|
|
Information Systems
Department
|
|
|
A Public Research University |
QUICK LINKS: Home Page / Publications / Presentations / Ph.D. in Information Systems / IS Department
Home Page: http://web.njit.edu/~bieber
Email: bieber@oak.njit.edu
The major theme running through my research is making people more effective. This underlies my original research work in hypermedia, starting in the 1980s and ongoing, and continues in my current projects and proposals concerning digital libraries, virtual communities, software engineering, the World Wide Web and educational research.
The Collaborative Learning through Assessment (CLASS) or Participatory Learning Approach (PLA) involves students in the entire life-cycle of a problem (i.e., from creating problems to grading). CLASS improves learning in many ways, both for on-campus and distance students. To date we have used CLASS for exams in a masters-level survey course and junior-level programming course. Extensions would include all kinds of problems (homework, labs, semester projects, quizzes, etc.)
Very briefly, the process proceeds as follows. All student involvement could be as individuals or as groups:
Students learn from this process in several ways. They learn from creating questions, from reviewing the questions that others create, from answering questions, from grading the answers, from reviewing the second-opinion grading on their answers, and from reviewing other people's answers and grading justifications.
(*) denotes student author
Wu, Dezhi, Michael Bieber and Roxanne Hiltz, "Modeling the Acceptance of Participatory Examinations in Asynchronous Learning Networks," in submission.
This research develops and applies an extended version of the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) to student acceptance of online participatory examinations. Participatory exams provide learning opportunities by engaging students in the entire examination life cycle, including creating and solving problems, and grading solutions. Asynchronous learning technologies support the new participatory exam processes. Analysis of post-course student questionnaires supports the premises that students perceive that they learn from all stages of the cooperative exam process, and that acceptance of this new type of assessment procedure is a function of both intrinsic motivations (e.g., enjoyment of the experience) and extrinsic motivations (e.g., perception that one has learned from the process).
New forms of computer-mediated, online learning can benefit from new forms of assessment that fit the medium and the pedagogical style of the online environment. This paper investigates students' learning styles and learning strategies in taking online collaborative exams. Applying constructivist and collaborative learning theories, the Collaborative Examination features students’ active participation in various phases of the exam process through small group activities online. Students' learning strategies, including deep learning and collaborative learning, are investigated using a 1*3 field experiment to compare the team-based Collaborative online Exam with the Traditional in-class exam and with the Participatory Exam, where students participate in the online exam processes individually. Data analysis using results from 485 students indicates that collaborative examinations significantly reduced surface learning in exam study, and enhanced interactions and the sense of an online learning community. The results also suggest learning predispositions were significantly correlated with exam study strategies, and provide indications of their effects on learning strategies.
This paper presents the results of a field experiment on online examinations facilitated by collaboration support systems. In particular, it examines collaborative learning and virtual teams through online examinations as an assessment procedure, compared to traditional examinations. Assessment increasingly is regarded as an important part of the learning process. Applying constructivism and collaborative learning theories, the Collaborative Examination process features students’ active participation in various phases of the exam process through small group activities online. A 1*3 field experiment evaluated the collaborative online exam compared with the traditional in-class exam, and the Participatory Exam where students participated in the online exam processes without groups. Data analysis using results from 485 students indicates that collaborative examinations significantly enhance interactions and the sense of an online learning community, and result in significantly higher levels of perceived learning.
Shen, Jia, Michael Bieber and Roxanne Hiltz, "Participatory Examinations in Asynchronous Learning Networks: Longitudinal Evaluation Results," Journal of Asynchronous Learning Networks, Volume 9, Issue 3, pp. 93-113, October 2005. [on-line] http://web.njit.edu/~bieber/pub/jaln2006.pdf
This paper presents longitudinal evaluation results for an online participatory examination process in an information systems course over three semesters. The exam process includes students making up questions, answering other students’ questions, grading answers to questions they author, and appealing the grades. The surveys following each exam elicited students’ feedback, and an experiment compared the participatory exam with the traditional exam in the third semester. Survey results reveal that the majority of students have favorable attitudes towards the participatory exam, and would recommend the participatory examination for future courses. Students in the participatory exam enjoyed the process significantly more than students in the traditional exam, and have higher overall preference for the exam mode, although their perceived learning and perceived fairness in grading are lower than with the traditional exam. Discussion and future research on this topic are also presented.
Bieber, Michael, Jia Shen, Dezhi Wu and Roxanne Hiltz, "Participatory Learning Approach," Encyclopedia of Distance Learning, Caroline Howard, Judith Boettcher, Lorraine Justice, Karen Schenk, Gary Berg and Patricia Rogers (ed.), Idea Group, 2005, forthcoming. [on-line] http://web.njit.edu/~bieber/pub/PLA-DLEncyclopedia.pdf
A short article on the Participatory Learning Approach.
Wu, Dezhi (*), Michael Bieber and S. Roxanne Hiltz, "Developing and Measuring Learning from a Constructivist Learning Procedure: Participatory Examinations," in preparation
This paper presents the process framework, our research model and five semesters of experimental results with the participatory (aka collaborative) exam. A majority of students preferred the participatory exam and believed that it increased their learning.
Shen, Jia (*), Kung-E Cheng (*), Michael Bieber and Roxanne Hiltz, "Collaborative Examinations for Asynchronous Learning Networks: Three Evaluation Results," in preparation
This paper presents results of three semesters' experimentation with the collaborative examination. The collaborative exam provides opportunities for students to learn from creating, reading, answering and grading exam questions. An on-line asynchronous learning network system facilitates the process.
Shen, Jia (*), Kung-E Cheng (*), Michael Bieber and S. Roxanne
Hiltz, "Traditional In-class Examination vs. Collaborative Online
Examination in Asynchronous Learning Networks: Field Evaluation
Results, " Proceedings of the Americas Conference on Information
Systems, New York, August 2004, 2998-3008; Best Paper
Nomination
[pdf] http://web.njit.edu/~bieber/pub/Shen-AMCIS2004.pdf
Online courses make possible new forms of working
and learning together that would be difficult or impossible to use in
the classroom-based course. This paper presents field evaluation
results comparing the traditional in-class examination and the
collaborative online examination using asynchronous learning networks
(ALN) in a graduate-level course in a U.S. university. The
collaborative online exam includes students making up questions,
answering, grading, and appealing the grades. A 1x2 field experiment
was designed to evaluate the collaborative exam in comparison with a
traditional in-class exam. Survey results (response rate = 81.6%)
show an overall favorable attitude towards the collaborative exam,
including enjoyability of the exam process, perceived learning,
satisfaction, and recommendation for future courses. Significant
correlations and differences are found among factors and between the
two exam modes. Students' concerns as well as plans for future
research are also discussed.
Wu, Dezhi (*), Michael Bieber, S. Roxanne Hiltz and Hyo-Joo Han,
"Constructivist Learning with Participatory Examinations, "
Proceedings of the 37th Hawaii International Conference on System
Sciences, IEEE Press, Washington, D.C., January 2004, (Advances
in Teaching and Learning Technologies Minitrack), Best Paper
Nomination
[pdf] http://web.njit.edu/~bieber/pub/PID25671.pdf
This paper extends our prior reports on the Collaborative Examinations, presenting the process framework, our research model and further experimental results. The participatory exam process provides opportunities for students to learn from creating, reading, answering and grading exam questions. An on-line asynchronous learning network system facilitates the process. A majority of students preferred the participatory exam and believed that it increased their learning.
Shen, Jia (*), Roxanne Hiltz, Kung-E Cheng (*), Yooncheong Cho
(*), Michael Bieber, "Collaborative Examinations for Asynchronous
Learning Networks: Evaluation Results," Proceedings of the 34th
Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences, IEEE Press,
Washington, D.C., January 2001, (Asynchronous Learning Networks
Minitrack).
[pdf] http://web.njit.edu/~bieber/pub/hicss01/hicss01-collab-midterm.pdf
This describes a new kind of on-line examination procedure, which would serve both distance and on-campus students. The "collaborative exam" engages students in a much broader range of learning activities as part of the examination process than standard exams. This paper reports on our first round of experiments with this new examination procedure.
I also hope to conduct research that will create goals and guidelines for educational software. This research will take a long-term view of educational support. Assume that 30 years from now we could have any computer support we want. How will we teach effectively in this environment? How will people learn effectively in this environment?
