Evolution of the Walden s Paths Authoring Tools Unmil P. Karadkar, Luis Francisco-Revilla, Richard Furuta, Haowei Hsieh, Frank M. Shipman III Center for the Study of Digital Libraries and Department of Computer Science Texas A&M University College Station, TX 77843-3112 USA {unmil, l0f0954, furuta, haowei, shipman}@csdl.tamu.edu Abstract: Changing user skills, available infrastructure, and work practices have caused many differences in the authoring support provided by the Walden s Paths project since its conception. In this paper we trace these changes and the transition from the earlier authoring tools that supported an integrated authoring process, to the more recent tools designed to work with the Web applications that teachers have become accustomed to. 1. Introduction Hypertext has come a long way from being found only in research systems to being a part of our everyday lives in the form of the World-Wide Web (WWW or the Web). We use the Web for browsing academic information, for furthering business interests, for entertainment and a variety of other purposes. There is an immense amount of information on the Web that can be used for a variety of reasons. Web-based information can be harnessed to supplement classroom teaching for K-12 students. K-12 teachers can use Web-based information in the curriculum to help students learn at their own pace and to make their educational experience a more interactive one [Furuta et al. 97]. While the use of Web-based documents in educational curriculum allows teachers and students unrestricted access to a global information repository, it also raises issues. The Web is a vast and dynamic medium. It can be used as a canvas for exploratory learning. Exploration, a valuable mode of learning, can be more useful to students if it occurs in an environment that the curriculum developer has constrained by providing context and additional structure. Much of the information available on the Web is not oriented towards use in a classroom setting or for comprehension by K-12 students. However, various elements of the available information, for example, collections of images, simulations, multimedia objects, library databases and catalogs, etc., have the potential to play an important role in an educational setting [Shipman et al. 96]. The addition of meta-structure to the existing hypertext network makes it more suitable for exploratory learning. A path is a type of meta-structure that links conceptually similar information in a hypertextual Web. Bush suggested the use of associative trails as a means to maintain information based on a user s mental model [Bush 45]. Paths have been implemented in Trigg s Guided Tours [Trigg 88], integrated into Notecards [Halasz 87], and demonstrated in Zellweger s Scripted Paths [Zellweger 89]. In the next section of the paper we briefly describe Walden s Paths, a system that allows teachers to add metastructure over Web-based documents. Section 3 describes the early implementations of the authoring tools and the lessons learned from them. We describe the concept and implementation of a new set of authoring tools in section 4. Section 5 discusses a recent evaluation of the new authoring tools. Section 6 presents directions for future work and concludes the paper.
2. Walden s Paths Walden s Paths is a Web implementation of a path mechanism. A path is based on the metaphor of a networkbased meta-document, where the links from the path point to Web documents. In general, the author of the path is not the author of the documents that the path points to. Walden s Paths currently supports linear, directed paths -- a path is essentially a list of Web pages to be followed in the order of their appearance in the path. Walden s Paths is aimed at incorporating Web-based information in the K-12 curriculum and hence additional text can be added in order to further contextualize the Web-based information. The authors may provide this context by adding text or other annotations to individual pages on the path, as well as by providing an abstract for the path as a whole [Furuta et al. 97]. A detailed discussion of the various issues and experiences with Walden s Paths can be found in [Shipman et al. 96], [Furuta et al. 97] and [Shipman et al. 98]. Walden s Paths (http://www.cs.tamu.edu/walden) can be accessed from any standard Web browser that supports frames. Figure 1 shows a page from a path on the Center for Studies of Digital Libraries. The browser window is split into three frames. The bottom frame displays the Web page that the path refers to, as it would appear when viewed without the Walden s Paths interface. The top two frames help enunciate the contents of the bottom frame. The top-left frame is the "Control Frame". It displays the widgets for navigating along the path and provides an indication of the reader s location on the path. It also provides a link to the page being displayed in the bottom frame in case the reader would like to view the page outside of the Walden s Paths interface. The information icon (denoted by i ) displays a brief overview of the path that includes an abstract for the path: a short description, followed by the title of each page in the path. The top-right frame is the "Annotation Frame". This frame contains the annotation added by the author. The annotation may be an explanation of the document in the bottom frame, a pointer to more resources, a question that the students may be expected to answer, points to be noted in the document below or any other information that will satisfy the author s curricular goals. Path readers may navigate the path solely by clicking on the forward and back arrows (in other words, visiting the paths in the order intended by the path author) or by visiting pages in the order of their choice by clicking on the page numbers. A reader may follow any link from the document displayed in the bottom frame and thus explore the space related to the path. When the reader "leaves" the path, a "Return to Path" image replaces the contents of the control frame as shown in Figure 2. Once the reader is done exploring the space he or she may return to the location on the path where the exploring began with a single click of the mouse on this image. 3. Authoring Paths and Earlier Tools Authoring paths is a complex information task, requiring a number of author activities. In general, path Figure 1: The Walden s Paths Interface Figure 2: Off-Path traversal
