Graduate School of Informatics

Those, who finished 7 courses successfully, need to bring their petitions to the Student Affair Office at the Graduate School of Indormatics until 20 June Wendesday, in order to apply Transfer from Master Without Thesis Program to Master with thesis Program.

Title: ESSENTIAL DESIGN COMPONENTS OF GENETIC DATA ENABLED MOBILE PERSONAL HEALTH RECORD SYSTEMS

PhD Candidate: Özlem Özkan

Program: Health Informatics Department 

Date: 09 July Monday 09:30

Place: Conference Hall-01

Abstract:The rapid growth in the use of genetic tests in healthcare has opened a new discussion on redesign of electronic health records to cover the genetic/genomic data. Today, this work is done in the same way with ordinary health data. However, genetic data has many unique properties that raise concerns on privacy and security issues and there are even special laws and acts to protect genetic/genomic in many countries. We strongly suggest Personal Health Records (PHR) systems for this purpose since it is under full control of the owner, and so has a great potential to cover privacy concerns. Thus, we applied four sub-studies in order to identify critical design issues of genetic data enabled mobile PHR in the scope of this dissertation. First, we analyzed the mobile application markets and evaluated the mPHRs in order to see what is in existing applications, and to identify the missing aspects. Second, with the help of the analysis results, a survey was developed and conducted to 174 people, half of which had genetic test experiences to reach publics concerns and views on the issue. Third, as a parallel study, 11 participatory design sessions with five participants were held and a paper prototype of genetic data included mPHR was developed as a result. Lastly, two focus group studies on collection of genetic data and confidentiality in Turkish health information systems were organized with 18 experts. By this way, all aspects of a genetic data enabled mPHR design were determined and presented to the literature.

Graduate School of Informatics /Cognitive Science

In partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Science Aysel Yasemin Göl will defend his thesis.

Title: AN EXPERIMENTAL INVESTIGATION OF CHANGE BLINDNESS BY GROUP EYE TRACKING PARADIGM

Date: 01th June 2018

Time: 10:00 AM

Place: A-108

Thesis Abstract :The group effect refers to a decline in vigilance when an individual is in a social, group setting. Due to a diluted risk of being preyed upon and a higher number of group members that can detect a predator, members are less alert when they are in a group. The present study investigates if such an effect can be observed in human participants in a simple change detection task by employing group eye tracking (GET) paradigm. For this end, the visual phenomenon of change blindness is explored. In a within-subjects experiment, participants attempted to find if a change has been made to a stimulus they have previously seen. The same task was performed twice, once alone and once in a group of three while their eye movements were recorded with an eye tracker. Results of eye movement analysis show that, during the visual search for a change, eye movements are significantly slower when the participants are in groups (p < .01). The findings indicate that this effect may be related to a decline in vigilance and the group effect.

METU Informatics Institute is organizing monthly Friday Seminars series and Prof. Sadi Turgut from METU, Department of Physics is going to give the last talk of this semester. The title of his talk is “Quantum Computers”.

Location: Conference Room (124), METU Informatics Institute

Time: 8 June 2018, 15:30-16:30

This seminar is open to public and those outside METU have to register using Google Forms: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSc2VLWyxjKMluS6tZwSFt742LLQkiUIKyEp3xzw6O186DojhA/viewform (Free Registration)

Short Biography:

Prof. Dr. Sadi Turgut is interested in the physics of information processing, especially quantum information.

BS, 1989, METU Physics,

PhD, 1995, UC Berkeley, Physics,

Working at METU, Physics Department since 1996.

Graduate School of Informatics /Cognitive Science

In partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Science Çağdaş Bostancı will defend his thesis.

Title: TEMPORAL AND STRUCTURAL PERCEPTION OF RHYTHMIC IRREGULARITIES

Date: 29th May 2018

Time: 09:30 AM

Place: B-116

Thesis Abstract :Time perception studies often seek for a timing mechanism that can explain temporal judgments in a general way. In search of such a model, environmental, contextual and subjective factors affecting temporal judgments should be taken into account as well. The present study provides a critical evolution of existing timing models by comparing the interval processing and production strategies of musicians and non-musicians. The study contains 3 experiments: Experiment 1 is a perceptual comparison task, Experiment 2 is a duration reproduction task and Experiment 3 is a rhythm reproduction task. The contrasts between the two groups are believed to be captured by participants’ initial reactions to rhythmic structures. For that purpose, short scale (4 beat) rhythmic samples are used in the experiments. Standard samples are regular 4 beat rhythms. Test samples include regular and irregular rhythms. The irregular conditions are prepared by changing the temporal position of the second beat of the regular rhythms. Early and late second beats in these irregular samples have the same temporal distance from the expected beat. Hence, the expectancy violation reflects any differences between early and late oddball stimuli. The experimental analyses suggest an asymmetry between early and late oddballs in participants’ initial reactions to such expectancy violations, in terms of their perceptual comparison of rhythms, as well as their duration and rhythm (re)production. Moreover, it provides evidence for different strategies used by participant groups in order to cope with rhythmic irregularities.

Title: Player Acceptance and Motivation for Games with Emerging Technologies: A Multi Theory Approach in Virtual Reality Gaming and Pervasive Gaming Contexts

PhD Candidate: Mehmet Kösa

Program: Information Systems Department 

Date: 04 June Monday 14:00

Place: Conference Hall-01

Abstract: The research project presented here consists of the studies I undertook throughout my PhD studies. In this research project, I propose a gaming technology acceptance-motivation model (GTAM). The model amalgamates Technology Acceptance Model, Self-Determination Theory and Flow Theory. The aim of the model is to expand knowledge on the acceptance of and motivation for video gaming technologies. Initially, a systematic literature review was conducted to see the state of the art research on hedonic information systems in the information system (IS) literature. The literature review produced salient research question and the results were presented in the light of those research questions. Building on the literature, the model was created. The proposed model was tested using quantitative methods. Data collection was two-fold: First, a cross-sectional survey was carried out in the virtual reality (VR) gaming context and then, a longitudinal diary study was conducted in the pervasive gaming (PG) context to complement the survey. For the survey, structural equation modeling was employed and for the diary study, multilevel analyses were conducted. Therefore, the proposed model was tested with two empirical studies. Results showed that perceived ease of use was the antecedent of autonomy and competence. Also, in addition to flow (immersion and concentration), autonomy and competence predict enjoyment which then predicts attitude and intention play. Studies presented offer theoretical contributions to IS and games research as well as implications for managers and practitioners in the interactive hedonic information system business. The results were discussed and the implications were presented.