This line of research would look at cognitive educational theories, as well as the processes involved in learning, teaching and administrating. These theories and processes should be built directly into the software environment so people can be guided to use the technology effectively. The result should be a framework for teaching and learning 30+ years from now. The goal would be to produce a solid vision that would guide software development of multimedia authoring tools, educational software environments and collaborative systems in the future.
Note, this section does not include papers on logic modeling of hypermedia and decision support applications utilizing hypermedia support. For these please see the section "Hypermedia, Logic Modeling and Decision Support." There are also several publications connected to our hypermedia research in the "Digital Library" section and the "Relationship Analysis" section.
Many hypermedia researchers find the level of hypermedia on the Web to be quite rudimentary compared to the research systems that have been developed These systems included sophisticated hypermedia features such as user-declared links and annotations, guided tours, recommended paths, search based on link structure (instead of text content), information overviews, and sophisticated backtracking.
Dynamic applications are those everyday applications, in which people make some kind of query and the application generates a response "dynamically" or in "real time". Because the response had to be generated instead of just retrieving a stored copy, all hypermedia features (links, annotations, connections to guided tours, etc.) have to be dynamically re-associated with the response that is displayed on the user's screen. Almost no research has been conducted on this important aspect of Web applications.
The Dynamic Hypermedia Engine (DHE) automatically provides hypermedia support for everyday applications on the Web. DHE also provides a new approach for easily converting ("migrating") non-Web applications to become Web applications, which could save developers a great deal of time.
(*) denotes student author
Catanio, Joseph (*), Nkechi Nnadi (*), Li Zhang (*), Michael
Bieber and Roberto Galnares, "Ubiquitous Metainformation and the
WYWWYWI* Principle," Journal of
Digital Information, 5(1), April 2004.
[on-line] http://jodi.tamu.edu/Articles/v05/i01/Catanio/
- http://web.njit.edu/~bieber/pub/wywwywi_v47.htm
* WYWWYWI - What you want, when you want it, pronounced "why why why"
Metainformation includes the structural relationships, content-based relationships, user-declared link-based relationships, and metadata around an element of interest. Combined, the metainformation goes a long way towards establishing the full semantics for (the meaning of and context around) a system's elements. We take a three-pronged approach to providing metainformation on a grand scale. First, we provide a systematic methodology for systems analysts to determine the relationships around elements of interest in their information domains - Relationship Analysis. Relationship Analysis will result in a comprehensive set of a domain's structural relationships. Second, we provide a Metainformation Engine, which automatically generates sets of structural and content-based relationships around elements of interest as links, as well as metadata within static and virtual documents. Third, we provide an infrastructure for widespread link-based services within both static and virtual documents. This approach provides the inspiration as well as a sound foundation for a ubiquitous embracing of the WYWWYWI principle in the everyday systems people use, both on the Web and beyond.
Zhang, Li (*), Michael Bieber, David Millard and Vincent Oria, "Just-in-Time Hypermedia," forthcoming in the ACM Symposium on Document Engineering 2004. [on-line] http://web.njit.edu/~bieber/pub/zhang-doceng04.pdf
Many analytical or computational applications, especially legacy systems, create documents and display screens in response to user queries "dynamically" or "in real time". These "virtual documents" do not exist in advance, and thus hypermedia features must be generated "just in time" - automatically and dynamically. Conversely, the hypermedia features may have to cause target documents to be generated or re-generated. This paper focuses on the specific challenges faced in hypermedia support for virtual documents of dynamic hypermedia functionality, dynamic regeneration, and dynamic anchor re-identification and re-location. It presents a prototype called JHE (Just-in-time Hypermedia Engine) to support just-in-time hypermedia across third party applications with dynamic content, and discusses issues prompted by this research.
Chiu, Chao-Min, Michael Bieber and Qiang Lu, "Towards Integrating
Hypermedia on the Web," Proceedings of the 35th Hawaii
International Conference on System Sciences, IEEE Press,
Washington, D.C., January 2002, (Managing Information on the Web
Minitrack).
[pdf] http://web.njit.edu/~bieber/pub/chiu-hicss02.pdf
This paper presents a framework for discussing issues and questions around Web Information Systems. WIS dynamically generate their contents, and thus require some mechanism to automatically infer metadata about WIS objects, infer access to relationships (i.e., links) among information objects, and provide hypermedia functionality. The framework focuses on integrating information systems into the Web and providing hypermedia functionality to them.
Balasubramanian, V., Michael Bieber and Tomás Isakowitz,
"Systematic Hypermedia Design," Information Systems Journal,
26(4), 2001, 295-320.
[pdf] http://web.njit.edu/~bieber/pub/isj01.pdf
A systematic approach to designing and implementing a hypermedia interface to a relational database system.
Chiu, Chao-Min and Michael Bieber, "A Dynamically Mapped Open
Hypermedia System Framework for Integrating Information Systems,"
Information and Software Technology, 43, 2001, 75-86.
[on-line] http://web.njit.edu/~bieber/pub/chiu/ist01.pdf
The overall goal of this research is to design a distributed, extensible, cross-platform, collaborative, and integrated system that can supplement information systems with hypermedia support. In this paper we propose a dynamically mapped open hypermedia system framework for evaluating this support. The framework has two axes: a logical component focus and an application requirement focus. Given this framework we first evaluate five open hypermedia systems and the World Wide Web, and then design our own system implemented on top of the World Wide Web. This paper also contributes guidelines for building mapping routines that provide supplemental hypermedia support (an alternate approach to those used in our DHE project).
Chiu, Chao-Min and Michael Bieber, "Toward Hypermedia Support for
Information Relationship Management," Journal of Information
Science, 27(2) 2001, 93-100.
[on-line] http://web.njit.edu/~bieber/pub/chiu/jis01.pdf
This paper presents an effort related to and elaborating upon Yoo & Bieber's Relationship-Navigation Analysis called Relationship-Navigation Rule Analysis. RNRA includes steps for writing mapping rules, and presents an alternate view of mapping rules from other work by Bieber.
Bhaumik, Anirban (*), Deepti Dixit (*), Roberto Galnares (*),
Manolis Tzagarakis (*), Michalis Vaitis (*), Michael Bieber, Vincent
Oria, Aparna Krishna (*), Qiang Lu (*), Firas Aljallad (*), Li Zhang
(*), "Integrating Hypermedia Functionality into Database
Applications," Developing Quality Complex Database Systems:
Practices, Techniques and Technologies, Becker, Shirley (ed.),
2001.
[pdf] http://web.njit.edu/~bieber/pub/db-chapter.pdf
A review of our research efforts and future research agenda for
supporting database applications with hypermedia support.
- extends "Towards Hypermedia Support for Database Systems" HICSS
2001
Bieber, Michael, "Hypertext," Encyclopedia of Computer Science (4th Edition), Ralston, A., Edwin Reilly and David Hemmendinger (eds.), Nature Publishing Group, 2000, 799-805. [on-line] http://web.njit.edu/~bieber/pub/cs-encyclopedia/csencyclopedia00.pdf
A detailed definition of hypertext and hypermedia, as well as an overview of the associated research fields.
Vitali, Fabio and
Bieber, Michael, "Hypermedia on the Web: What Will It Take?," ACM
Computing Surveys, 31(4es), 1999.
[on-line] http://web.njit.edu/~bieber/pub/acmcs/cs-vb.html
Researchers in the hypermedia field often lament that the World Wide Web does not support many of hypermedia's rich structuring, navigation and annotation features. What would it take for everyday Web applications to be fully hypermedia compliant, now that the basic hypermedia building blocks exist on the Web? The following four capabilities are the most critical for integrating hypermedia support in the Web environment: editable browsers, storing document content and link anchors separately, external linkbases, and displaying link spans, node and link attributes. Individual developers can not decide autonomously on how to resolve many of the outstanding issues. Developers need agreed-upon conventions and tools built upon today's Web standards to fully incorporate hypermedia functionality into everyday applications.
Bieber, Michael, Harri
Oinas-Kukkonen and V. Balasubramanian, "Hypertext Functionality,"
ACM Computing Surveys, 31(4es), 1999.
