Brad MehlenbacherPh.D
Personal Homepage:
http://www4.ncsu.edu/~brad_mCurrent place of employment:
NC State UniversityBrad Mehlenbacher is an Associate Professor of Distance Learning (Leadership, Policy, Adult & Higher Education), Primary Area Faculty Member with Human Factors & Ergonomics (Psychology), Affiliated Faculty Member with Communication, Rhetoric, & Digital Media (English and Communication), and Affiliated Faculty Member with the Digital Games Research Center (Computer Science) at NC State University. He teaches graduate courses on instruction and learning with technology and Web-based instruction. He earned his BA and MA at the University of Waterloo (Ontario, Canada), where he focused on computer-assisted learning and computational text analysis; and his PhD in rhetoric and document design at Carnegie Mellon University, where he focused on online information design, usability, and human-computer interaction.
Mehlenbacher is author of Instruction and Technology: Designs for Everyday Learning (MIT Press, 2010), co-author of Online Help: Design and Evaluation (Ablex, 1993), and has published numerous articles on online information design and evaluation. He has chapters in Assessment Strategies for the Online Learner (Jossey-Bass), The Human-Computer Interaction Handbook (Lawrence Erlbaum), Innovative Approaches to Teaching Technical Writing (Utah State UP), The Society of Text (MIT Press), The Computer Science and Engineering Handbook (CRC Press), and the 1997 NCTE award-winning Computers and Technical Communication (Ablex Press).
Mehlenbacher is elected Chair of the Association for Computing Machinery's Special Interest Group on the Design of Communication (ACM SIGDOC). At NC State, he has served as usability consultant for the previous and the new NC State Website. Broadly defined, Mehlenbacher's research interest is in applying empirical research and rhetorical theory to the study of human-computer interfaces and online support systems, usability testing methods, and Web-based instruction.
Over the years, Mehlenbacher has consulted for numerous academic and nonacademic institutions, including the Computer Science Department, Engineering Design Research Center, and Communications Design Center at Carnegie Mellon; the Centre for Professional Writing at the University of Waterloo; the Center for the Study of Writing at the University of California at Berkeley; Apple Computer; Bell-Northern Research; Hewlett Packard; SAS Institute; Digital Equipment Corporation; Ricoh Silicon Valley; the American Cancer Society; UNext.com; IBM-Toronto; and IBM-RTP. He lives in Cary, North Carolina, and has two extraordinary daughters, Eleanor Dare and Frances Elizabeth. He has been using Internet-based communication tools since beginning his undergraduate degree in 1980 at the University of Waterloo.
Publications by Brad Mehlenbacher (bibliography)
Mehlenbacher, Brad (2010): Instruction and Technology: Designs for Everyday Learning. Cambridge, MA, MIT Press
“The perpetual connectivity made possible by twenty-first-century technology has profoundly affected instruction and learning. Emerging technologies that upend traditional notions of communication and community also influence the ways we design and evaluate instruction and how we understand learning and learning environments. In Instruction and Technology, Brad Mehlenbacher offers a detailed, multidisciplinary analysis of the dynamic relationship between technology and learning. Mehlenbacher describes how today’s ubiquitous technology conflates our once separated learning worlds—work, leisure, and higher educational spaces. He reviews the ongoing cross-disciplinary conversation about learning with technology and distance education and examines a dozen models of instruction and learning with technology drawn from peer-reviewed research. Taking an integrative perspective toward design, Mehlenbacher offers a framework for everyday instructional situations, describing five interdependent dimensions: learner background and knowledge, learner tasks and activities, social dynamics, instructor activities, and learning environment and artifacts.
The technologies that distribute today's classroom across time and space call for a new discussion about what we value in the traditional classroom. Rather than simply offering recipes for creating online instruction, with Instruction and Technology Brad Mehlenbacher lays the groundwork for the long-term multidisciplinary investigation that will be required as researchers and practitioners shape and extend the boundaries of this emerging field.
See http://mitpress.mit.edu/catalog/item/default.asp?ttype=2&tid=12243 to request an exam/desk copy.”
© All rights reserved Mehlenbacher and/or MIT Press
Mehlenbacher, Brad, McKone, Sarah, Grant, Christine, Bowles, Tuere, Peretti, Steve and Martin, Pamela (2010): Social media for sustainable engineering communication. In: ACM 28th International Conference on Design of Communication 2010. pp. 65-72.
“This paper provides an overview of current research on social media applications, including user demographics and how social media websites define themselves. The paper also describes user activities using social media and suggests known strengths and weaknesses of social media, and concludes by outlining several recommendations for developing strong online communities.”
