From bolesd Fri Feb 7 12:51:59 1997 Received: from cortez.sss.rpi.edu (bolesd@cortez.sss.rpi.edu [128.113.113.33]) by mail1.its.rpi.edu (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id MAA21230; Fri, 7 Feb 1997 12:51:58 -0500 From: David B Boles Received: (bolesd@localhost) by cortez.sss.rpi.edu (8.6.9/8.6.4) id MAA67304; Fri, 7 Feb 1997 12:51:57 -0500 Date: Fri, 7 Feb 1997 12:51:57 -0500 Message-Id: <199702071751.MAA67304@cortez.sss.rpi.edu> To: kalshm, brings, noelr X-UIDL: 1c2132bde998665a4b4b7cab41316c9d Status: R Mike, Selmer, Ron -- After some difficulty last night, I was finally able to get the MEL Web site today. If you'd like to check it out, it's at http://www.pstnet.com. There is both good news and bad news. THE GOOD NEWS I can mount labs in the courses Cognitive Psychology and Experimental Methods and Statistics at zero cost. This is because the MEL Lab product, a prepackaged collection of 28 experiments, is paid for by the student (at approximately $25 per student). Students simply buy the product through the bookstore. Furthermore, there is some provision for student- set parameters, which provides enough flexibility that it could be useful in the design portions of Experimental Methods and Statistics. Finally, equipment requirements are minimal. THE BAD NEWS The MEL Lab coverage of human factors topics is almost nonexistent (one phone keyboard lab), and of course anything off the beaten Psychology track is not covered. So to author our own experiments from scratch, we would need the MEL Professional product. With bulk pricing, this amounts to $15,000 for 30 machines. (It is possible that a further discount would be given since bulk pricing begins at 10 machines and we have 30 -- but this would require direct negotiations with the company.) Each machine will also have to have a graphics card (but maybe this is already in the base proposal). So it looks like another $15,000 budget item is the bottom line. If we could be extravagant, we could also put in for button boxes (to save wear and tear on the computer keyboards and to provide slightly more accurate timing) at $12,000 for 30 machines. However, my Apple II experience suggests that the risk to computer keyboards is not very great -- and besides, for $400 per machine we could go through several replacement keyboards. I hope this helps-- Dave