[on-line]
http://web.njit.edu/~bieber/pub/acmcs/cs-bob.html
This paper introduces a research subfield of both hypermedia and information systems. The Hypertext Functionality field studies techniques for and the impact of supplementing everyday computer applications with hypertext (or hypermedia) functionality (HTF). The HTF approach encourages system developers to think actively about an application's interrelationships, and whether users should access and navigate along these relationships directly. It views hypertext as value-added support functionality. The HTF approach fosters three major areas of research: using HTF to improve personal and organizational effectiveness, HTF and application design, and integrating HTF into applications.
Bieber, Michael, "Hypertext and Web Engineering," ACM
Hypertext'98 Proceedings, ACM Press, Washington, D.C., June 1998,
pages 277-278.
[pdf] http://web.njit.edu/~bieber/pub/bieber-ht98.pdf
A short paper (strongly refereed) describing our approach to automatically generating links with Web applications. Our approach to Web Engineering consists of a relationship analysis, which produces specifications for links which our DHE hypermedia engine project then automatically generates.
Chiu, Chao-Min (*) and Michael Bieber, "A Generic Dynamic-Mapping Wrapper for Open Hypertext System Support of Analytical Applications," ACM Hypertext'97 Proceedings, ACM Press, Washington, D.C., April 1997, pages 218-219. [on-line] http://web.njit.edu/~bieber/pub/ht97pdf
This short paper (strongly refereed) explains an architecture for supplementing information systems with hypertext using the terminology and models of the open hypermedia systems (OHS) research field. This research should encourage more OHS support for computational applications.
Vitali, Fabio,
Chao-Min Chiu (*) and Michael Bieber, "Extending HTML in a Principled
Way with Displets," Computer Networks and ISDN Systems,
1997.
[on-line] http://www.cs.unibo.it/~fabio/bio/papers/1997/WWW97/Displets/PAPER155.html
Displets provide authors and programmers with a way to freely extend the HTML language on a per-document basis in a principled manner. This would enable people to easily include special notations such as mathematics, music, charting, etc. Displets are Java classes that are activated while rendering an HTML document.
Bieber, Michael and Fabio
Vitali, "Toward Support for Hypermedia on the World Wide Web"
IEEE Computer 30(1), January 1997.
[on-line] http://www.cs.unibo.it/~fabio/bio/papers/1997/IEEEC97/January/IEEEC0197.html
In the rush to co-opt and retrofit applications on the Web, we risk the opportunity cost of bypassing its greatest supplemental benefit: ubiquitous hypermedia support. We consider hypermedia and Web integration from the point of view of an organization's MIS department and organization management.
Bieber, Michael, Fabio
Vitali, Helen Ashman (*), V. Balasubramanian (*), and Harri
Oinas-Kukkonen (*), "Fourth Generation Hypermedia: Some Missing
Links for the World Wide Web" International Journal of
Human-Computer Studies 47, 1997, 31-65.
[on-line] http://web.njit.edu/~bieber/pub/bva97.html
World Wide Web authors must cope in a hypermedia environment analogous to second- generation computing languages, building and managing all hypermedia links using simple anchors and single-step navigation. We present a set of third- and fourth- generation hypermedia functionalities and give some direction for implementing them.
Bieber, Michael, "Advancing Information Comprehension through Hypertext" Advances in Intelligent Hypertext, J. Mayfield & C. Nicholas (eds.), Springer-Verlag, 1997.
This chapter discusses many of the issues and experiences we encountered when creating the electronic version of the August 1995 special section in the Communications of the ACM.
Bieber, Michael and Charles Kacmar, "Designing Hypertext Support
for Computational Applications" Communications of the ACM,
38(8), August 1995, 99-107.
[pdf] http://web.njit.edu/~bieber/pub/BK95.pdf
What considerations must designers face when incorporating hypertext as "secondary support functionality" to non hypertext-oriented information systems?
Bieber, Michael and Jiangling Wan (*), "Backtracking in a Multiple-window Hypertext Environment," Proceedings of the ACM European Conference on Hypermedia Technologies, Edinburgh, September 18-23, 1994, ACM. http://web.njit.edu/~bieber/pub/bw94.pdf
How should hypertext systems handle backtracking among multiple windows containing different "logical" tasks, in a way that does not disorient the user?
Bieber, Michael, "Automating Hypermedia for Decision Support," Hypermedia, 4(2), 1992, pages 83-110.
A non-technical discussion of integrating hypermedia and DSS, and the challenges dynamic environments pose. In a technical appendix we demonstrate bridge laws, which dynamically map hypermedia to DSS applications.
Bieber, Michael P. and Steven O. Kimbrough, "On Generalizing the Concept of Hypertext," Management Information Systems Quarterly, 16(1), March 1992, pages 77-93.
A non-technical discussion of generalizing hypertext entities and link traversal. A sample DSS session illustrates the interaction among the DSS shell components.
Note: For more general papers concerning hypermedia, please see the section "Hypermedia and the WWW."
Our main focus on hypermedia has been generating links automatically within computational systems, i.e., systems that generate documents and display screens in response to user interaction. These include analytical systems such as decision support systems. This also includes many legacy systems. Links are not generated through lexical analysis, rather on a representation of the system's internal structure (or logic). Because hypermedia specifications must be defined in advance this means we have to model them in some manner. The publications in this section present our work in developing logic models of dynamic hypermedia support and our primary early application area of decision support systems.
(*) denotes student author
Zhang, Li (*), Michael Bieber, David Millard and
Vincent Oria, "Just-in-Time Hypermedia," Proceedings of the 2004 ACM
Symposium on Document Engineering, Milwaukee, 35-44, October
2004.
[on-line] http://web.njit.edu/~bieber/pub/zhang-doceng04.pdf
Many analytical or computational applications, especially legacy systems, create documents and display screens in response to user queries "dynamically" or "in real time". These "virtual documents" do not exist in advance, and thus hypermedia features must be generated "just in time" - automatically and dynamically. Conversely, the hypermedia features may have to cause target documents to be generated or re-generated. This paper focuses on the specific challenges faced in hypermedia support for virtual documents of dynamic hypermedia functionality, dynamic regeneration, and dynamic anchor re-identification and re-location. It presents a prototype called JHE (Just-in-time Hypermedia Engine) to support just-in-time hypermedia across third party applications with dynamic content, and discusses issues prompted by this research.
Bhaumik, Anirban (*), Deepti Dixit (*), Roberto Galnares (*),
Manolis Tzagarakis (*), Michalis Vaitis (*), Michael Bieber, Vincent
Oria, Aparna Krishna (*), Qiang Lu (*), Firas Aljallad (*), Li Zhang
(*), "Integrating Hypermedia Functionality into Database
Applications," Developing Quality Complex Database Systems:
Practices, Techniques and Technologies, Becker, Shirley (ed.),
2001.
[pdf] http://web.njit.edu/~bieber/pub/db-chapter.pdf
A review of our research efforts and future research agenda for
supporting database applications with hypermedia support.
- extends "Towards Hypermedia Support for Database Systems" HICSS
2001
Spasovic, Lazar, Michael Bieber and Athanassios Bladikas,
"Multi-Modal Freight Transportation: Regional Data Development and
Analysis," New Jersey Institute of Technology, Technical Report,
2000.
Describes various decision support tools and their hypermedia
enhancements, applied to the area of freight transportation.
[pdf] http://web.njit.edu/~bieber/pub/freight00.pdf
Scherl, Richard, Michael Bieber and Fabio
Vitali, "A Situation Calculus Model of Hypertext" Proceedings
of the 31st Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences,
IEEE Press, Washington, D.C., January 1998 (Logic Modeling
Minitrack)
[pdf] http://web.njit.edu/~bieber/pub/SBV98.pdf
We utilize the situation calculus to develop a logic model of hypertext systems. The situation calculus models the dynamic aspects of systems well.
Wan, Jiangling (*) and Michael Bieber, "Mapping Relational Database Management Systems to Hypertext" Proceedings of the 30th Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences, IEEE Press, Washington, D.C., January 1997, pages 160-166, (Volume 6, Hypermedia Minitrack).
A logic-based approach to integrating hypertext and relational database management systems (RDBMS) without any changes to the RDBMS.
