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)