Two years ago the idea of International Teaching and Research in Hypertext (INTR/HT) was introduced. This paper follows up on this idea and further develops new thoughts on this topic, based on the experiences gained from three university courses taught under the umbrella of INTR/HT. We conclude we have envisioned a model for the future of international and interdisciplinary education in hypertext that has the potential to raise the next generation of hypertext researchers through efforts of collaborative teaching and learning activities.

Social and professional topics → Computer science education;

General and reference → Surveys and overviews;

Applied computing → Distance learning;

Human-centered computing → Hypertext / hypermedia.

hypertext, hypertext community, university teaching, distance teaching, didactic, hypertext systems, research, projects, INTR/HT, Historic Hypertext Project

Claus Atzenbeck, Dene Grigar, and Manolis Tzagarakis. 2023. Interdisciplinary Teaching Toward the Next Generation Hypertext Researchers. In 34th ACM Conference on Hypertext and Social Media (HT '23), September 4–8, 2023, Rome, Italy. ACM, New York, NY, USA, 5 pages. https://doi.org/10.1145/3603163.3609055

Hypertext "as a method of inquiry, a lens through which other topics are investigated" [2] can be applied in a variety of domains, making this topic omnipresent in today's information driven world. However, for the public the notion of hypertext is mostly limited to the notion of WWW "links", which boils down to URIs. Additionally, a deeper understanding of hypertext is often buried under big topics, such as AI, the Web, or interactive media. Such a perspective limits the recognition of hypertext ideas and research and renders it a niche topic. As hypertext has been the theoretical framework of the WWW, it is important to keep its status as one of the pillars of today's WWW where new ideas can be proposed, discussed, reshaped and evolved. Towards such a goal, the most important countermeasure that aims for a better recognition of hypertext in its respective scientific domains is educating researchers. Firstly, it addresses students who eventually will become members of the next generation of researchers in hypertext related topics. Secondly, it targets a wide range of fields, acknowledging the interdisciplinary character of hypertext.

To that end, measures were proposed at the 2021 ACM Conference on Hypertext and Social Media the International Teaching and Research in Hypertext (INTR/HT) as "way[s] for the hypertext community to gain strength and contribute to other fields of research by joining forces" [1]. These include:

Creating a network of hypertext scholars who would identify important topics to be taught.

Offering courses that introduce students to (interdisciplinary) perspectives of hypertext.

Identifying appropriate tools for teaching, in particular hypertext software that acts as both subject of students' studies/experiments and a knowledge tool for them.

Developing new ways of teaching geographically distributed, partly overlapping courses, including adapting current software tools and outlining new, tailored pedagogical methods.

Providing vintage hypertext systems to students and scholars[^1] that would broaden students' perspectives by allowing them to gain hands-on experience with hypertext applications and media about which they had previously only seen in photographs.

[^1]: This is the aim of The Historic Hypertext Project (histHT), see https://human.iisys.de/histHT/

Based on the first ideas presented [1], we conducted three INTR/HT based courses in three international universities. In Sect. 2 we describe the organization and content of those courses. From there, we discuss the important findings as problem statement in Sect. 3. Finally, we conclude and propose our vision of the next big steps in Sect. 4.

Table 1 on the following page provides an overview of the three courses associated with INTR/HT that were held partly in conjunction during the spring/summer semester 2023. Three universities participated—in the order of their respective semester start date: (i) Washington State University Vancouver (WSUV), USA; (ii) University of Patras, Greece; and (iii) Hof University, Germany. The following preconditions were noted:

Most notably, the three courses were located at different universities and countries: USA, Greece, and Germany. The international scope of the course implies that joint sessions needed to acknowledge multiple time zones and different national holidays.

The semesters also began and ended at different times. In the USA, the start date was 10th January, followed by Greece on 20th February and then Germany on 14th March. Additionally, semesters ended on 2nd May, 2nd June, and 7th July, respectively. As such, the intersecting time frame for all three universities to collaborate was limited to 14th March until 2nd May—a time span of seven weeks.

Along with the challenges of time were the different courses of study offered at each university. In the USA the main focus was on hypertext as born-digital literature and art, particularly in the area of storytelling (course of study, "Digital Technology & Culture"), whereas the German course was very much computing system centered (course of study, "Computer Science"). Finally, the course in Greece was about digital economy, (course of study "Economy"), focusing on digital goods, which also includes hypertext.