Wan, Jiangling (*) and Michael Bieber, "GHMI: A General Hypertext Data Model Supporting Integration of Hypertext and Information Systems" Proceedings of the Twenty-Ninth Annual Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences (Wailea, Maui; January 1996), IEEE Press, Washington, D.C., pages 47-56 (Volume 2, Logic Modeling Minitrack).
A Dexter-based logic model employing composites and bridge laws to
map the independent domains of hypertext and non-hypertext
information systems.
- builds upon the technique described in "A Logic-based Approach to
Integrating Hypertext and Information Systems"
Bieber, Michael and Charles Kacmar, "Designing Hypertext Support
for Computational Applications" Communications of the ACM,
38(8), August 1995, 99-107.
[pdf] http://web.njit.edu/~bieber/pub/BK95.pdf
What considerations must designers face when incorporating hypertext as "secondary support functionality" to non hypertext-oriented information systems?
Bieber, Michael, "On Integrating Hypermedia into Decision Support
and Other Information Systems" Decision Support Systems 14,
1995, 251-267.
[on-line] http://web.njit.edu/~bieber/pub/Bi95/Bi95.html
A proposed architecture and minimal requirements for integrating a
dynamic hypermedia engine with non-hypermedia interface-oriented and
computationally-oriented information systems.
- supersedes "Issues in Modeling a 'Dynamic' Hypertext Interface"
Wan, Jiangling (*), Michael Bieber, Jason Wang and Peter A. Ng, "LHM: A Logic-based Hypertext Data Model for Integrating Hypertext and Information Systems," Proceedings of the 28th Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences, IEEE Press, Washington, D.C., January 1995, pages 350-359 (Volume 3, Logic Modeling Minitrack).
A logic model employing composites and bridge laws to map the
independent domains of hypertext and document management.
- builds upon the model in "Document Management Through Hypertext: A
Logic Modeling Approach"
Bieber, Michael and Steven O. Kimbrough, "On the Logic of Generalized Hypertext," Decision Support Systems 11, 1994, North Holland, 241-257.
A logic model of generalized hypertext components and link traversal.
Wan, Jiangling (*), Michael Bieber, Jason Wang and Peter A. Ng, "Document Management Through Hypertext: A Logic Modeling Approach," Proceedings of the 27th Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences, IEEE Press, Washington, D.C., January 1994, pages 558-568 (Volume 3, Logic Modeling Minitrack). [on-line] http://web.njit.edu/~bieber/pub/wbwn94.pdf
How logic modeling can map two independent information system domains, such as hypertext and document management, through using bridge laws.
Bieber, Michael P. and Steven O. Kimbrough, "On Generalizing the Concept of Hypertext," Management Information Systems Quarterly, 16(1), March 1992, pages 77-93.
A non-technical discussion of generalizing hypertext entities and link traversal. A sample DSS session illustrates the interaction among the DSS shell components.
Bieber, Michael, Generalized Hypertext in a Knowledge-based DSS Shell Environment, Ph. D. Dissertation, Decision Sciences Department, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA 19104, 1990.
A thesis detailing the motivation for and development of a logic model of generalized hypertext-a dynamic view of hypertext supporting DSS applications at the system-level interface of a knowledge-based shell.
Kimbrough, Steven O., Clark Pritchett, Michael Bieber (*) and Hemant Bhargava (*), "The Coast Guard's KSS Project", Interfaces, 20(6), November/December 1990, pages 5-16.
A detailed introduction to the hypertext, model management, project management and decision support concepts motivating our prototype DSSs, and how these are assisting the U. S. Coast Guard.
Bhargava, Hemant K. (*), Michael P. Bieber (*) and Steven O. Kimbrough, "Oona, Max, and the WYWWYWI Principle: Generalized Hypertext and Model Management in a Symbolic Programming Environment," in Proceedings of the Ninth International Conference on Information Systems, Minneapolis, 1988, pages 179-192. [on-line] http://web.njit.edu/~bieber/pub/bbk88.pdf
How we integrated and implemented hypertext and model management concepts in two prototype DSSs, and why.
We've been fortunate to receive four federal grants to conduct digital library research. This research targets integrating digital library collections and services, and giving users customized access to these.
Project Web Site -- Project Demo -- Short Paper
The Digital Library Service Integration (DLSI) project provides a systematic lightweight approach for integrating digital library collections and services. When the user clicks on an item within a digital library collection or service, DLSI automatically generates a set of links to related information and relevant services. The set of links is customized using collaborative filtering techniques, matching the current user's navigation to the "click streams" of other users.
The IntLib Grant focuses on integrating the resources of public libraries primarily (and university libraries secondarily) together with digital libraries. It builds upon the DLSI project. We plan to integrate selected resources within:
The funding for the IntegraL and IntLib grants combined will enable us to develop two additional aspects that both projects will then use: a next generation collaborative filtering engine and next generation federated search. (IntLib is funding students and IntegraL is funding faculty to work together on these.)
The IntLib software will be freely available to public libraries and digital libraries to integrate their collections and services (if desired and when permissible, with those of our partners).
The IntegraL Grant focuses on integrating specific resources of university libraries with those of the National Science Digital Library. It builds upon the DLSI project. We plan to integrate selected resources within:
The funding for the IntegraL and IntLib grants combined will enable us to develop two additional aspects that both projects will then use: a next generation collaborative filtering engine and next generation federated search. (IntLib is funding students and IntegraL is funding faculty to work together on these.)
The IntegraL software will be freely available to university libraries and members of the National Science Digital Library to integrate their collections and services (if desired and when permissible, with those of our partners).
The General Recommendation Engine (GRE) project will develop the next generation of recommender systems, and apply these within the National Science Digital Library. GRE will supplement user's searches with sets of links that others have found useful. GRE will develop and combine three next generation approaches to recommendations: collaborative-filtering, content-based recommendations and knowledge-based recommendations to craft the best set of links to related information.
Note that this differs from IntLib and IntegraL in that GRE's recommendations apply to user searching. IntLib and IntegraL's links are placed within regular content. GRE will use DLSI's automated linking as a fourth kind of recommendation on top of specific search items (treating these as regular content).
(*) denotes student author
Nnadi, Nkechi (*) and Michael Bieber, "Lightweight Integration of
Documents and Services," Proceedings of the 2004 ACM Symposium on
Document Engineering, Milwaukee, 51-53, October 2004.
[on-line] http://web.njit.edu/~bieber/pub/dlii-doceng04s-v11.pdf
(full version - in preparation) Nnadi, Nkechi (*) and Michael Bieber, "Towards Lightweight Digital Library Integration," in progress. [on-line] http://web.njit.edu/~bieber/pub/nnadi-doceng04.pdf (latest version)
The Digital Library Integration Infrastructure (DLII) provides a systematic lightweight approach for integrating digital library collections and services. Digital library systems generally require minimal or no changes to their code. Users see a totally integrated environment. They use their digital library system just as before. They also see extra link anchors. Selecting one generates a list of links to relevant metainformation (structural, content-based and knowledge-sharing relationships, and metadata). DLII generates the vast majority of supplemental link anchors and metainformation links automatically through the use of relationship rules. This paper presents the concept of metainformation, describes the DLII infrastructure and architecture, and explains how systems can integrate into the infrastructure. This research's primary contribution is providing a relatively straightforward, sustainable infrastructure for integrating digital library collections and services.
Bieber, Michael, Roberto Galnares (*) and Qiang Lu (*), Service
Integration for Virtual Communities. Web Engineering Workshop,
International World Wide Web 10 Conference, Hong Kong, May 2001.
[on-line] http://web.njit.edu/~bieber/pub/WWW10-workshop-services.doc
A wide and growing research literature exists on developing and understanding virtual communities. The theories and techniques developed in the research literature, however, have never been tested or evaluated as an integrated whole. As part of this research, we shall use the Dynamic Hypermedia Engine (DHE) to integrate a series of knowledge sharing tools to support collaboration, knowledge-sharing and learning within distributed communities. Evaluation is also a vital element of this research.
Bieber, Michael, Douglas Engelbart, Richard Furuta, Starr Roxanne
Hiltz, John Noll, Jenny Preece, Edward Stohr, Murray Turoff and
Bartel Van De Walle, "Towards Virtual Community Knowledge Evolution,"
Journal of Management Information Systems, 18(4), Spring 2002,
11-36.
