Subject: Change of Dates: 2nd Flexible Hypertext Workshop
From: Maria Milosavljevic <mariam@mpce.mq.edu.au>
To: elsnet-list@cogsci.ed.ac.uk
Date: Fri, 6 Feb 1998 11:59:46 +1100 (EST)



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            The 2nd International Flexible Hypertext Workshop:

                           Standards and Evaluation

                           Held in Conjunction with 
           the 7th International World Wide Web Conference (WWW7)

                 Brisbane, Australia --- 14 April 1998

                  http://www.mri.mq.edu.au/conf/flexht98/

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Workshop Theme:
---------------

With the explosion of information on 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.

This workshop is intended as an inter-disciplinary exploration into
flexible hypertext systems. Flexible hypertext systems are systems
which can present different users with different views of the same
hypertext network, or which can dynamically create the hypertext
network and the content of the documents at the nodes of that network
at run-time. This workshop aims to draw together a number of research
groups taking different approaches to flexible hypertext systems, in
order to promote the cross-fertilisation of ideas and highlight the
prospects for future collaboration. The target research areas include
(but are not limited to):

- 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. That is,
the content of the documents remain static, but links to other
documents are flexible.

- Adaptive hypertext: the adaptation of an existing hypertext network
of documents to a model of the user. That is, providing flexible
document content and flexible views of a static hypertext network.

- 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. The hypertext network does not
exist in any form; it is built dynamically.

Some related events which have been held in the past include: 

- Flexible Hypertext Workshop, held at the the Eighth ACM
International Hypertext Conference (Hypertext'97).
(http://www.mri.mq.edu.au/~mariam/flexht/)

- Intelligent educational systems on the World-Wide Web, held in
conjunction with the 8th World Conference on Artificial Intelligence
in Education (AI-ED97). 
(http://www.contrib.andrew.cmu.edu/~plb/AIED97_workshop/)

- Workshop on Adaptive Systems and User Modeling on the World Wide
Web, held in conjunction with the Sixth International Conference on
User Modeling (UM'97).  (http://zaphod.cs.uni-sb.de/~UM97/ws5.html)

- Workshop on User Modelling for Information Filtering on the World
Wide Web, held in conjunction with the Fifth International Conference
on User Modeling (UM'96). 
(http://www.cs.su.oz.au/~bob/um96-workshop.html)

- Workshop on Adaptive Hypertext and Hypermedia held in conjunction
with the Fourth International Conference on User Modeling (UM'94).
(http://www.education.uts.edu.au/projects/ah/AH-94.html)

More information about adaptive hypertext systems can be found at 
http://www.education.uts.edu.au/projects/ah/

Workshop Focus:
---------------

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 will be
the focus of this workshop:

- Standards: With the increasing popularity of the world wide web and
the growing market for flexible document delivery systems, we need to
develop standards for these systems in order to encourage and
facilitate their use more widely on the world wide web. In order to
develop such standards it is first important to more clearly define
the requirements for such systems: what does it mean for a system to
be a flexible, adaptive or dynamic hypertext system? Following on from
these requirements, which techniques are important in flexible
hypertext systems? Finally, can we design a standard architecture for
flexible hypertext systems which can be re-used widely?

- 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 flexible hypertext systems. In particular, since the
main goal of these systems is to maximise 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 might be done.

Workshop Format:
----------------

The workshop will run for one full day on 14 April. The number of
attendees will be limited to 20 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
organised to encourage informal discussion.

The programme 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.

Position Papers:
----------------

We invite position papers describing demonstrated techniques for
improving the flexibility of hypertext documents. We are particularly
interested in papers which present innovative solutions to providing
flexible hypertext documents, and those which address the need for
building standard architectures and evaluation techniques for such
systems. We are also interested in receiving papers assessing the
benefits and downfalls of providing flexible documents, and papers of
a more speculative nature which focus on the future of flexible
hypertext systems. Those aspects of the paper which are important for
discussion in the workshop should be clearly outlined in the paper.

Papers should be 3-5 pages long, and should be put up on the Web. If
you don't have access to a web server, then some space will be
allocated for you.

Electronic submission of the URL address of the position paper will be
preferred, although papers submitted as ascii (html) or postscript
will be accepted. To submit a position paper, send the URL address and
an ascii version of the paper itself to: mariam@mpce.mq.edu.au

If this is not possible, please send hard copies to:

Maria Milosavljevic 
CSIRO Mathematical and Information Sciences
Locked Bag 17
North Ryde 
NSW 2113 
Australia

Important Dates: 

     27 February 1998: Submission of position papers 
     13 March 1998: Notification of acceptance or rejection
     27 March 1998: Camera-ready copies due 

Before the workshop, all attendees will be able to access the position
papers from the web. We strongly encourage attendees to read these
before the workshop.

Programme Committee: 
--------------------

Maria Milosavljevic (Chair), Macquarie University, Australia.
Peter Brusilovsky, Carnegie Mellon University, USA.
Robert Dale, Macquarie University, Australia.
Paul De Bra, Eindhoven University of Technology, the Netherlands.
Kristina Hook, Swedish Institute of Computer Science, Sweden.
Judy Kay, University of Sydney, Australia.
Jon Oberlander, University of Edinburgh, Scotland.
Cecile Paris, CSIRO Mathematical and Information Sciences, Australia.
Julita Vassileva, University of Saskatchewan, Canada

For More Information:
---------------------

Maria Milosavljevic
MRI Language Technology Group
Macquarie University
Sydney NSW 2113
Australia
email: mariam@mpce.mq.edu.au
Tel: (+61 2) 9850 6345
Fax: (+61 2) 9850 9529