Tutorial Submission

Name of presenter(s)

Gavin Bell
Samuel Latt Epstein
Daniel K. Schneider
Marcus Speh
Jenifer Tennison

Proposed Tutorial Title

WOO: Web Object Oriented
WOO: Web Object Oriented - Building Collaborative Adaptive Information Systems

Contact information

E-mail address
Daniel.Schneider@tecfa.unige.ch
Mailing address
Daniel Schneider
University of Geneva
Faculty of Psychology and Educational Sciences
9 route de Drize
CH-1227 Carouge
Switzerland
Phone number
+ 41 22 705 96 94
Fax number
+ 41 22 342 89 24

Curriculum vitæ

  • Gavin Bell is a Teaching Assistant and Postgraduate Student with Department of Psychology at the University of Nottingham, UK. His interests lie with personalised information systems, that is making information accessible to people in the way they need it. This includes hypertext, adaptive systems, knowlege representation, navigation in electronic spaces and customisation of information spaces. This work was carried out as part of Gavin Bell's PhD under the supervision of Dr. Claire O'Malley. Email: grb@psychology.nottingham.ac.uk

  • Samuel Latt Epstein is presently Dir., Hypermedia Development for SenseMedia, Network. Two decades of interactive hypermedia research and development include participation in: Microware's OS-9, Microsoft Windows 1.0, Picosof iDRIVE, CDi, CD-R recordable CD, and numerous realtime control and graphical systems and exhibitions. Online in 1975 (CBBS) and on the internet in 1983, Epstein focuses on making internet and hypermedia solutions widely accessible to individuals and business through affordable and easy to use, collaborative user interfaces using pc's, macintosh and unix computers.

    SenseMedia presently provides commercial hypermedia services throughout the world from our Pacific Rim distributed hub and personal internet dialup to the islands of Hawai'i. Email: sle@sensemedia.net.

  • Dr. Daniel K. Schneider, is a research associate at the Educational Technology Unit (TECFA), School of Psychology and Educational Sciences, University of Geneva, Switzerland. His current research interests include computer mediated communication and information tools on the Internet. In the past he has worked on intelligent learning environments (AI & education) and cognitive modeling. He is a trained political scientist and wrote a Ph.D on modeling political decision makers. Email: schneide@divsun.unige.ch.

  • Dr. Marcus Speh is with the Advanced Development Group of Andersen Consulting. Prior to this appointment, he was a post-doctoral fellow for theoretical and computational particle physics at the German High Energy Physics laboratory DESY (Deutsches Elektronen-Synchrotron) in Hamburg and Zeuthen. Since October 1994, he is the chairman of the board of directors for the Globewide Network Academy, a consortium of schools and colleges on the internet. He is also an Hon Fellow at Birkbeck College, London. Email: marcus@andersen.co.uk

  • Jenifer Tennison is a Teaching Assistant and Postgraduate Student in the Artificial Intelligence Research Group in the Department of Psychology, Nottingham University, UK. Her research interests include organisational information systems, design rationale, computer supported collaborative work and other forms of adaptive collaborative information systems. This work was carried out as part of Jenifer Tennison's PhD under the supervision of Professor Nigel Shadbolt Email: jft@psychology.nottingham.ac.uk.

    Description of Tutorial

    "WOO" stands for both "WEB Object Oriented" and "W3 + MOO". MOOs are a variant of text-based virtual realities also known as MUDS (Multi-User Dimensions or Dungeons). WOOs or Webbed MOOs combine the flexibility of the MOOs with the WWW's ability to deliver structured text, multi-media and interactive forms over the Internet. A webbed MOO thus acts as a flexible HTTPD server. The purpose of this tutorial is to introduce Webbed MOO Technology to a wider audience at both the conceptual and technical level. We will address in particular the following topics:

    Outline

    1. Introduction
      Speaker: Daniel K. Schneider.

    2. Theory
      • Collaborative Teleworking for Distributed and Multinational Organizations
        Speakers: Jenifer Tennison and Samuel Latt Epstein.

        This talk will focus on the use of WOO in group work on longterm projects within large companies.

      • New Century Marketing - Focusing Your Message For The Global Marketplace
        Speakers: Samuel Latt Epstein and Jenifer Tennison.

        How WOO might be used to present commercial information over the web by adapting to the user.

      • Adaptive Hypermedia and CSCW Systems
        Speaker: Gavin Bell.

        How WOO could be used to give users a personalised view of information space by maintaining user models.

      • Virtual Worlds for Education and Research
        Speaker: Daniel K. Schneider.

        This talk will present first a short overview on MUDs used for research and education and discuss various "uses" of text-based VR technologies for learning, teaching and support of research work.

      • WOOs in corporate training
        Speaker: Marcus Speh.

        A discussion of the benefits of WOOs to commercial organizations with the need for corporate training.

    3. Application
      • A primer on WOO Technology
        Speaker: Jenifer Tennison.

        This section will focus on the various protocols and implementations of WOO.

      • Example applications
        Speaker: Samuel Latt Epstein.

        This section is example based and we will look closely at three applications.

    Details on talks are here

    Length

    half day (other possibilities can be considered)

    Tutorial notes

    The tutorial notes will cover each talk in more detail and also point to resources available over the Internet.

    Book chapter

    Yes we plan to prepare a chapter containing the materials used for the tutorial. It will differ from the tutorial outline above in 2 ways: It will contain more technical materials and it will be organized differently (to fit into a book chapter).

    Target audience

    There are several groups of people that may be interested in attending. Attendees will learn about the scope of application for webbed MOOs and will receive pointers to more information if they are interested in investigating it further. Basic familiary on how a Web server operates is required but no prior knowledge on webbed Moos.