[on-line]
http://web.njit.edu/~bieber/pub/jmis02.pdf
A review of our research efforts and future research agenda for supporting learning and knowledge sharing within virtual communities. The focus of this article is on the technological base, which vastly expands the paradigm of digital libraries.
Bieber, Michael, Il Im, Ron Rice, Ricki Goldman-Segall, Ravi Paul,
Edward Stohr, Starr Roxanne Hiltz, Jennifer Preece, Murray Turoff,
"Towards Knowledge-Sharing and Learning in Virtual Professional
Communities," Proceedings of the 35th Hawaii International
Conference on System Sciences, IEEE Press, Washington, D.C.,
January 2002, (Community Informatics Minitrack).
[pdf] http://web.njit.edu/~bieber/pub/bieber-hicss02.pdf
A review of our research efforts and future research agenda for supporting learning and knowledge sharing within virtual communities. The focus of this paper is on the research paradigm to promote learning and knowledge sharing.
Turoff, Murray, Starr Roxanne Hiltz, Michael Bieber, Brian Whitworth and Jerry Fjermestad, "Computer Mediated Communications for Group Support: Past and Future," (John Carroll, ed.) in Human-Computer Interaction in the New Millennium, Addison Wesley, 2001.
Approximately thirty years have passed since the first asynchronous group communication system became operational. While one may think the field has fully matured, that is not case. This paper emphasizes exploration of future R&D directions for Group Communications. It describes structuring of group communications through software that provides or supports analytical tools (that gather and analyze data), communication protocols, and human roles. Many of the ideas have had limited demonstrations in actual use. However, for various reasons to be discussed, we have not yet seen these ideas widely incorporated into current group communication systems. Hopefully the increasing computer literacy of users and their growing understanding of group communications will demand this.
Turoff, Murray, Starr Roxanne Hiltz, Michael Bieber, Jerry Fjermestad and Ajaz Rana "Collaborative Discourse Structures in Computer Mediated Group Communications," Journal of Computer Mediated Communication 4(4), June 1999. [on-line] http://www.ascusc.org/jcmc/vol4/issue4/turoff.html
This paper describes a potential integrated collaborative hypermedia environment supporting rich discourse within groups. Using application oriented conceptual maps to categorize the group discussion would be an advancement in the design of computer-mediated communication (CMC) systems to allow much larger groups to collaborate productively. The group meta-communication process should allow the group to modify and evolve these conceptual discourse templates.
Turoff, Murray, Jerry Fjermestad, Ajaz Rana, Michael Bieber and Starr Roxanne Hiltz, "Collaborative Hypermedia in Virtual Reality Systems," Proceedings of the Third Americas Conference of the Association of Information Systems, Indianapolis, August 15-17, 1997.
Combining multimedia, virtual reality, collaboration tools and semantic structuring through hypertext should make groups more effective. This paper describes a potential integrated collaborative hypermedia environment supporting rich discourse within groups.
(top of page; pubs by research themes: intro, hypermedia & WWW, dig lib, virtual communities, vc informatics, relationship analysis, participatory learning, ed software, closing note; pubs sorted by type)
Through my work with virtual communities, I have teamed up with Michael Gurstein to develop a new focus which we call "Virtual Community Informatics." Currently there is no formal interaction between the local community and the virtual community practitioners or research communities. Virtual Community Informatics, lies at these dual cross-roads: bringing together people concerned with local and virtual communities; and bringing together the researchers and practitioners (developers, leaders and participants) in these two domains
http://is.njit.edu/vci - in preparation
to be posted
Michael Bieber, Barbara McFall, Ronald Rice and Michael Gurstein, "Towards Systems Design for Supporting Enabling Communities," Journal of Community Informatics, November 2006.
Communities and community support systems should be designed to enable participants to work effectively towards conducting both collective and individual activities and achieving their goals. Such communities are called "Enabling Communities". Our focus is the "systems" that support community members in doing whichever tasks or activities they need or want to. These systems include processes, technology, information and people. This paper provides a framework for Supporting Enabling Communities (SEComm) in two major components: (1) Participant Support Systems (PaSS) and (2) Community Participation Levels (CPaL). Three case studies apply this framework to an emerging virtual community and a community of practice.
(top of page; pubs by research themes: intro, participatory learning, hypermedia & WWW, logic & dss, dig lib, virtual communities, vc informatics, relationship analysis, ed software, closing note; pubs sorted by type)
(top of page; pubs by research themes: intro, hypermedia & WWW, dig lib, virtual communities, vc informatics, relationship analysis, participatory learning, ed software, closing note; pubs sorted by type)
Michael Bieber, Barbara McFall, Ronald Rice and Michael Gurstein, "Towards Systems Design for Supporting Enabling Communities," Journal of Community Informatics, November 2006.
Communities and community support systems should be designed to enable participants to work effectively towards conducting both collective and individual activities and achieving their goals. Such communities are called "Enabling Communities". Our focus is the "systems" that support community members in doing whichever tasks or activities they need or want to. These systems include processes, technology, information and people. This paper provides a framework for Supporting Enabling Communities (SEComm) in two major components: (1) Participant Support Systems (PaSS) and (2) Community Participation Levels (CPaL). Three case studies apply this framework to an emerging virtual community and a community of practice.
Links on the World Wide Web implement relationships. Many relationships in information domains are implicit, and only become obvious through a systematic analysis. Many non-obvious relationships (as well as some more obvious ones) are often left out of application designs. Similarly, many Web sites in general are missing useful links. Relationship Analysis uniquely focuses on the relationships in a complex system or information domain. It provides a systematic analysis approach to determining the set of relevant objects and links, which then could be included in the design of a Web application, a Web interface to analytical, "legacy" and "back-office" applications, as well as non-Web applications.
Relationship Analysis has the potential to become a standard stage within several of the analysis methodologies that all large software engineering projects employ. We intend to strive towards getting Relationship Analysis diagrams included in the modeling standard for the software industry: Unified Modeling Language (UML).
(*) denotes student author
Joseph Catanio and Michael Bieber, "Relationship Analysis: A
Technique to Improve the Systems Analysis Process," submitted to the
Journal of the AIS
[on-line] http://web.njit.edu/~bieber/pub/Catanio_Bieber_JAIS_Submission.doc
This paper presents a new, theory-grounded model underlying Relationship Analysis as well as our experimental results. Relationship Analysis offers a systematic, domain-independent analysis technique specifically to determine a domain's relationship structure. The Relationship Analysis Model is the first theory-based taxonomy to classify relationships. A rigorous evaluation was conducted, including a formal experiment comparing novice and experienced analysts with and without Relationship Analysis. It was shown that the Relationship Analysis Process based on the model does provide a fuller and richer systems analysis, resulting in improved quality of class diagrams. It also was shown that Relationship Analysis enables analysts of varying experience levels to achieve class diagrams of similar quality. Relationship Analysis significantly enhances the systems analyst's effectiveness, especially in the area of relationship discovery and documentation, resulting in improved analysis and design artifacts.
Yoo, Joonhee, Joseph Catanio (*), Michael Bieber and Ravi Paul,
"Relationship Analysis in Requirements Engineering," Requirements
Engineering (2004) 9: 238&endash;247.
[on-line] http://web.njit.edu/~bieber/pub/yoo2004.pdf
This paper describes Relationship Analysis, with a focus on how it can support the requirements engineering stage of systems analysis in the software engineering life cycle. Relationship analysis provides a systematic way of identifying useful relationships in application domains.
Catanio, Joseph (*) and Michael Bieber, "Relationship Analysis: A
Technique To Enhance Systems Analysis For Web Development,"
forthcoming in Web Engineering: Principles and Techniques,
Woojung Suh (ed.), Idea Group, 2004.
[on-line] http://web.njit.edu/~bieber/pub/ra-we-chapter04.pdf
This paper describes Relationship Analysis and describes some of our future directions for grounding the approach in Guilford's Structure of Intellect theory. Relationship analysis provides a systematic way of identifying useful relationships in application domains.
Catanio, Joseph (*), Nkechi Nnadi (*), Li Zhang (*), Michael
Bieber and Roberto Galnares, "Ubiquitous Metainformation and the
WYWWYWI* Principle," Journal of
Digital Information, 5(1), April 2004.
