Tim Comber, BAppSci(Hons), M.Bus (SCU) Tim Comber completed a B.App.Sc.(Computing) Honours in 1993 at Southern Cross University and went on to study Master's by research which was awarded in 2010 . In the seventies he almost completed a degree in Psychology but dropped out to raise his kids. He has had a variety of occupations: timber docker, farmer, house-husband, clerk in Telecom, dole bludger, railway station assistant, opal miner, bread slicer. His hobbies and interests (in no particular order): classical guitar, gems and minerals, reading SF and fantasy, gardening, fishing, computer games. Currently Tim teaches first year programming and is the Course Coordinator for IT programs and Deputy Chair of School Board. His research interests are women in IT, Internet usage, human-computer interaction and teaching programming.
Journal articles
Girls get IT (with Raina Mason and Graham Cooper), ACM Inroads (2011)
In this article, we describe high school promotional visits and campus workshops developed to encourage...
Theses
An analysis of entropy, redundancy and complexity in graphical user interfaces, MBA Southern Cross University, Lismore, NSW (2010)
This thesis introduces a new sequential data analysis technique for graphical user interfaces (GUIs) based...
The importance of text width and white space for online documentation, BAppSc (Hons) thesis, Southern Cross University, Coffs Harbour, NSW (1994)
This study investigates the importance of text width and passive white space on comprehension, speed...
Conference publications
It’s (no longer) a remote chance for girls in IT (with Raina Mason and Graham Cooper), 1st International Australasian Conference on Enabling Access to Higher Education (2011)
This paper reports on an IT Girls Day Outreach program initiative to girls from Year...
Managing your business through effective IT management - secure it or lose it (with D Bruce Armstrong), School of Commerce and Management Papers (2005)
Internet and computer usage: comparisons among metropolitan centres, coastal regional centres and inland regional centres (with D Bruce Armstrong, Don Dingsdag, and Gerard J. Fogarty), Proceedings of Delivering IT and e-business value in networked environments: 14th Australasian Conference on Information Systems (ACIS) (2003)
In this exploratory paper the authors compare Internet and computer usage data from the Basic...
User operations as language elements: measuring usability and user competence through redundancy (with John R. Maltby), CHINZ 03, the Fourth Annual International Conference of the New Zealand Chapter of the ACM Special Interest Group on Computer-Human Interaction, 3-4 July (2003)
Layout complexity: does it measure usability? (with John R. Maltby), Human-computer interaction: interact '97, international conference on human-computer interaction, 14-18 July (1997)
This research investigates the validity of the layout complexity metric to GUI screen design. This...