Users are increasingly inundated with small devices with communication and storage capabilities. Unfortunately, the user is still responsible for reconciling all of the devices whenever a change is made. We present Footloose, a usercentered data store that can share data and reconcile conflicts across diverse devices. Footloose is an optimistic system based on physical eventual consistency—cons...

Little is known about the learners who download iTunes U resources but do not belong to the Higher Education institutions that provide them. This paper presents the first full profile of the external iTunes U learner and their practices and opinions of the materials they download. The data was gathered through a large survey (over 2000 responses) carried out over two years using the iTunes U si...

iTunes University, a website with downloadable educational podcasts, can provide students the opportunity to obtain professors’ lectures when students are unable to attend class. To determine the effectiveness of audio lectures in higher education, undergraduate general psychology students participated in one of two conditions. In the lecture condition, participants listened to a 25-min lecture...

We use a human–subjects experiment to test the effects of non–coercive “information” mechanisms designed to increase cooperation and efficiency in the trust game. In the equilibrium of the standard trust game, the investor does not invest, foreseeing that the allocator would have kept all of the returns from investment. Our mechanisms add a pre–play stage in which the investor receives informat...

Extensive research has shown that person-centered learning aiming at students’ development on the levels of intellect, skills, and attitudes is effective in face-to-face education. More recently, advances in web-technology let us ask: Is humanistic, person-centered learning also effective along the application of modern technology? In this contribution we reflect 10 years of research at the Uni...

Spiraling healthcare costs in the United States and elsewhere, coupled to mediocre outcomes and health status indices, the persistent latency between best practice knowledge and its application in practice, an inefficient public health and clinical research infrastructure, and many other factors demand a more sophisticated use of information technology to support improvements. The ever growing ...

Online piracy of copyrighted digital music has become rampant as internet bandwidth and digital compression technologies have advanced. The music industry has suffered significant financial losses and has responded with lawsuits, though online music piracy remains prevalent. More effective approaches to fighting music piracy can be developed with the aid of an understanding of individual attitu...