Beside conducting joint lectures provided by the respective organizing universities, a number of further shared guest lecturers were invited to present their research on specific hypertext topics.

Table 1: Performed INTR/HT courses in spring/summer semester 2023

Before coordinating the course schedules, topics needed to be aligned. While the subject matter in the USA and Germany focused on hypertext narratives and hypertext systems, respectively, the course in Greece showed only limited commonalities, such as topics on hypertext as digital goods, the history of hypertext as the foundation of the Web, and Web technologies.

After having identified topics that could be provided jointly, we began the process of scheduling them within the seven overlapping weeks during the semester that was common to all three universities in a way that each of those topics matched the respective sequence of lectures. Holidays, which were different among the countries, needed to be excluded accordingly; examples include spring break (USA) or Easter break (Greece, Germany).

Requesting the time slot for this lecture needed to be done for the German course earlier than usual since the course in the USA took place two months ahead of its schedule. The course in the USA had to be ready for the spring schedule by early summer 2022. Moreover, due to different time zones, the overlapping period for synchronous teaching sessions was limited. The course in the USA took place in the morning local time (9:10–11:50 am), whereas the course in Germany was scheduled late afternoon local time (3:45–7:00 pm). Because the USA changed to daylight saving time (DST) earlier than Europe, the first few courses had an overlap of 110 minutes but changed to 50 minutes after 26th March (change to DST in Europe). Thus, university schedules impacted the length of time that synchronous teaching could take place. The use of a joint calendar that presented the teaching events in the respective local time and acknowledged changes related to DST was employed and shared with the students in all three courses.

During the overlapping lecture time within the mentioned seven weeks, one of the three participating professors was responsible for providing a lecture that was streamed via Zoom. Synchronous lectures turned out to be very successful, as students were able to ask questions directly to the lecturer. Because of the diversity of training and academic focus among the three groups of students, information was scaffolded so that complex ideas relating to interdisciplinary perspective on hypertext were introduced after students gained basic knowledge that allowed them to understand it. The lectures also provided the participating professors with the opportunity to get a better understanding of the others' perspective, which paved the way to further teaching or research collaboration.

Along with lectures by the three participating professors, other experts in the field were invited to provide guest lectures to one or more courses. This approach was well received by the students who were excited to be taught by some of the leading scholars in the field. Additionally, from 8th–12th May 2023 Hof University conducted its International Teaching Week (ITW), during which the University invites international scholars to visit and provide lectures. This opportunity allowed the professors from WSUV and University of Patras to meet and provide lectures in-person to students at Hof.

As previously proposed [1], hypertext tools were given to students to be used in their respective classes. As such, these resources were subject of the hypertext courses themselves and served as knowledge tools for the students' class projects. In particular, we provided students with the browser plugin Weblinks [5], developed at Hof University, which allows users to link, annotate, and structure arbitrary Web pages. Furthermore, we provided students with the spatial hypertext client SPORE ("Spatial hypertext oriented recommender system") [4] that provides recommendations on publications related to hypertext. Both Weblinks and SPORE are components of the CB-OHS Mother [3]. Students were asked to use those research tools for their work (e.g., finding or structuring information for their term papers) or write their term papers or exercises about those tools. These activities made it possible for students to know the latest hypertext research in practice, and at the same time it provided feedback about the systems to the developers.

The plugin Weblinks was used by the students in the Digital Economy course during their term project, in order to annotate Webpages of e-commerce sites in order to comment and discuss their structure (in terms of the content and links). Also available to students were hypertext authoring tools. The WSUV students were introduced to Storyspace 3 and required to produce a narrative for one of their four projects with it. Twine was also used in the course and served as the subject of a joint workshop where students from all three campuses learned the basics of using the tool to create a story. This hands on approach to teaching hypertext, particularly with two different platforms, resulted in students recognizing the various ways hypertext can be expressed creatively as well as experiencing, firsthand, the affordances and constraints inherent in these tools. For example, students were frustrated that they could not name the paths in Twine when they found that feature so useful for relaying metanarratives with Storyspace.