[on-line] http://jodi.tamu.edu/Articles/v05/i01/Catanio/
- http://web.njit.edu/~bieber/pub/wywwywi_v47.htm
* WYWWYWI - What you want, when you want it, pronounced "why why why"
Metainformation includes the structural relationships, content-based relationships, user-declared link-based relationships, and metadata around an element of interest. Combined, the metainformation goes a long way towards establishing the full semantics for (the meaning of and context around) a system's elements. We take a three-pronged approach to providing metainformation on a grand scale. First, we provide a systematic methodology for systems analysts to determine the relationships around elements of interest in their information domains - Relationship Analysis. Relationship Analysis will result in a comprehensive set of a domain's structural relationships. Second, we provide a Metainformation Engine, which automatically generates sets of structural and content-based relationships around elements of interest as links, as well as metadata within static and virtual documents. Third, we provide an infrastructure for widespread link-based services within both static and virtual documents. This approach provides the inspiration as well as a sound foundation for a ubiquitous embracing of the WYWWYWI principle in the everyday systems people use, both on the Web and beyond.
Catanio, Joseph (*), Ashish Ghoda (*), Atanu Pal (*), Joonhee Yoo
(*), Michael Bieber, Il Im, Ravi Paul and Fahri Yetim, "Relationship
Analysis: A Research Plan for Enhancing Systems Analysis For Web
Development, " Proceedings of the 36th Hawaii International
Conference on System Sciences, IEEE Press, Washington, D.C.,
January 2003, (E-Commerce Systems Development Minitrack).
[doc] http://web.njit.edu/~bieber/pub/hicss03-ra.pdf
This paper presents a research agenda for further developing Relationship Analysis, a software engineering/systems analysis approach for discovering the relationships in a complex system.
Yoo, Joonhee (*) and Michael Bieber, "Finding Linking
Opportunities through Relationship-based Analysis," Hypertext 2000
Proceedings, San Antonio, ACM Press, June 2000.
[pdf] http://web.njit.edu/~bieber/pub/ht00-yoo-bieber.pdf
This paper presents a general introduction to the Relationship Navigation Analysis (RNA). It provides a detailed example, and explores different aspects of RNA from the HICSS paper below.
Yoo, Joonhee (*) and Michael Bieber, "Towards a Relationship Navigation Analysis," Proceedings of the 33rd Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences, IEEE Press, Washington, D.C., January 2000, (Internet Minitrack). [pdf] http://web.njit.edu/~bieber/pub/hicss00/INWEB02.pdf
This paper presents a general introduction to the Relationship Navigation Analysis (RNA). Many conceptual modeling and system design methodologies provide tools to help system designers to model the real world. No guidelines exist, however, for determining the relationships within conceptual domains or implementations. RNA, based on a generic relationship taxonomy, provides a systematic way of identifying useful relationships in application domains. Developers can then implement each relationship as a link. Viewing an application domain from the relationship management point of view and modeling from a philosophy of maximum access provides a unique vantage point for application design. We present RNA and its generic relationship taxonomy, describing their use for system analysis.
Bieber, Michael and Joonhee Yoo (*) "Hypermedia: A Design
Philosophy," ACM Computing Surveys, 31(4es), 1999.
[on-line] http://web.njit.edu/~bieber/pub/acmcs/cs-yb.html
This paper is a somewhat unconventional, general introduction to the philosophy behind Relationship-Navigation Analysis (RNA). Few designers explicitly think about their applications' interrelationships. Designers appear not have a deep enough conceptualization of their domains to identify intuitive relationships and realize the full scope and interconnections within domains. RNA gives designers and developers an analysis tool to think about an information domain in terms of its interrelationships. RNA incorporates a complete taxonomy of generic relationship types that would apply to any application domain, and perhaps any system - computerized or not.
Van De Walle, Bartel and Michael Bieber, "Finding the Underlying
Links within Analytical Applications," New Jersey Institute of
Technology, Technical Report, 1999.
[on-line] http://web.njit.edu/~bieber/pub/vb99-www/VB99-www.html
When migrating applications to the World Wide Web, developers often do not take the opportunity to reengineer the applications for the Web environment. Many applications thus have a paucity of links. The Relationship-Navigation Analysis methodology helps designers better understand, as well as add a rich layer of meaningful hypermedia functionality to complex analytical applications. We illustrate with a multi-criteria decision model application, implemented in a decision analysis software toolkit.
Bieber, Michael and Fabio
Vitali, "Toward Support for Hypermedia on the World Wide Web"
IEEE Computer 30(1), January 1997.
[on-line] http://www.cs.unibo.it/~fabio/bio/papers/1997/IEEEC97/January/IEEEC0197.html
In the rush to co-opt and retrofit applications on the Web, we risk the opportunity cost of bypassing its greatest supplemental benefit: ubiquitous hypermedia support. We consider hypermedia and Web integration from the point of view of an organization's MIS department and organization management.
(return to index at top of page)
The field of Information Systems strongly influences my work. I define Computer Science as the study of making information technology efficient, and Information Systems as the study of applying information technology effectively. Thus much of my work focuses on how concepts and technologies best can serve people and organizations. Through all of my research runs a common thread of enabling people - those using everyday applications on the World Wide Web, virtual communities, local communities, educators and students.
(return to index at top of page)
((*) student author; see also Refereed Journal Articles (secondary author); and to top of page)
Michael Bieber, Barbara McFall, Ronald Rice and Michael Gurstein, "Towards Systems Design for Supporting Enabling Communities," Journal of Community Informatics, November 2006.
Communities and community support systems should be designed to enable participants to work effectively towards conducting both collective and individual activities and achieving their goals. Such communities are called "Enabling Communities". Our focus is the "systems" that support community members in doing whichever tasks or activities they need or want to. These systems include processes, technology, information and people. This paper provides a framework for Supporting Enabling Communities (SEComm) in two major components: (1) Participant Support Systems (PaSS) and (2) Community Participation Levels (CPaL). Three case studies apply this framework to an emerging virtual community and a community of practice.
A review of our research efforts and future research agenda for supporting learning and knowledge sharing within virtual communities. The focus of this article is on the technological base, which vastly expands the paradigm of digital libraries.
Bieber, Michael, Harri
Oinas-Kukkonen and V. Balasubramanian, "Hypertext Functionality,"
ACM Computing Surveys, 31(4es), 1999.
[on-line]
http://web.njit.edu/~bieber/pub/acmcs/cs-bob.html
This paper introduces a research subfield of both hypermedia and information systems. The Hypertext Functionality field studies techniques for and the impact of supplementing everyday computer applications with hypertext (or hypermedia) functionality (HTF). The HTF approach encourages system developers to think actively about an application's interrelationships, and whether users should access and navigate along these relationships directly. It views hypertext as value-added support functionality. The HTF approach fosters three major areas of research: using HTF to improve personal and organizational effectiveness, HTF and application design, and integrating HTF into applications.
Bieber, Michael and Joonhee Yoo (*) "Hypermedia: A Design
Philosophy," ACM Computing Surveys, 31(4es), 1999.
[on-line] http://web.njit.edu/~bieber/pub/acmcs/cs-yb.html
This paper is a somewhat unconventional, general introduction to the philosophy behind Relationship-Navigation Analysis (RNA). Few designers explicitly think about their applications' interrelationships. Designers appear not have a deep enough conceptualization of their domains to identify intuitive relationships and realize the full scope and interconnections within domains. RNA gives designers and developers an analysis tool to think about an information domain in terms of its interrelationships. RNA incorporates a complete taxonomy of generic relationship types that would apply to any application domain, and perhaps any system - computerized or not.
Bieber, Michael and Fabio
Vitali, "Toward Support for Hypermedia on the World Wide Web"
IEEE Computer 30(1), January 1997.
[on-line] http://www.cs.unibo.it/~fabio/bio/papers/1997/IEEEC97/January/IEEEC0197.html
In the rush to co-opt and retrofit applications on the Web, we risk the opportunity cost of bypassing its greatest supplemental benefit: ubiquitous hypermedia support. We consider hypermedia and Web integration from the point of view of an organization's MIS department and organization management.
Bieber, Michael, Fabio
Vitali, Helen Ashman (*), V. Balasubramanian (*), and Harri
Oinas-Kukkonen (*), "Fourth Generation Hypermedia: Some Missing
Links for the World Wide Web" International Journal of
Human-Computer Studies 47, 1997, 31-65.