authoring comprises of the following steps [Shipman et al. 97]: Locating promising Web pages Browsing and evaluating material at these sites Selecting information elements for use in the path Developing an outline for the path Adding the page URLs and annotations to the paths Not all of these steps may be required for every path that is authored. For example, if the path author has also developed the pages that contain the information, the location of the information is known. Also, the information has been created for the purposes of the path and there is no need to further evaluate it. In the past, we have tried various approaches to provide an effective interface for authoring paths. One of these, the Path Authoring Tool, allowed authors to search for Web resources and group selected resources along with their annotations, into a path. The interface for this tool is shown in figure 2. The tool queried Web search engines for finding information on the keywords specified by the author. The list of pages returned by the search engines was displayed in the Search page list (top-left of the window). The pages could be shifted into the path or workspace areas, where the author could add annotations to the page. The authors could store potentially useful pages in the workspace area for later inclusion in a path. The pages in the path could be selected for viewing or modification and the information about this page was displayed in the Information panel at the bottom of the window. An alternate version of organizing information was tried using an enhanced version of VIKI [Shipman et al. 95]. VIKI is a hypertext system designed to support information analysis. It provides users with the ability to place and move information symbols in a set of two-dimensional spaces called "collections". It then uses a spatial parsing algorithm to identify structure that is implicit in the layout of information symbols. VIKI was enhanced with an interface to Web search engines (AltaVista and OpenText) and a "Save As Path" capability to support authoring of paths [Shipman et al. 97]. This authoring tool performed the search and returned the results in a VIKI collection. The author could then organize and annotate the results in the workspace. This workspace could then be saved either as a VIKI collection for continuing work later or saved as a path. This tool also allowed the author to create paths containing either a selected subset of the pages in the workspace or containing all the pages that had URLs associated with them [Shipman et al. 98]. Thus the author could store other information in the VIKI collection for reference purposes. This approach was promising, although VIKI s implementation on Sun SPARCstations Figure 3: The Path Authoring Tool Figure 4: The VIKI-based Authoring Tool
limited its portability. The recent implementation of VKB [Shipman et al. 00] may allow further investigation of this approach in the future. The earlier authoring tools provided integrated support for all the steps involved in authoring. However, the process of authoring consists of three operational phases (distinct from the steps mentioned above). In the first phase, the author collects information from the Web for adding in the path. In the second phase, the author creates the path from these resources and stores it in the local file system. In the third phase, this saved path is moved to a Web-accessible location and is registered with Walden s Paths. The new generation of authoring tools separates the three operational phases. 4. The PathAuthor and the PathPublisher The earlier authoring tools explicitly supported authors in their search for pages to include in the path by providing a built-in interface to search the Web. When we began the project in 1995, teachers were not accustomed to using the Web and so the authoring tools provided a uniform interface to Web search engines to avoid requiring teachers to learn too many new interfaces. In developing the new authoring interface, we recognized that teachers today were likely to be very comfortable with Web searching, and indeed that each individual has his or her own preferences for favorite search engine. Rather than attempting to provide universal support for searching within the authoring tool, we decided instead to assume that information location could and would be handled outside of our system. As a useful side effect, this design decision allowed specification of an authoring interface that did not require an active network connection, thereby opening up the possibility of allowing path editing to occur offline, for example on a laptop located at home. Additionally, it removed the technical requirement that the authoring tool s interface be continually modified to keep up with the changing interface to externally-maintained search engines and eased concerns about compromising the intellectual property rights of the owners of the search engines. The support provided by our new authoring tools begins with creation of the path from the Web documents selected in the first phase. Once the author has decided which Web pages to use for the path, these pages may be ordered and the annotations may be written even in the absence of a network connection. In addition to the information collected by the previous authoring tools, the PathAuthor collects additional meta-data about the path. This includes contact information about the author, which is displayed by Walden s Paths if a viewer wishes to see the path overview. Walden s Paths uses caching to improve the response time. A page is cached the first time it is accessed and from then on it is served from the local cache. Thus, if a page changes after it has been cached, the viewers of the paths cannot know about it. However, if the authors want to include periodically changing information, it presents a problem with the current path structure. Hence, the new authoring tool accepts a caching period from the author, the amount of time after which, the page must be fetched again from its location. The paths that are created may also be valid only for certain duration. For example, the author may not wish to have a path for the solutions to student assignments available beyond the Figure 5: Author Information Dialog Figure 6: Walden s PathAuthor
