Interactive Electronic Conference Proceedings

Samuel A. Rebelsky, James Ford, Kenneth Harker, Fillia Makedon, P. Takis Metaxas,* Charles Owen

Dartmouth College Department of Computer Science
Dartmouth Experimental Visualization Laboratory
6211 Sudikoff Laboratories
Hanover, NH 03755

*Wellesley College
Department of Computer Science
106 Central Street
Wellesley, MA 02181

samr@cs.dartmouth.edu
jford@cs.dartmouth.edu
iago@cs.dartmouth.edu
makedon@cs.dartmouth.edu
PMetaxas@wellesley.edu
cowen@cs.dartmouth.edu

Abstract

Computer technology has changed the way that conference proceedings can be archived and presented. No longer are researchers limited to printed text; electronic proceedings allow virtual participants in the conference to search the proceedings for ideas, to add and share annotations, and to create paths of related concepts through the proceedings. Proceedings that incorporate nontextual materials, such as audio, video, and slides from conference presentations provide further opportunities for virtual participants.

In this demonstration of the DAGS interactive multimedia conference proceedings, we present an electronic conference proceedings interface that incorporates both papers and presentations. This interface presents a wide variety of features, admits nonlinear interactions, and suggests new roles for conference proceedings.

Keywords

Electronic Conference Proceedings; Multimedia Interfaces; Hypermedia; Academic/Educational Applications; User-Interface Components.

ABOUT ELECTRONIC PROCEEDINGS

Although many conferences are now providing some form of electronic proceedings (e.g., [1,,4,5]), few electronic proceedings incorporate the wide variety of materials from a conference, in particular, the talks presented at the conference. However, these presentations can form an integral part of electronic conference proceedings. Conference presentations often contain valuable materials not found in the paper. Presentations often include introductory and tutorial materials used to make the presentation accessible to a broader audience. Many presentations also include informal descriptions of both the successful and failed steps taken in the research project. Such materials can affect the research methods of both novices and experts. Because of the great value of presentations, the DAGS proceedings interface includes reproductions of presentations.

Electronic proceedings must also present a variety of features to allow virtual participants to manage the information contained in the proceedings. Such features include navigation utilities (both linear and hypertext navigation), searching and indexing mechanisms, and annotation facilities [6].

THE DAGS EXPERIENCE

The Dartmouth Institute for Advanced Graduate Studies in Parallel Computation (DAGS) and the Dartmouth Experimental Visualization Laboratory (DEVLAB) have collaborated in producing electronic proceedings for the DAGS summer institutes. Although the proceedings interface described in [2] and used for [3] was successful, we chose to redesign and reimplement this interface for subsequent proceedings. Our primary goals in the redesign were to simplify the interface (as some users appeared to be overwhelmed by the plethora of features in the original interface) and to unify the interfaces for talks and papers so that virtual participants could employ the same features for talks that they employed for papers.

We chose to build our own interface---rather than to use an application like NCSA Mosaic, Adobe Acrobat, or FolioViews---because we wanted to include features not available in these interfaces (e.g., reader-definable "paths of ideas") and because we needed better support for the audio and video from presentations and for integrating and linking corresponding portions of papers and presentations.

AN INTERFACE FOR PAPERS

The interface used for presenting papers, shown in figure 1, models the paper on a printed document, with the traditional "trappings" that one expects with printed documents, including a running title, page numbers, and room in the margin for personal annotations. Unlike some electronic proceedings, this onscreen interface does not attempt to precisely reproduce the printed proceedings. Many computer screens cannot accommodate the shape and size of the printed page; hence interfaces (such as the one used for [4]) that mimic the page force onscreen readers to scroll in uncomfortable ways. By reformatting the text for the screen, we simplify both reading and navigation.

Key features of this interface include four sharable forms of annotations (marginal notes, a notebook, bookmarks, and participant-definable paths through the proceedings); multiple forms of searching and indexing; help mechanisms; and contextual cues to help participants orient themselves within the proceedings. These features also admit new uses of the proceedings. For example, faculty have used marginal notes, notebooks, and the path facility to build lessons and tutorials from portions of the proceedings.

Figure 1. The DAGS hypertext interface.

AN INTERFACE FOR PRESENTATIONS

The interface for presentations, shown in figure 2, incorporates many of the features used in the interface for papers. In addition to viewing and listening to talk presentations, virtual participants may also annotate slides, search for text on slides (or in notes on slides), and include slides on paths of ideas.

Figure 2. The DAGS presentation interface.

Even after the interface for such presentations has been built and tested, work is required to build the individual presentations. Some of this work can be done by novices (e.g., digitizing materials), some can be done automatically (e.g., removing periods of silence from talks), and some requires expert work (e.g., determining links between related sections of different documents).

CONCLUSIONS

The DAGS proceedings and their interface demonstrate that an electronic proceedings can be more than a searchable collection of papersproceedings can incorporate conference presentations and, by including links and paths, can present the material in the proceedings as a unified whole, rather than as separate documents. Such multimedia conference presentations show promise in presenting additional materials to researchers, introducing newcomers to a field, and in acting as educational aids.

Acknowledgments

The DAGS institutes and the preparation of electronic proceedings for the DAGS institutes were supported by a variety of institutions, including the National Science Foundation (NSF grants 5-34251, 5-34294, 5-34332), the New England Consortium for Undergraduate Science Education (NECUSE), the Dartmouth Institute for Advanced Graduate Studies, and the Dartmouth College Presidential Scholars Fund.

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