© All rights reserved Mehlenbacher et al. and/or ACM Press
Mehlenbacher, Brad, Holstein, Krista, Gordon, Brett and Khammar, Khalil (2010): Reviewing the research on distance education and e-learning. In: ACM 28th International Conference on Design of Communication 2010. pp. 237-242.
“This paper will provide insight into the current emphasis of research on distance education and e-learning. The review is organized by three intersecting activities. First, we informally collected and reviewed approximately 300 peer-reviewed journals for articles published on distance education and instruction and technology broadly defined [30]. Second, we read and reviewed the numerous meta-analyses of distance education, multimedia, e-learning, and collaborative computing published over the last fifteen years [1-2, 4-6, 17, 25-27, 31, 33, 35]. Third, we performed our own meta-analysis of the abstracts of articles published in 10 peer-reviewed journals on distance learning and e-learning. Our goal in all these activities was to generate a list of significant topics or themes contained in publications about distance education and e-learning, in part to demonstrate the lack of consistent terminology.”
© All rights reserved Mehlenbacher et al. and/or ACM Press
Mehlenbacher, Brad (2008): Communication design and theories of learning. In: DOC08 2008. pp. 139-146.
“This paper provides a brief overview of the ill-structured information spaces that communication designers create and inhabit, highlighting the need for a research-based understanding of learning. A sociocognitive approach to learning that benefits from the strengths of cognitive and social perspectives is described. As a complex learning activity, communication design and use demand creative, multidisciplinary approaches to data collection, analysis, and interpretation.”
© All rights reserved Mehlenbacher and/or ACM Press
Pierce, Robert, Mehlenbacher, Brad, Costa, Carlos J., Albers, Michael J. and Protopsaltis, Aristidis (2008): Panel design of communication: new steps. In: DOC08 2008. pp. 183-184.
“SIGDOC comes from a technical writing tradition, where literature and rhetoric play an important role. Communication is now giving a broader focus, especially as influences come from graphical design, web design, digital sound or digital multimedia. In Lisbon, we expect to discuss this focus of SIGDOC. This is an important transition that is being done, without loosing its identity. In fact, from the revision process the heterogeneity of view point was identified. This is the result of including more participants from multimedia, computer science and graphical design. For the second time, SIGDOC will take place outside the American continent. For the first time it takes places in a non-English speaking country. It is the ideal place to discuss an important issue either for the technical documentation, either for software engineering or for design of communication communities: translation, internationalization, localization, and globalization. Bologna process is transforming and making an authentic revolution in the European university panorama. This may be faced either as a threat or as an opportunity. In this context, the discussion about a curriculum in design of communication is an important step that may be undertaken by the SIGDOC. It is a step that may contribute to its affirmation either in academia or in practitioner context.”
© All rights reserved Pierce et al. and/or ACM Press
Mehlenbacher, Brad (2007): Triangulating communication design: emerging models for theory and practice. In: Proceedings of the 25th annual ACM international conference on Design of communication 2007, El Paso, Texas, USA. pp. 87-94.
“This paper describes the enduring dichotomy between what is defined as science and what is defined as non-science, and shows how this dichotomy serves as a backdrop for current divisions between theory and practice. The canonical concept of invention and contemporary interest in problem setting highlight the similarities between the activities of theoreticians and practitioners and inform the development of a useful definition of rhetorical or communication design. While recent developments in activity-, work-, and ecologically-centered design provide a powerful metaphor for contextualizing communication design work, a tentative argument is made for attending to emerging opportunities and challenges related to distributed space and time.”
© All rights reserved Mehlenbacher and/or ACM Press
Pierce, Robert, Protopsaltis, Aristidis, Mehlenbacher, Brad and Zachry, Mark (2007): What is design of communication?. In: Proceedings of the 25th annual ACM international conference on Design of communication 2007, El Paso, Texas, USA. p. 181.
Stamey, John, Novick, David G., Spinuzz, Clay and Mehlenbacher, Brad (2006): Research issues in the design of communication. In: ACM 24th International Conference on Design of Communication 2006. pp. 129-130.
Mehlenbacher, Brad (2000): Intentionality and Other Nonsignificant Issues in Learning. In ACM SIGDOC *Journal of Computer Documentation, 24 (1) pp. 25-30.
“In this second of three commentaries on Martinez, Mehlenbacher praises her "useful framework for evaluating the success or failure of particular learning environments." But he notes that intentionality is really just one among five dimensions of instructional situations (learner background, learner tasks, social dynamics, instructional methods, and learning tools) that all interact to influence educational outcomes.”