[on-line] http://web.njit.edu/~bieber/pub/bva97.html
World Wide Web authors must cope in a hypermedia environment analogous to second- generation computing languages, building and managing all hypermedia links using simple anchors and single-step navigation. We present a set of third- and fourth- generation hypermedia functionalities and give some direction for implementing them.
Bieber, Michael, "On Integrating Hypermedia into Decision Support
and Other Information Systems" Decision Support Systems 14,
1995, 251-267.
[on-line] http://web.njit.edu/~bieber/pub/Bi95/Bi95.html
A proposed architecture and minimal requirements for integrating a
dynamic hypermedia engine with non-hypermedia interface-oriented and
computationally-oriented information systems.
- supersedes "Issues in Modeling a 'Dynamic' Hypertext Interface"
Bieber, Michael and Charles Kacmar, "Designing Hypertext Support
for Computational Applications" Communications of the ACM,
38(8), August 1995, 99-107.
[pdf] http://web.njit.edu/~bieber/pub/BK95.pdf
What considerations must designers face when incorporating hypertext as "secondary support functionality" to non hypertext-oriented information systems?
Bieber, Michael and Tomás Isakowitz, "Text Editing and Beyond: A Study in Logic Modeling," Decision Support Systems 11, 1994, North Holland, 219-240.
A study of logic modeling as a technique for modeling and testing information systems.
Bieber, Michael and Steven O. Kimbrough, "On the Logic of Generalized Hypertext," Decision Support Systems 11, 1994, North Holland, 241-257.
A logic model of generalized hypertext components and link traversal.
Bieber, Michael, "Automating Hypermedia for Decision Support," Hypermedia, 4(2), 1992, pages 83-110.
A non-technical discussion of integrating hypermedia and DSS, and the challenges dynamic environments pose. In a technical appendix we demonstrate bridge laws, which dynamically map hypermedia to DSS applications.
Bieber, Michael P. and Steven O. Kimbrough, "On Generalizing the Concept of Hypertext," Management Information Systems Quarterly, 16(1), March 1992, pages 77-93.
A non-technical discussion of generalizing hypertext entities and link traversal. A sample DSS session illustrates the interaction among the DSS shell components.
((*) student author; see also Refereed Journal Articles (primary author); and to top of page)
Shen, Jia, Roxanne Hiltz and Michael Bieber, "Collaborative Online Examinations: Impacts on Interaction, Learning, and Student Satisfaction," IEEE Transactions on Systems, Man, and Cybernetics, Part A: Systems and Humans, Volume 36, No. 6, November 2006, 1045-1053. [on-line] http://web.njit.edu/~bieber/pub/IEEESMCA-2006.pdf
This paper presents the results of a field experiment on online examinations facilitated by collaboration support systems. In particular, it examines collaborative learning and virtual teams through online examinations as an assessment procedure, compared to traditional examinations. Assessment increasingly is regarded as an important part of the learning process. Applying constructivism and collaborative learning theories, the Collaborative Examination process features students’ active participation in various phases of the exam process through small group activities online. A 1*3 field experiment evaluated the collaborative online exam compared with the traditional in-class exam, and the Participatory Exam where students participated in the online exam processes without groups. Data analysis using results from 485 students indicates that collaborative examinations significantly enhance interactions and the sense of an online learning community, and result in significantly higher levels of perceived learning.
Shen, Jia, Michael Bieber and Roxanne Hiltz, "Participatory Examinations in Asynchronous Learning Networks: Longitudinal Evaluation Results," Journal of Asynchronous Learning Networks, Volume 9, Issue 3, pp. 93-113, October 2005. [on-line] http://web.njit.edu/~bieber/pub/jaln2006.pdf
This paper presents longitudinal evaluation results for an online participatory examination process in an information systems course over three semesters. The exam process includes students making up questions, answering other students‚ questions, grading answers to questions they author, and appealing the grades. The surveys following each exam elicited students‚ feedback, and an experiment compared the participatory exam with the traditional exam in the third semester. Survey results reveal that the majority of students have favorable attitudes towards the participatory exam, and would recommend the participatory examination for future courses. Students in the participatory exam enjoyed the process significantly more than students in the traditional exam, and have higher overall preference for the exam mode, although their perceived learning and perceived fairness in grading are lower than with the traditional exam. Discussion and future research on this topic are also presented.
Yoo, Joonhee, Joseph Catanio (*), Michael Bieber and Ravi Paul,
"Relationship Analysis in Requirements Engineering," Requirements
Engineering (2004) 9: 238&endash;247.
[on-line] http://web.njit.edu/~bieber/pub/yoo2004.pdf
This paper describes our current research achievements in the area of Relationship Analysis, with a focus on how it can support the requirements engineering stage of systems analysis in the software engineering life cycle. Relationship analysis provides a systematic way of identifying useful relationships in application domains.
Catanio, Joseph (*), Nkechi Nnadi (*), Li Zhang (*), Michael
Bieber and Roberto Galnares, "Ubiquitous Metainformation and the
WYWWYWI* Principle," Journal of
Digital Information, 5(1), April 2004.
[on-line] http://jodi.tamu.edu/Articles/v05/i01/Catanio/
- http://web.njit.edu/~bieber/pub/wywwywi_v47.htm
* WYWWYWI - What you want, when you want it, pronounced "why why why"
Metainformation includes the structural relationships, content-based relationships, user-declared link-based relationships, and metadata around an element of interest. Combined, the metainformation goes a long way towards establishing the full semantics for (the meaning of and context around) a system's elements. We take a three-pronged approach to providing metainformation on a grand scale. First, we provide a systematic methodology for systems analysts to determine the relationships around elements of interest in their information domains - Relationship Analysis. Relationship Analysis will result in a comprehensive set of a domain's structural relationships. Second, we provide a Metainformation Engine, which automatically generates sets of structural and content-based relationships around elements of interest as links, as well as metadata within static and virtual documents. Third, we provide an infrastructure for widespread link-based services within both static and virtual documents. This approach provides the inspiration as well as a sound foundation for a ubiquitous embracing of the WYWWYWI principle in the everyday systems people use, both on the Web and beyond.
Balasubramanian, V., Michael Bieber and Tomás Isakowitz,
"Systematic Hypermedia Design," Information Systems Journal,
26(4), 2001, 295-320.
[pdf] http://web.njit.edu/~bieber/pub/isj01.pdf
A systematic approach to designing and implementing a hypermedia interface to a relational database system.
Chiu, Chao-Min and Michael Bieber, "A Dynamically Mapped Open
Hypermedia System Framework for Integrating Information Systems,"
Information and Software Technology, 43, 2001, 75-86.
[on-line] http://web.njit.edu/~bieber/pub/chiu/ist01.pdf
The overall goal of this research is to design a distributed, extensible, cross-platform, collaborative, and integrated system that can supplement information systems with hypermedia support. In this paper we propose a dynamically mapped open hypermedia system framework for evaluating this support. The framework has two axes: a logical component focus and an application requirement focus. Given this framework we first evaluate five open hypermedia systems and the World Wide Web, and then design our own system implemented on top of the World Wide Web. This paper also contributes guidelines for building mapping routines that provide supplemental hypermedia support (an alternate approach to those used in our DHE project).
Chiu, Chao-Min and Michael Bieber, "Toward Hypermedia Support for
Information Relationship Management," Journal of Information
Science, 27(2) 2001, 93-100.
[on-line] http://web.njit.edu/~bieber/pub/chiu/jis01.pdf
This paper presents an effort related to and elaborating upon Yoo & Bieber's Relationship-Navigation Analysis called Relationship-Navigation Rule Analysis. RNRA includes steps for writing mapping rules, and presents an alternate view of mapping rules from other work by Bieber.
Vitali, Fabio and
Bieber, Michael, "Hypermedia on the Web: What Will It Take?," ACM
Computing Surveys, 31(4es), 1999.
[on-line] http://web.njit.edu/~bieber/pub/acmcs/cs-vb.html
Researchers in the hypermedia field often lament that the World Wide Web does not support many of hypermedia's rich structuring, navigation and annotation features. What would it take for everyday Web applications to be fully hypermedia compliant, now that the basic hypermedia building blocks exist on the Web? The following four capabilities are the most critical for integrating hypermedia support in the Web environment: editable browsers, storing document content and link anchors separately, external linkbases, and displaying link spans, node and link attributes. Individual developers can not decide autonomously on how to resolve many of the outstanding issues. Developers need agreed-upon conventions and tools built upon today's Web standards to fully incorporate hypermedia functionality into everyday applications.
