![[HT'98 logo]](HT98logo.gif) |
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Ninth ACM Conference on Hypertext and Hypermedia
Hypertext'98
Pittsburgh, USA, June
20-24, 1998 |
Second Workshop on Adaptive Hypertext and Hypermedia
With the growing size, complexity and heterogeneity of current hypermedia systems, especially the World Wide Web, comes the need to provide more flexible mechanisms for delivering information to the user. That is, we require mechanisms which can modify documents on-the-fly in order to take the user's needs into account. Static hypertext documents suffer from an inability to be all things to all people; document and multimedia authors must write multiple documents for different users rather than a single document which can dynamically modify its content in order to address a particular user's knowledge or the context of delivery.
A possible remedy for the negative effects of the traditional "one-size-fits-all" approach in the development of hypermedia systems is to equip them with the ability to adapt to the needs of their individual users. A possible way for achieving adaptivity is by modeling the users and tailoring the system's interactions to their goals, tasks and interests. In this sense, the notion of adaptive hypertext/hypermedia means a hypertext or hypermedia system which reflects some features of the user and/or characteristics of his/her system usage in a user model, and utilizes this model in order to adapt various aspects of the system's output to the user.
This workshop was intended as an inter-disciplinary exploration into adaptive hypertext and other kinds of flexible hypertext systems. It aimed to draw together a number of research groups taking different approaches to adaptive and flexible hypertext systems, in order to promote the cross-fertilization of ideas and highlight the prospects for future collaboration. The target research areas for the second Adaptive Hypertext and Hypermedia workshop include:
- Adaptive hypertext and hypermedia (adaptive navigation support and adaptive presentation within an existing hypertext network of documents)
- Dynamic hypertext (employing text generation or other techniques to dynamically create both the hypertext network and the documents within the network as the user requests them)
- Information retrieval and filtering (the use of information retrieval or other techniques to determine the relevance of the nodes within a static hypertext network for the individual user)
- Intelligent hypertext (automatic linking, similarity-based navigation, concept-based navigation).
Some related events which have been held in the past include:
More information about adaptive hypertext systems can be found on Adaptive Hypertext and Hypermedia Home Page
There has been a significant amount of research in this area over the past five years (see workshop theme for more information), but two recurring issues have become increasingly important, and these were the focus of this workshop:
- World Wide Web: The Web is both a new application area and a new challenge for adaptive and flexible hypertext research. Web-based applications are expected to be used by a much greater variety of users than any earlier standalone application. Web-based applications naturally need to be flexible; a Web-based hypertext application which is designed with a particular class of users in mind may not suit users of other classes. At the same time, developing adaptive and flexible hypermedia systems on the Web, we can investigate a number of new opportunities such as user model sharing or the use of group models.
- Evaluation: One of the key issues which arose from the first flexible hypertext workshop and which has been aired again recently on the adaptive hypertext mailing list is the importance of the evaluation of adaptive and flexible hypertext systems. In particular, since the main goal of these systems is to maximize the suitability of a document to the user's knowledge and needs, evaluation is an essential aspect in the development of these systems. However, very little research has been done which confirms the advantages of such systems or which demonstrates how this evaluation process might be done.
The workshop will run for one full day before the main Hypertext'98 conference. The number of attendees will be limited to 20-25 in order to encourage participation in workshop discussions. Participation will be on the basis of submitted position papers or by invitation. The workshop will include a limited number of paper presentations and general group discussions. Group discussions will focus on the issues raised in the position papers, as well as on some focus questions. A workshop dinner will also be organized to encourage informal discussion.
The program will include:
- Welcome and Introduction
- Workshop Sessions consisting of:
- 1 to 2 Position Paper Presentations (15-30 minutes), and
- Group Discussion on the Issues Raised (30-60 minutes)
- Closing:
- Planning for post-workshop activities
- Conclusions and Wrap-up
- Workshop Dinner
The proceedings will be compiled into a technical report after the workshop.
- Peter Brusilovsky (chair), School of Computer Science, Carnegie Mellon University, USA
- Paul De Bra, Faculty of Mathematics and Computing Science, Eindhoven University of Technology, the Netherlands
- John Eklund, Sydney University of Technology, Australia
- Kristina Höök, Human-computer interaction and language engineering group (HUMLE), Swedish Institute of Computer Science, Sweden.
- Alfred Kobsa, GMD FIT German National Research Center for Information Technology, Germany
- Maria Milosavljevic, CSIRO Mathematical and Information Sciences, Sydney, Australia
- Johanna D. Moore, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Pittsburgh, USA
- Jon Oberlander, Human Communication Research Centre, University of Edinburgh, U.K.
- Julita Vassileva, University of Saskatchewan, Canada
Peter Brusilovsky <plb@cs.cmu.edu>
School of Computer Science
Carnegie Mellon University
Pittsburgh, PA 15213, USA
Phone 412 268 56 84
Fax 412 268 55 76
WWW http://www.contrib.andrew.cmu.edu/~plb/home.html