© All rights reserved Mehlenbacher and/or ACM Press
Hill, Charles A. and Mehlenbacher, Brad (1996): Readers' Expectations and Writers' Goals in the Late Age of Print. In: ACM 14th International Conference on Systems Documentation 1996. pp. 257-266.
“Most of us are very comfortable acknowledging that reading and writing electronic texts is now firmly a well-established part of our everyday life, but we only occasionally examine the generational differences between our grandparents' notions of text and our children's. This is largely because our demographic is a transitional one, caught between a well-learned familiarity with hardcopy texts and the challenge of intense movements to online environments. This paper traces our movement from hardcopy texts to digital texts, and speculates about how readers' and writers' expectations of texts are being transformed by emerging technologies. Specifically, digital texts are erasing traditional distinctions between written and spoken discourse, increasing the interconnectedness of texts, increasing the demand for user control over texts, integrating various modes of communication, and intensifying the relationship between readers and writers.”
© All rights reserved Hill and Mehlenbacher and/or ACM Press
Mehlenbacher, Brad (1996): Spaces Without Places. In ACM SIGDOC *Journal of Computer Documentation, 20 (3) pp. 18-22.
Mehlenbacher, Brad, Hardin, Beth, Barrett, Chris and Clagett, Jim (1994): Multi-User Domains and Virtual Campuses: Implications for Computer-Mediated Collaboration and Technical Communication. In: ACM Twelfth International Conference on Systems Documentation 1994. pp. 213-219.
“Despite being the focus of 170 articles in the Fall of 1993, few researchers have documented how the Internet, an environment that attracts over 6000 new users per month, will affect the technical communication profession [18]. In particular, researchers have devoted little attention to the rapid emergence of an Internet tool that has the potential to increase collaboration among professional technical communicators. This paper represents one such attempt and describes an electronic tool we are building at NCSU called the TechComm-VC (Virtual Campus), a Multi-User Domain, or MUD.”
© All rights reserved Mehlenbacher et al. and/or ACM Press
Mehlenbacher, Brad (1993): Software Usability: Choosing Appropriate Methods for Evaluating Online Systems and Documentation. In: ACM Eleventh International Conference on Systems Documentation 1993. pp. 209-222.
“The objective of this paper is to bring users to the foreground of on-going system and documentation development efforts by doing five things: (1) outlining existing methods to elicit user reactions to software; (2) describing how to design informal usability tests employing each method; (3) discussing the strengths and weaknesses of each method given the time and resource constraints facing technical communicators and software designers; (4) recommending times during the software development cycle, when certain methods are particularly fruitful in providing valuable design feedback, and; (5) providing an extensive bibliography on usability testing methods.”
© All rights reserved Mehlenbacher and/or ACM Press
Duffy, Thomas M., Palmer, James E. and Mehlenbacher, Brad (1993): Online Help: Design and Evaluation. Norwood, NJ, Intellect
Mehlenbacher, Brad (1992): Navigating Online Information: A Characterization of Extralinguistic Factors that Influence User Behavior. In: ACM Tenth International Conference on Systems Documentation 1992. pp. 35-46.
“The paper examines the extralinguistic factors that influence user behavior with online information systems. Extralinguistic factors include any interface features which are "outside" how users understand and comprehend written texts online. Extralinguistic features, therefore, are interface features that support (1) how users formulate their information goals or represent their tasks, (2) how users navigate to new or related topics of interest to them, and (3) how users quickly scan (rather than read) online information. It is argued that text comprehension is only one task that users engage in when using online information systems. A model of online user behavior that includes goal setting, navigating, scanning, and text comprehension is outlined. I argue that a broader definition of online information use is necessary and discuss various design principles for avoiding communication breakdowns before users reach their desired information. Finally, I conclude by suggesting that a Participatory Design Approach to the design of human-computer interfaces is one method of undermining our tendency, as software designers, to apply design advice and guidelines without first accounting for user tasks and information goals.”
© All rights reserved Mehlenbacher and/or ACM Press
Mehlenbacher, Brad, Duffy, Thomas M. and Palmer, James E. (1989): Finding Information on a Menu: Linking Menu Organization to the User's Goals. In Human-Computer Interaction, 4 (3) pp. 231-251.