Turoff, Murray, Starr Roxanne Hiltz, Michael Bieber, Jerry Fjermestad and Ajaz Rana "Collaborative Discourse Structures in Computer Mediated Group Communications," Journal of Computer Mediated Communication 4(4), June 1999. [on-line] http://www.ascusc.org/jcmc/vol4/issue4/turoff.html
This paper describes a potential integrated collaborative hypermedia environment supporting rich discourse within groups. Using application oriented conceptual maps to categorize the group discussion would be an advancement in the design of computer-mediated communication (CMC) systems to allow much larger groups to collaborate productively. The group meta-communication process should allow the group to modify and evolve these conceptual discourse templates.
Vitali, Fabio,
Chao-Min Chiu (*) and Michael Bieber, "Extending HTML in a Principled
Way with Displets," Computer Networks and ISDN Systems,
1997.
[on-line] http://www.cs.unibo.it/~fabio/bio/papers/1997/WWW97/Displets/PAPER155.html
Displets provide authors and programmers with a way to freely extend the HTML language on a per-document basis in a principled manner. This would enable people to easily include special notations such as mathematics, music, charting, etc. Displets are Java classes that are activated while rendering an HTML document.
Hao, Xialong (*), Jason T.L. Wang, Michael Bieber and Peter A. Ng, "Heuristic Classification of Office Documents", International Journal on Artificial Intelligence Tools, 1995, pages 233-265.
A method for classifying scanned and other electronic documents based on their layout.
Kimbrough, Steven O., Clark Pritchett, Michael Bieber (*) and Hemant Bhargava (*), "The Coast Guard's KSS Project", Interfaces, 20(6), November/December 1990, pages 5-16.
A detailed introduction to the hypertext, model management, project management and decision support concepts motivating our prototype DSSs, and how these are assisting the U. S. Coast Guard.
((*) student author; to top of page)
Catanio, Joseph (*) and Michael Bieber, "Relationship Analysis: A
Technique To Enhance Systems Analysis For Web Development,"
forthcoming in Web Engineering: Principles and Techniques,
Woojung Suh (ed.), Idea Group, 2004.
[on-line] http://web.njit.edu/~bieber/pub/ra-we-chapter04.pdf
This paper describes Relationship Analysis and describes some of our future directions for grounding the approach in Guilford's Structure of Intellect theory. Relationship analysis provides a systematic way of identifying useful relationships in application domains.
Turoff, Murray, Starr Roxanne Hiltz, Michael Bieber, Brian Whitworth and Jerry Fjermestad, "Computer Mediated Communications for Group Support: Past and Future," (John Carroll, ed.) in Human-Computer Interaction in the New Millennium, Addison Wesley, 2001.
Approximately thirty years have passed since the first asynchronous group communication system became operational. While one may think the field has fully matured, that is not case. This paper emphasizes exploration of future R&D directions for Group Communications. It describes structuring of group communications through software that provides or supports analytical tools (that gather and analyze data), communication protocols, and human roles. Many of the ideas have had limited demonstrations in actual use. However, for various reasons to be discussed, we have not yet seen these ideas widely incorporated into current group communication systems. Hopefully the increasing computer literacy of users and their growing understanding of group communications will demand this.
Bhaumik, Anirban (*), Deepti Dixit (*), Roberto Galnares (*),
Manolis Tzagarakis (*), Michalis Vaitis (*), Michael Bieber, Vincent
Oria, Aparna Krishna (*), Qiang Lu (*), Firas Aljallad (*), Li Zhang
(*), "Integrating Hypermedia Functionality into Database
Applications," Developing Quality Complex Database Systems:
Practices, Techniques and Technologies, Becker, Shirley (ed.),
2001.
[pdf] http://web.njit.edu/~bieber/pub/db-chapter.pdf
A review of our research efforts and future research agenda for
supporting database applications with hypermedia support.
- extends "Towards Hypermedia Support for Database Systems" HICSS
2001
Yoo, Joonhee (*) and Bieber, Michael, "A Systematic Relationship
Analysis for Modeling Information Domains" in Information Modeling
in the New Millennium, Matti Rossi & Keng Siau (eds.), Idea
Group, 2001.
[pdf] http://web.njit.edu/~bieber/pub/millenium-v3.pdf
This chapter introduces the Relationship Navigation Analysis methodology.
Bieber, Michael, "Advancing Information Comprehension through Hypertext" Advances in Intelligent Hypertext, J. Mayfield & C. Nicholas (eds.), Springer-Verlag, 1997.
This chapter discusses many of the issues and experiences we encountered when creating the electronic version of the August 1995 special section in the Communications of the ACM.
(See also Conference Proceedings (strongly refereed; secondary author); (*) student author; and to top of page)
Bieber, Michael, Il Im, Ron Rice, Ricki Goldman-Segall, Ravi Paul,
Edward Stohr, Starr Roxanne Hiltz, Jennifer Preece, Murray Turoff,
"Towards Knowledge-Sharing and Learning in Virtual Professional
Communities," Proceedings of the 35th Hawaii International
Conference on System Sciences, IEEE Press, Washington, D.C.,
January 2002, (Community Informatics Minitrack).
[pdf] http://web.njit.edu/~bieber/pub/bieber-hicss02.pdf
A review of our research efforts and future research agenda for supporting learning and knowledge sharing within virtual communities. The focus of this paper is on the research paradigm to promote learning and knowledge sharing.
Bieber, Michael, Douglas Engelbart, Richard Furuta, Starr Roxanne
Hiltz, John Noll, Jenny Preece, Edward Stohr, Murray Turoff and
Bartel Van De Walle, "Virtual Community Knowledge Evolution,"
Proceedings of the 34th Hawaii International Conference on System
Sciences, IEEE Press, Washington, D.C., January 2001, (Community
Informatics Minitrack).
[pdf] http://web.njit.edu/~bieber/pub/hicss01/hicss01-ckess.pdf
A review of our research efforts and future research agenda for supporting learning and knowledge sharing within virtual communities. The focus of this paper is on the technological base, which vastly expands the paradigm of digital libraries.
Bieber, Michael, "Hypertext and Web Engineering," ACM
Hypertext'98 Proceedings, ACM Press, Washington, D.C., June 1998,
pages 277-278.
[pdf] http://web.njit.edu/~bieber/pub/bieber-ht98.pdf
A short paper (strongly refereed) describing our approach to automatically generating links with Web applications. Our approach to Web Engineering consists of a relationship analysis, which produces specifications for links which our DHE hypermedia engine project then automatically generates.
Bieber, Michael, Tomás Isakowitz and James Oliver (*), "An Analysis Framework for Information Comprehension and Access Management," Proceedings of the 28th Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences, IEEE Press, Washington, D.C., January 1995, pages 604-613 (Volume 4, Internet Minitrack).
Introducing the new interdisciplinary field of "Information Comprehension and Access Management," dealing with the technical, managerial and policy issues concerning information representation, extraction and distribution.
Bieber, Michael and Jiangling Wan (*), "Backtracking in a Multiple-window Hypertext Environment," Proceedings of the ACM European Conference on Hypermedia Technologies, Edinburgh, September 18-23, 1994, ACM. http://web.njit.edu/~bieber/pub/bw94.pdf
How should hypertext systems handle backtracking among multiple windows containing different "logical" tasks, in a way that does not disorient the user?
Bieber, Michael, "Issues in Modeling a 'Dynamic' Hypertext Interface," Hypertext '91 Proceedings, San Antonio, December 15-18, 1991, ACM, pages 203-218.
A proposed architecture using a dynamic hypertext engine to connect non-hypertext interface-oriented and computationally-oriented information systems. Includes a short discussion of document interchange.
(See also Conference Proceedings (strongly refereed, primary author); (*) student author; and to top of page)
Gomez, Elizabeth Avery (*), Dezhi Wu, Katia Passerini, and Michael Bieber "Introducing Computer Supported Team-Based Learning: Preliminary Outcomes and Learning Impacts," Information Resources Management Association (IRMA)
