Walden's Paths

1. Walden's Paths Richard Furuta, Frank M. Shipman III, Hugh Wilson Avital Arora, Luis Francisco-Revilla, Unmil P. Karadkar, Emily Luke, James Vasek Center for the Study of Digital Libraries Texas A&M University

2. Evolution of the Walden's Paths Authoring Tools Unmil P. Karadkar, Luis Francisco-Revilla, Richard Furuta, Haowei Hsieh, Frank M. Shipman III Texas A&M University

3. Walden’s Paths – Project Overview • Facilitates inclusion of Web-based information in the K-12 curriculum • Most information on the Web is not suitable for use in classroom education • Information needs to be contextualized • To suit the curricular goals • To highlight focal points for students • To present issues of interest • Paths are annotated lists of Web pages

4. Walden’s Paths – Project Overview WWW Host Web Page Internet Backbone A Path

5. The Walden’s Paths Server • List of Paths • Path Summaries • Links to author directories

6. The Walden’s Paths Server • Annotation Frame • Control Frame • Content Frame • Not controlled by the Path Author • Following links • Caching of pages for performance

7. The Walden’s Paths Server • Off-Path traversal • Single click return to Path • Guided exploratory learning environment

8. The Path Authoring Process • 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 • Making the Path accessible to the viewers

9. Java-based Path Authoring Tool • Java Applet • Most users were unfamiliar with Web-searches • Interfaced with Web-search engines • Frequent modification to search engine interface required • Workspace area to store potentially useful pages

10. VIKI-based Path Authoring Tool • Search results returned as a VIKI collection • Research tool • Implemented on Unix (Solaris) • Selected objects in the workspace saved as Paths • Workspace saved for future modification to the Path

11. Walden’s Authoring Tools • Three identifiable steps to creating Paths • Search for resources • Author a Path (save on local disk) • Publish the Path (Path accessible to viewers) • Authors can search for resources using their favorite search engines • Many users are familiar with Web-searches • Authors do not need to adapt to a new interface

12. Walden’s PathAuthor Page Information • Stand-alone Java application • Network-independent • Path outline • Title • Page list • Page outline • URL • Title • Caching • Annotation

13. Walden’s PathAuthor Author and Path Information • Author’s contact information • Path Expiration • For Paths that contain time-bound materials • Short description of the Path

14. Walden’s PathPublisher • Make a Path available to viewers • CGI Application • Publishing Paths over the WWW • Author login required • Security issues

15. Evaluation of the Authoring Tools • User Characteristics • 5 Middle School teachers from the CSISD (volunteers) • Varied teaching experience (between 1 and 10 years) • Teach different subjects (art, science, Physical education) • Use computers and the WWW often • Design (consecutive days. duration of each session – 90 min) • (Day 1) Training session – explanation, demo and guided tasks • (Day 2) Evaluation Session - create and publish a Path without collaboration and with minimal help from the investigator • Data collection • Pre-task and post-task questionnaires • Observations during the evaluation session • Discussion with the test subjects after the evaluation session

16. Results of the Evaluation • Responses to the questionnaires indicate that • The training imparted was sufficient to use the tools effectively • The tools are user-friendly and learnable • The interface employs appropriate widgets and labels • The authoring tools are at least as good as other comparable authoring environments (TrackStar) • Observation of the test users during evaluation • The tools are intuitive, functions of the widgets can be guessed from their appearance • Teachers were able to search for resources and author the Paths simultaneously • The tools are stable, with few defects

17. Results of the Evaluation • Some aspects could not be judged • Will authors prefer these tools over other comparable tools? • Are these tools memorable (once learned, can they be remembered after a period of time)? • Can authors with little or no experience with the WWW use them with ease? • Suggestions from the test users • Drag and drop feature for transferring URLs from the browser • Text and HTML viewing for the annotations • Integrated Spelling checker

18. Future Work • Add suggested features to the authoring tools • Conduct more extensive user testing • Test hypotheses that cannot be tested over a short time period • Set up authoring infrastructure in schools • Widen the user-base for the tools • Encourage authors to use Paths in their classroom teaching • Observe the changes in authors’ work practices as they mature at using the tools • Observe how authors use the tools (collaborative authoring)

