especially for visual effects.
For further details contact the SIGPHONE at (310) 288-1148 or at Los_Angeles_Chapter@siggraph.org, or www.siggraph.org/chapters/los_angeles
Last revision: 1998 April 19 [ls]