© Copyright 2006 Texas Digital Library. All Rights Reserved.
Vol 8, No 3 (2007)
Table of Contents
Articles
Towards a generic adaptive hypermedia platform: a conversion case study
This paper reports about the recent advances towards establishing a common platform for adaptive educational hypermedia (AEH) authoring. We present the conversion from MOT, a dedicated authoring system, to AHA! used in this context as delivery system for AEH. Moreover, we describe two new representation languages that emerged in the process: a common format for defining the static material, CAF, and an extended adaptation language for the description of the dynamic behaviour, LAG. Finally, some evaluations are shown and conclusions are drawn.
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Adaptive Hypermedia System Interoperability: a 'real world' evaluation
Adaptive Hypermedia (AH) authoring is widely acknowledged to be complex and time consuming, yet this vital process is rarely evaluated. Recent research has approached the authoring problem by ensuring that previously created materials can be converted from one system to another. This paper evaluates the results of this research, specifically the creation of adaptive materials in MOT and their conversion and subsequent delivery in WHURLE. A group of technically experienced IT users who are novice AH authors were exposed to MOT and WHURLE during an introductory week long course. This paper interprets the results of these authors using a "write once, deliver many" paradigm of adaptive hypermedia creation.
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Automatic summary evaluation based on text grammars
In this paper, I describe a method for evaluating automatically generated text summaries. The method is inspired by research in text grammars by Teun Van Dijk. It addresses a text as a complex structure, the elements of which are interconnected both on the level of form and meaning, and the well-formedness of which should be described on both of these levels. The method addresses current problems of summary evaluation methods, especially the problem of quantifying informativity, as well as the problem of objective measurement of well-formedness of text. It is believed that the ideas from this research can contribute to evaluation methods for algorithms transforming complex meaningful entities into other complex meaningful entities (text, hypertext, sound, vision).
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Developing an Adaptive Digital Talking Book Player with FAME
This article presents the development of an adaptive multimodal Digital Talking Book player using FAME. FAME is a conceptual framework for the development of adaptive multimodal applications. FAME's adaptation is based on context changes. The context is defined by three entities: User, Platform and Environment. The adaptation can impact multimodal operations, as well as interaction and presentation aspects. FAME introduces the notion of Behavioral Matrix. This is used to represent adaptation rules, store their activation count, and provide a mechanism for changing active rules in response to changes in the context. Usability and accessibility flaws have been identified in current Digital Talking Book players. The developed player proved the feasibility of FAME for developing adaptive multimodal applications, while also demonstrating that the introduction of multimodal input and outputs and of adaptive features helps overcome the limitations of current players.
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Dynamic Adaptation of Content and Structure in Electronic Encyclopaedias
Adaptive functionality has been applied successfully in many areas ranging from user interfaces to hypermedia systems. Digital libraries and electronic encyclopaedias, however, have rarely made use of the power of adaptation. In this paper, an approach to include adaptation into encyclopaedic environments is presented. The proposal covers a set of adaptation techniques. They enable the system to explain technical terms and replace domain specific expressions with "plain" words automatically. Moreover, specific terms can be linked to further articles automatedly. Blacklisting, whitelisting and general link alteration are employed in order to assure quality standards and to provide users with more appropriate hyperlinks. With navigation support based on the automatic insertion of trails and suggestions of potentially interesting articles, the users' navigation in encyclopaedias can be facilitated. A first version has been implemented in project "Alexander" and has been made available to a limited public. The system is based on a traditional client-server architecture, where the server-side components perform the actual adaptation. Details of this pilot project are provided.
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Adaptive Personal Information Environment based on the Semantic Web
Personalised information systems aim to give the individual user support in accessing, retrieving and storing information. In order to support knowledge workers during their tasks of searching, locating and manipulating information, a system that provides information suitable for a particular user’s needs, and that is also able to facilitate the sharing and reuse information, is essential. This paper presents Adaptive Personal Information Environment (a-PIE); a service-oriented framework using Open Hypermedia and Semantic Web technologies to provide a personalised web-based system. a-PIE models the information structures (data and links) and context as Fundamental Open Hypermedia Model (FOHM) structures which are manipulated by using the Auld Linky contextual link service. a-PIE provides an information environment that enables users to search an information space based on ontologically defined domain concepts. The users can add and manipulate (edit, delete, comment, etc.) interesting data, or parts of information structures, into their information space leaving the original published data, or information structures, unchanged. a-PIE facilitates the shareability and reusability of knowledge according to users’ requirements.
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Virtual Web Services
In this paper we propose an application of software agents to provide Virtual Web Services. A Virtual Web Service is a linked collection of several real and/or virtual Web Services, and public and private agents, accessed by the user in the same way as a single real Web Service. A Virtual Web Service allows unrestricted comparison, information merging, pipelining, etc., of data coming from different sources and in different forms. Detailed architecture and functionality of a single Virtual Web Service is user-dependent, and information gathered from existing Web Services may be used in an individual manner. The main goal of the proposal is twofold. First, virtual services allow unrestricted personalization of any Web Service by user-defined software executed at both the server- and the clientside. Second, virtual services provide efficient server-side monitoring and alerting once “vital” information provided by a real service is changed, and this change is of any interest to particular user. In addition, the service users are able to define their own, non-standard interfaces to existing services without a direct interaction with the service provider (information owner). This feature allows for user-specific versioning of services and continuous improvement of the service from the user point of view. By shifting the personalization aspects to the users, we reduce overall maintenance costs (from the service owner point of view) and improve system flexibility and fast adaptation to dynamic changes in the environment and evolving user requirements.
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Personalization of Shared Data: The ShaRef Approach
Personalization of services often has to cope with the conflicting goals of allowing cooperation and sharing, which require common data formats and services, and supporting individual use cases, which require as much personalization as possible. In this paper we present the ShaRef approach to personalization and sharing, which on the one hand allows users to cooperatively work with bibliographic references, and on the other hand supports the usage of this information in personalized and diverse ways. The goal of this approach is to foster as much cooperation as possible, while simultaneously supporting users with individualized ways of reusing the cooperatively managed data. This way of building applications combines the beneficial aspects of information sharing and personalization. Using this approach, applications are better suited to become building blocks in information infrastructures that are built by users in unpredictable ways.
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