Instructor: Richard Furuta
Phone: 845-3839 Email: furuta@cs.tamu.edu
Office: HR Bright 414C Office hours: TuTh 2:00-3:00 or by appointment

Text and readings: The course will be based on readings from the literature. There is no text book for this course.

Approximate grading scheme

20%   Term project
20%   Class presentations and participation
10%   Written summaries
10%   Technology assessment assignment
20%   Laboratory exercises
20%   Exams

Notes on course elements:

1. This class is a readings and discussion class. We will read a significant number of papers during the semester. Past semesters have totalled up to 1000 pages of reading. You will be responsible for facilitating the discussion in several sessions during the semester (probably two or three). In addition to leading the discussion, you will prepare a short summary of each of the papers read.
2. A term project is a major component of the course. The project may be group or individual, at your choice, and may be focused either in research, in creation of a significant hypertext document, or in prototype systems implementation. You will also be responsible for an in-class presentation on your project. A proposal will be required in advance of the project.
3. An early course component will be the preparation of an evaluation of the features of a number of hypertext systems. The class will be split into groups and each group will be responsible for studying, exercising, reporting on, and preparing a written summary about an assigned hypertext system.
4. Exams will be comprehensive and will cover class discussion, readings, and assignments.
5. Other labs will be assigned during the semester.

Class topics:

• History of hypertext/hypermedia and early pioneers: Conklin's review, Vannevar Bush, Doug Engelbart, Ted Nelson, Andy van Dam (HES/Fress), Kay (Dynabook)
• Influential systems: Intermedia, KMS, Notecards, Guide, Storyspace, others.
• Models and meta-models: HAM, IDE, Trellis, Dexter, etc. Structure and document-related models and systems such as MacWeb, Grif, HyTime, etc.
• Specific issues such as: collaboration support, searching and paths, interchange, real-world hypertext, representation and spatial metaphores, multimedia support and implementation, hyperbases and toolkits, hypertext as a development paradigm.
• Recent papers from the research literature (especially ECHT '96 and Hypertext '96).

Some additional information sources:

• Conference proceedings: Hypertext '87, Hypertext '89, Hypertext '91, Hypertext '93, ECHT '90, ECHT '92, Hypertext '93, ECHT '94, Hypertext '96.
• Journals: Hypermedia and .
• Jakob Nielsen, HyperText & HyperMedia, Academic Press, 1990. Nielsen, Multimedia and Hypermedia: The Internet and Beyond, Academic Press, 1995.
• Special journal issues: Communications of the ACM, July 1988, February 1994, August 1995; Transactions on Information Systems, January 1989; others.