“Design paradigms often ignore the diverse goals users bring to the computer interface. Any human-computer interaction can be viewed as a marriage of two systems: The user begins the interaction by formulating an information goal, and the computer software meets that goal with a sometimes complex list of potential topic areas. The user then accesses that topic list through the computer interface. Part of the act of accessing the topic list is selecting a potential topic, and this action is often supported by a menu interface. Although research is pervasive on how best to organize menu items to facilitate learning, search speed, and reduced selection errors, little has been done to examine the impact of different types of user goals or cues on a menu's effectiveness. In a study using three distinct cues -- direct match, synonym, and iconic -- and two menu organizations -- alphabetical and functional -- data suggest that (a) the functional menu is more effective than the alphabetical menu for the synonym and iconic cues, (b) learning occurs with both menu designs (i.e., selection speed increases rapidly across the five trial blocks), and (c) users make fewer errors with the functionally organized menu. The results, in general, encourage more rigorous investigation of the interaction between the tasks users bring to menu interfaces and the optimal design of those menus.”
© All rights reserved Mehlenbacher et al. and/or Taylor and Francis
Mehlenbacher, Brad, Duffy, Tom, Palmer, Jim, Truschel, Maria, Denchfield, Karen and Aaron, Ann (1988): Help for the Designers on Online Help Systems. In ACM SIGCHI Bulletin, 20 (1) pp. 66-69.
Duffy, Thomas M., Palmer, James E. and Mehlenbacher, Brad (1983): Online Help: Design and Evaluation. Norwood, NJ, Intellect
Show this list on your homepage
User-contributed publications
Here is a list of publications that have been submitted by the author himself/herself or a website visitor:
Mehlenbacher, B., Bennett, L., Bird, T., Ivey, M., Lucas, J., Morton, J., & Whitman, L. (2005). Usable e-learning: A conceptual model for evaluation and design. Proceedings of HCI International 2005: 11th International Conference on Human-Computer Interaction, Volume 4 — Theories, Models, and Processes in HCI. Las Vegas, NV: Mira Digital P, 1-10.
Mehlenbacher, B., & Dicks, R. S. (2004). A pedagogical framework for faculty-student research and public service in technical communication. In T. Bridgeford, K. S. Kitalong, & D. Selfe (Eds.), Innovative Approaches to Teaching Technical Writing (pp. 219-237). Logan, UT: Utah State University P.
Mehlenbacher, B. (2003). Documentation: Not yet implemented but coming soon! In A. Sears & J. Jacko (Eds.), The Human-Computer Interaction Handbook: Fundamentals, Evolving Technologies and Emerging Applications (pp. 527-543). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.
Mehlenbacher, B. (2002). Assessing the usability of online instructional materials. In R. S. Anderson, J. F. Bauer, and B. W. Speck (Eds.). Assessment Strategies for the On-line Class: From Theory to Practice (pp. 91-98). New Directions for Teaching and Learning Series, Number 91. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.
Mehlenbacher, B., Miller, C. R., Covington, D., & Larsen, J. (2000). Active and interactive learning online: A comparison of Web-based and conventional writing classes. IEEE Transactions on Professional Communication, 43 (2), 166-184.
Lee, M. F., & Mehlenbacher, B. (2000). Technical writer/subject-matter expert interaction: The writer’s perspective, the organizational challenge. Technical Communication, 47 (4), 544-552.
Tomasi, M. D., & Mehlenbacher, B. (1999). Re-engineering online documentation: Designing examples-based online support systems. Technical Communication, 46 (1), 55-66.
Hill, C. A., & Mehlenbacher, B. (1998). Transitional generations and World Wide Web reading and writing: Implications of a hypertextual interface for the masses. TEXT Technology, 8 (4), 29-47.
Selber, S. A., Johnson-Eilola, J., & Mehlenbacher, B. (1996). Online support systems. ACM Computing Surveys, 28 (1), 197-200.
Mehlenbacher, B. (1995). Charting the future of technical communication: SIGDOC’94 and the great divide. ACM Journal of Computer Documentation, 19 (2), 20-32.
Mehlenbacher, B. (1994). The rhetorical nature of academic research funding. IEEE Transactions on Professional Communication, 37 (3), 157-162.
Mehlenbacher, B. (1993). Concerning SIGDOC’92: Text transformation and the world of multimedia documentation. ACM Journal of Computer Documentation, 17 (4), 23-32.
Duffy, T. M., Palmer, J. E., & Mehlenbacher, B. (1993). Online help: Design and evaluation. Human-Computer Interaction Series. Norwood, NJ: Ablex, ISBN 0-89-391-858-X.
Duffy, T. M., Higgins, L., Mehlenbacher, B., Cochran, C., Wallace, D., Hill, C. Haugen, D., McCaffrey, M. Burnett, R., Sloane, S., & Smith, S. (1989). Models for the design of instructional text. Reading Research Quarterly, 24 (4), 434-457.
Mehlenbacher, B., Duffy, T. M., Palmer, J. E., Truschel, M., Denchfield, K., & Aaron, A. (1988). Help for the designers of online help systems. ACM SIGCHI Bulletin, 20 (1), 66-69.