With the courses described in Sect. 2 we viewed our efforts with the INTR/HT as a practical learning experience for planning topics and scheduling joint lectures. More importantly, however, we used our first collaborative teaching as the building block of a bigger picture that goes beyond that: sustainable, interdisciplinary, and tightly coupled hypertext courses aimed at building the field by educating the next generation of hypertext researchers for both academia and industry. In this section we want to extend what we have presented in [1] and focus on the most important aspects. Our experience forms our vision for the future.

During the implementation of this first INTR/HT course, we found that the latter mentioned aim of educating hypertext researchers subsumes all other goals. It is a long-term attempt that goes hand in hand with the development of the hypertext community. In particular, we envision the following areas for sustainably developing a breeding ground for the next generation hypertext researchers.

One of the primary INTR/HT goals is educating students in current topics as well as the history of hypertext. This goal was already outlined in the described courses.

A new perspective involves multi-level courses in which B.Sc., B.A., M.Sc., M.A., or Ph.D. students work together, collaboratively on projects and communicate directly with one another. This idea has been described already in [1], but not yet implemented in practice. Such an approach is particularly important from the perspective of educating hypertext researchers as it aims for a smooth integration of students in thematic education workflows in which they meet and experience other students studying at higher levels. We expect this approach to help all students with realizing their opportunities.

Interdisciplinarity always has been a focus in INTR/HT. The mentioned course was interdisciplinary, as it included students from Digital Technology and Culture and Computer Science working together with students from Economics (see Tab. 1). We envision many more course combinations or different number of courses of study, for example, students from linguistics, social sciences, or philosophy. We expect two beneficial outcomes: (i) students get to know how hypertext is seen in other fields, which allows them to better understand terminology and point of views; and (ii) inviting many different fields of research related to hypertext increases the size, scope, and importance of the hypertext community.

Teaching associated courses automatically makes the respective lecturers guest speakers for the other courses. This approach allows for a broader perspective on hypertext that is taught to the students. Further, this can be extended toward other external lecturers. As mentioned in Sect. 2, we invited a number of external guest lecturers, which was evaluated positively by the students. Guest lecturers are likely to be from institutions abroad, which increases the level of internationalization of their respective organization.

In [1] we further addressed the need of a common hypertext teaching repository that can be used by scholars as a source of materials for their classes. While this issue has been discussed, it has not yet been implemented. To achieve this goal, we anticipate the need to select an appropriate platform for such a repository, possibly one similar to Scalar[^2], for example.

We experienced the importance of students working with existing hypertext tools, as described in Sect. 2. This should be further extended toward vintage systems, as presented in [1].

The discussed course was outlined as three loosely connected courses that follow the rules of their respective universities. Another approach would include truly joint classes with common assessment and examination that are implemented in all participating universities.

[^2]: https://scalar.me/anvc/

Beyond teaching, we found that INTR/HT fosters the discussion of research ideas at interdisciplinary and inter-institutional levels. This approach helps to develop new topics and student projects for participating courses.

Those hypertext research ideas may lead to project sketches and finally grant proposals at international or national levels. Funded projects would finance positions for Ph.D. students or provide possibilities for bachelor or master students to work on related sub-projects.

Many scholars have contacts to industry. INTR/HT would provide means for them to become involved in interdisciplinary and international students or research projects and offers the possibility for students to get in touch with companies interested in hypertext or digital technologies.

As described in Sect. 2.3, students were asked to test the hypertext tools developed by INTR/HT partners. Such actions open opportunities for jointly organized courses in which more students are available for such tasks. It may even be extended toward testing by industry partners. Overall, such usage provides valuable feedback or leads to further developing research prototypes or retrieve results in research projects.

INTR/HT can also act as a marketplace for research positions. Students come to know other hypertext researchers or universities and vice versa. Classroom contact may help researchers in acquiring research staff or exchange students.

Based on INTR/HT activities, a sustainable network of closely collaborating researchers is created. It may be coupled with other organizations or networks, such as ACM SIGWEB (Special Interest Group on Hypertext and the Web) or ELO (Electronic Literature Organization).

The INTR/HT initiated collaborations may lead to visiting researchers in other organizations, e.g., for their sabbatical, international teaching weeks organized by universities or similar institutions. This type of connection helps to spread ideas, support interdisciplinary thinking, and strengthen international efforts of the respective organizations.