end of the current semester. Hence, the path may have an expiration date. The Author Information Dialog is displayed in figure 4. All of this information is voluntary -- paths may be authored without this information. The PathAuthor is a network-independent stand-alone Java application. It is backward compatible and reads paths that were created using the earlier authoring tools. When such paths are saved, they are saved in the new format and hence the PathAuthor also acts as a path upgrade tool. The interface of the PathAuthor is illustrated in figure 5. The PathAuthor is platform-independent, as it has been implemented in Java, and it automatically adjusts the window size depending upon the size of the display. It currently supports three screen resolutions, 640 X 480 pixels, 800 X 600 pixels and 1024 X 768 pixels. For any other display sizes, the interface selects the most optimal display parameters and adjusts to the display. The interface supports the addition of new pages, the modification of page properties like Title, URL, Caching and Annotation, the deletion of existing pages, the retraction of all changes to a page, and the reordering of the pages in the path. The PathPublisher supports the authors in publishing their paths that have already been saved in their local file systems. It is implemented as a CGI application and can be accessed from anywhere via the WWW. The authors must login over the WWW with a login name and a password in order to publish or unpublish paths. The paths so published are displayed in the author s personal list of paths. The authors may also modify some of their user settings, for example the password or change the titles of the paths. The PathPublisher also features an "Administrative" interface that allows an administrator to log on remotely and add/delete author logins or modify their settings. The administrator may also add paths that are visible in the global space (from the main list of paths). We are currently not considering security issues beyond the login procedure, as these can be handled by the use of existing technologies like SSL (secure sockets layer). Figure 6 illustrates the interface of the PathPublisher. 5. Evaluation of the new authoring tools Intermediate school (5th and 6th grade) teachers in the College Station Independent School District (CSISD) evaluated the new set of authoring tools and tested their usability. The teachers fluently used Web search engines to find resources for their paths. They found the authoring tools easy to learn and were able to create and publish paths using these tools in a short time. The teachers suggested addition of new features to improve the utility of the authoring tools. They suggested that the PathAuthor support a drag-and-drop feature to copy the URLs of the pages directly from the browser window. Currently the authors can add any amount of text on one line in the annotation area. This feature allows authors to include lengthy HTML tags within their annotations without having to break them up across lines. The teachers would like an additional "text" mode for the annotations that would wrap the text after it spanned the width of the window. They also identified potential usability problems with the tools and these will be fixed in the near future. Figure 7: Walden s PathPublisher
6. Conclusion and Future Work The expectations of users from the software they use change over time. This is partly due to the changes in their knowledge, in their work practices, and in the infrastructure that is available to them. In the Walden s Paths project, we have observed these changes and have modified the functionality offered to the authors to best support their needs and work practices over time. The earlier versions of the Walden s paths authoring tools were designed to support users who were not conversant with the use of the Web and hence provided a more protected environment in terms of interacting with data on the Web. The later tools focus more on supporting the authors in the process of path authoring and rely on authors to be able to gather the information that they would like to go in their paths. This also offers more flexibility and freedom to the author as regards their preferences in collecting data over the Web. As evaluation of the new tools takes place, we will watch for signs that teachers are having trouble searching for information or would like a workspace for storing pages of potential future value with the path. 7. References [Bush 45] Bush, V., "As We May Think", The Atlantic Monthly, August 1945, pp. 101-108. [Furuta et al. 97] Furuta, R., Shipman, F., Marshall, C., Brenner, D., Hsieh, H., "Hypertext Paths and the World- Wide Web: Experiences with Walden s Paths", Proceedings of Hypertext 97: the Eighth ACM Conference on Hypertext, Southampton, U.K., April 6 11 1997, pp. 167 176. [Halasz et al. 87] Halasz, F., Moran, T., Trigg, R., "Notecards in a Nutshell", Proceedings of the ACM CHI+GI Conference 1987, Toronto, Ontario (5-9 April, 1987), pp. 45-52. [Shipman et al. 95] Shipman, F., Marshall, C. and Moran, T., "Finding and Using Implicit Structure in Human- Organized Layouts of Information", Proceedings of Human Factors in Computing Systems, CHI 95, ACM, Denver, CO, May 1995, pp. 346-353. [Shipman et al. 96] Shipman, F., Marshall, C., Furuta, R., Brenner, D., Hsieh, H., Kumar, V., "Creating Educational Guided Paths over the World-Wide Web", Proceedings of ED-TELECOM 96, June 1996, pp. 326 331. [Shipman et al. 97] Shipman, F., Furuta, R., Marshall, C., "Generating Web-based Presentations in Spatial Hypertext", Proceedings of IUI 97, Orlando, FL, August 1996, pp. 71-78. [Shipman et al. 98] Shipman, F., Furuta, R., Brenner, D., Chung, C., Hsieh, H., "Using Paths in the Classroom: Experiences and Adaptations", Proceedings of Hypertext 98, Pittsburgh, PA, June 1998, pp. 267-276. [Shipman et al. 00] Shipman, F., Hsieh, H., Airhart, R., "Analytic Workspaces: Supporting the Emergence of Interpretation in the Visual Knowledge Builder", Technical Report, Department of Computer Science and Center for the Study of Digital Libraries, Texas A&M University. [Trigg 88] Trigg, R., "Guided Tours and Tabletops: Tools for Communicating in a Hypertext Environment", ACM Transactions on Office Information Systems, 6(4), October 1988, pp. 398-414. [Zellweger 89] Zellweger, P., "Scripted Documents: A Hypertext Path Mechanism", Proceedings of Hypertext 89, ACM, New York, November 1989, pp. 1-26 Acknowledgements This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant No. IIS-9812040. We would like to thank the participating teachers and Institutional Review Board of the College Station ISD for their support towards the evaluation of Walden s authoring tools.