Knowledge wants to be free !
We have decided to give away world-class educational materials
because we believe that universal access to high quality education is key to the building
of peace, sustainable social and economic development, and intercultural dialogue.
To calculate just have much we have saved you, our wonderful readers, we compare our free encyclopedia to two
books we love:
$110: Human-Computer Interaction by Dix et al (a great textbook but without video interviews)
$116: Shneiderman's Designing the User Interface
(a great textbook but without video interviews).
As you are reading our encyclopedia on your iPad/tablet (and saving a few trees), we estimate that the price would be $90 if sold as an eBook.
With that number, we can calculate how much money we have saved our readers, based on calculating the number of readers.
How we calculate readership
Because of our online and tablet/iPad approach to publishing, we are able to precisely measure reading behaviour across hundreds of parameters in realtime: Anything from reading
speed, drop-off points in the text, reader demographics, and much more.
Based on our server logs and the Google Analytics API,
we calculate the number of readers as described in the calculation method below.
A reader is not the same as a simple pageview and a reader is not the same as a
website visitor (as described in our calculation method below).
We calculate readership for two types of readers:
- Readers that have read our whole encyclopedia, much the same way you read a printed book
- Readers that have reader an individual chapter
Calcalution method: How we define a reader
- First we use the Google Analytics API to get a report of the number of unique human visitors to a chapter/page. Google runs its business on ads and thus completely relies on the ability to distinguish between a human visitor and an automated request. If not, you could earn millions on automating clicks on Google Ads.
- We then compare that number to our Apache webserver logs, which report the much higher number of actual visits to a chapter/page (both human and automated). We calculate the difference in percent, which we call an "exaggeration factor", which we use in step 6 below.
- With a large part of the visitors excluded, we further exclude any visitor who:
- has not remained on the page for at least 3 minutes (this factor is calculated by recording visit durations of 1000 randomly selected visitors) or has not printed the page (i.e. has not visited the printerfriendly version of the chapter/page)
- has not scrolled the page (this factor is calculated by recording scroll movements on 1000 randomly selected visitors)
- We then further exclude "double readers", i.e. readers who read a portion of a chapter and then returns in,
say, a week or a month to read the rest.
Although this person's reading activity spans multiple server sessions, the person is only counted as a single reader.
We categorize a "double reader" as a visitor who:
- visits a page, or multiple pages, across multiple server sessions
- qualifies to be defined as a reader, cf step 1-3 above, in all server sessions
- uses the same originating IP address
- We then subtract 5% from the final number to counter-balance a last remaining factor, namely the situation where one reader reads a chapter on his/her tablet
using a WiFi connection (and counted as one reader) but then picks up his other tablet using a 3G dongle
(with another IP address) and re-reads some of the chapter. That will equal two readers, not one. We have no way
of calculating how many times this situation arises, but to be on the safe side we subtract 5%
from the final number.
- We then take half of the "exaggeration factor" from step 2 and substract from the final number. We do this for no rational reason. We do it only as a further measure to be certain that our number of readers is not inflated.
- To qualify as a reader who has read our whole encyclopedia - much the same way you read a printed book - that person must have qualified as a reader (cf. 1-6 above) of at least 80% of the encyclopedia chapters.
As a result, we have eliminated everything from automated requests to the more casual visitors. That leaves us with what we can safely call readers.
Changes to this page (author)
15 Jan 2011: Author was edited 15 Jan 2011: Author was edited 15 Apr 2010: Book was added to the page (approved by an editor)
15 Apr 2010: Author was added to the bibliography (approved by an editor)
15 Apr 2010: Page was edited
10 Feb 2010: Enabled abstracts to be shown on Brad Mehlenbacher's author page.
07 Apr 2009: Author was edited
07 Apr 2009: Author was edited
12 May 2008: Author was edited
12 May 2008: Author was edited
05 Nov 2007: Updated the picture of Brad Mehlenbacher
30 Sep 2007: Book was added to the page (approved by an editor)
30 Sep 2007: Author was edited (approved by an editor)
24 Jul 2007: Author was edited
24 Jul 2007: Author was edited
27 Jun 2007: Author was edited
23 Jun 2007: Author was edited
22 Jun 2007: Author was edited
22 Jun 2007: Author was edited
22 Jun 2007: Author was edited
22 Jun 2007: Author was edited
22 Jun 2007: Author was edited
28 Apr 2003: Added the author to the bibliography
Page Information
Page maintainer:
The Editorial TeamHow to cite/reference this page
URL: http://www.interaction-design.org/references/authors/brad_mehlenbacher.html
