991@NJIT-EIES.MAILNET (08/09/84)
From: "Martin R. Lyons" <991@NJIT-EIES.MAILNET>
In response to Liam Bannon's (bannon@nprdc) message of July 21:
We at the Computerized Conferencing and Communications Center of
New Jersey Institute of Technology operate the Electronic Information
Exchange System (EIES). Over our six years of operation, we have
studied how people interact not only with the system, but with others,
and how the two modes differ. In most instances, it has been found
that Computer Conferencing increases productivity and creativity, by
allowing not only ongoing discussion, but also 24 hour access.
Over the past few months, I have begun looking into the
feasibility of integrating an AI subsystem into our most recent
effort, EIES II, a new, improved version of EIES. At this point, the
design is such to provide user aid, to field questions (English text)
from the user, and try to answer those as intelligently as possible.
Most of our questions to the online consultants here take the form of
'Where do I find the conference on IBM PCs?', etc.
I have available two lists: the first is the research
reports available from CCCC, and the second major works by Murray
Turoff and Starr Roxanne Hiltz, two of the original designers of EIES.
S. R. Hiltz is also a sociologist and along with Elaine Kerr has
carried out extensive research in user interactions and usage. In
order to spare the list the 300+ lines of references, I am not
including them here. If you would like a copy drop me a message and
I'll send them to you. Please feel free to contact me here if I can
be of any help.
MAILNET: Marty@NJIT-EIES.Mailnet
ARPA: Marty%NJIT-EIES.Mailnet@MIT-MULTICS.ARPA
USPS: Marty Lyons, CCCC/EIES @ New Jersey Institute of Technology,
323 High St., Newark, NJ 07102 (201) 596-EIES