awinterb@udenva.UUCP (Art Winterbauer) (04/15/85)
_A_u_t_o_m_a_t_e_d _W_r_i_t_i_n_g _A_i_d
_P_r_o_b_l_e_m: An automated system for helping students to brain-
storm ideas for essays and research papers is currently
being studied as the subject of a dissertation at the
University of Denver. The programs are written in Pascal,
with user interfaces in C scripts, and run under the collec-
tive name of Writeaid on a VAX750 with 4.2 BSD Unix (Unix =
trademark Bell Labs). Writeaid is designed to enter into a
dialogue with students to help them mold a topic into a more
manageable state and to organize this information into an
outline. Teachers have access to a special set of routines
for altering how Writeaid works with students.
_Q_u_e_s_t_i_o_n: I do not know if other universities, schools, or
organizations in general would want to use Writeaid. I do
not intend for the system to be marketed as a package in its
present form, but would rather release the source for
further research efforts. However, this cannot be done
without incurring certain expenses, especially documentation
for system installation and the like.
Therefore, I need to know if anyone would want this package,
and how they would want it delivered (e.g., via the net in
pieces or tape). Also I need to know what people would con-
sider a reasonable fee to pay for such a system. There is
no need to go through the trouble of getting the system
ready for transmittal by whatever means if there is no
demand.
Please reply via e-mail to me or through U.S. Mail:
A.E. Winterbauer
Denver Research Institute
Electronics Division
University of Denver
PO Box 10127
Denver, CO 80208
ucbvax!nbires!udenva!awinterb (I think)