19. Structuring Access to a Dynamic Collection of Digital Documents: The Walden's Paths Virtual Directories Unmil P. Karadkar, Luis Francisco-Revilla, Richard Furuta, Frank M. Shipman III Texas A&M University

20. The Need for Virtual Directories • Path Lists tend to get lengthy fast • Limited amount of display real estate • Paths may be added and deleted frequently • Classifying Paths by author does not solve the issue • In fact, no static classification scheme can satisfy the requirements of all readers • Paths of interest to a reader may be spread over multiple physical directories

21. The Need for Virtual Directories

22. The Need for Virtual Directories Path Server Mr. Smith Mrs. Jones 7th Grade 8th Grade 7th Grade 8th Grade School A School B

23. Virtual Directories • Provide • content-based • location independent access • Persistent queries • Query attributes are saved • Resolved at access-time • Up to date information is presented to users • A proven technique • Semantic File System (Gifford, 1991) • Hierarchy and Content (Gopal 1999)

24. The Walden’s Paths Virtual Directories • Allow readers to access paths of interest without having to worry about their location • Display all paths that are currently available and may be of interest to the reader • Aid readers in reusing their past queries • Allow readers to search their earlier queries (work in progress) • Relationship with physical directories • A virtual directory created using author name as the search criterion

25. The Interface

26. The Interface

27. The Interface • Identical to the Path List interface • Links for • Modifying the criteria of this directory • Returning to the main Path List

28. The Interface • Save as new search or overwrite • No security yet

29. Technical Details • Baseline implementation • Virtual directories are stored as text files • Currently the directories can only be accessed via a direct URL which is presented to the readers when the directory is created • The directories have identical look and feel as the Path lists • Query terms are “OR”ed to yield the final result set • Queries can be recalled and modified

30. Future Work • Security and sharing of directories • Cataloging of Paths in order to return correct matches • Keyword-based approach with designated catalogers • Ensure consistency of terms • Better control over searches • Boolean and ranked queries • Use existing tools (MG?) • User modeling for saving user preferences • Favorites • Paths to be excluded from search • Recall directories created by users

31. Supporting Multilingual Paths on the WWW Unmil P. Karadkar, Luis Francisco-Revilla, Richard Furuta, Frank M. Shipman III, Avital Arora Texas A&M University

32. Catering to a Global Audience • Need to support Paths in different languages • Schools that teach more than one languages • Need to support parallel versions of Paths • Widening the viewer-base • Paths as an aid in learning foreign languages • Support for multiple fonts and parallel widgets • Support for authoring multilingual Paths • Users need not download any font faces • Microsoft (Web Embedding Fonts Tool) • BitStream (WebFont Wizard)

33. HTTP Server Path Server Reader Browser Control Widgets Language Selector Fonts Path Publisher Publish Paths Published Paths Browser Local Paths P1 P2 Pn Save/Load Paths PathAuthor Author L1 L2 L2 L1 L3 L4 The Architecture Server Setup Reader Setup Author Setup Remote Web-site

34. Interface (PathAuthor) • Authoring in various languages and scripts • English • Spanish • Hindi • Path and page information • Master Paths

35. Interface (PathPublisher) • CGI Application • Authors upload Paths to a Web-accessible location • Currently available in English only • Separation of Paths by language

36. Interface (Path Server) • Multilingual Interface • Paths can be viewed by language

37. Interface – A page on the Path • Page is available in the language of the Path

38. Interface – Another Page on the Path • Page is not available in Spanish • Page from the default language (English) is displayed

39. Issues • Technology • Nascent • Minimal support and buggy products • Server-specific • Installed Web fonts must specify valid servers for access • Each Walden’s Paths server must create fonts • Platform dependency (Windows) • Font availability • The server must have access to the font used by the Web page • Information • Most information is available in English • Use of Web-based translators yields unsatisfactory results

40. Future Work • Support for collaborative authoring • Creating paths in multiple languages when an author doesn’t know all of them • Internationalization of Walden’s Paths • User modeling and Personalization • User evaluation of the multilingual Paths • Path authoring • Browsing

41. Walden’s Paths – Project Overview • Walden’s Paths as a part of larger Digital Library (NSDL) • Quiz Authoring and Support • Path Manager • Web pages change frequently • Monitor and report web page changes