SIGWEB is ACM's official group for supporting the hypertext community. It sponsors the ACM Hypertext Conferences or provides other community services. However, there is no dedicated track for educating students to become the next generation hypertext scholars. INTR/HT closes this gap by providing a road map and suggestions how to achieve it. INTR/HT should be closely connected with SIGWEB to provide an organizational structure to it.

One proposal is to implement a student conference track at the ACM Hypertext Conference and invite the best students from INTR/HT courses to present their work. Those students would need to receive travel grants and free conference registration; however, this investment may encourage students to become interested in and connected to the hypertext community. As INTR/HT courses are run by experienced scholars, the quality of assessment and selection of students' work is provided in synergies with the respective courses. The opportunity to be rewarded by participating in an ACM Conference may increase the motivation of students to deliver high quality work.

INTR/HT may also conduct its own (online) student conferences, organized and run by students, that may even be open to the public. For example, (i) computer science or linguistics students may produce paper or poster contributions on hypertext topics or act as reviewers; (ii) management students may receive credit for formally planning the conference; (iii) digital media students may manage the Website, video streaming, or online polls; they could even host a creative track open to entries related to hypertext literature and art; or (iv) digital marketing students may contribute by handling the promotions of the event. These activities would not only provide students with information about hypertext, but also teach them how scientific conferences are organized—again a truly interdisciplinary effort. SIGWEB or other organizations or companies may want to sponsor awards for the best contributions, including paper/poster presentations or as part of the organization.

Overall, the presented INTR/HT activities will help the hypertext community and its projects or courses to gain visibility or be adopted by various related fields. Such a visionary approach is necessary to ensure that hypertext continues to provide important niche solutions to today's or future challenges, such as the ones related to AI or the Web.

In this paper we discussed our vision for the International Teaching and Research in Hypertext (INTR/HT) project, which was first introduced two years ago [1]. Following our experiences with connected, international, and interdisciplinary courses related to hypertext, our perspective became clearer regarding the main goal and supporting measures. We proposed educating the next generation of hypertext researchers as the most important goal, which supports the community and helps further develop hypertext as an important and interdisciplinary topic. We further argued that there should be a close connection to SIGWEB, ACM's official group providing services and support for hypertext professionals.

Though we started small in spring/summer semester 2023 with just three participating universities plus a number of external guest lecturers, we want to continue our efforts and expand our vision. For example, we plan to experiment with novel forms of teaching that takes into account: (i) interdisciplinary topics and courses of studies; (ii) mixed multi level courses (from bachelor to PhD); (iii) heterogeneously formed student groups working on projects; (iv) synchronous or asynchronous teaching methods; and (v) different organizational means addressing requirements caused by multiple time zones of teaching or different examination types. These extensions to our original plan will require us to select and set up an appropriate platform (such as Vector or a Wiki) for building a common repository of hypertext material that INTR/HT scholars may use or extend for their own courses. Furthermore, we plan to approach ACM SIGWEB about providing official support that will assist the course in gaining visibility in the community. Beyond that, we want to identify and utilize travel grants for students or lecturers studying or teaching abroad as well as research grants for joint hypertext related projects that will also involve early career researchers or students.

Although the planning for the fall/winter semester 2023/24 just began (USA) or has not even started yet (Europe), we outline possibilities for collaboration in our upcoming M.Sc. or M.A. courses. Depending on the possibilities or organizational limitations, we will use helpful tools, such as Slack, Vector, or—again—further apply our own hypertext demonstrators in an improved or adapted version in the context of students' work. Calendar apps will help students and instructors alike to keep track of lectures and meetings over different time zones. They also will allow students to easily book (online) office hours of any of the participating professors.

We believe that raising the next generation of hypertext researchers is a beneficial and important task that holds a large potential. We expect it to draw a number of opportunities for the scientific community and possibly the industry. We believe that it is natural to have ACM SIGWEB be officially associated, as it represents the hypertext community and provides services to it. Most importantly, we believe that INTR/HT has the potential for prospering and growing an interdisciplinary and international hypertext community.

The INTR/HT project is funded by the Bavarian State Ministry of Science and the Arts (grant ID "Kapitel 15 49 TG 73"). This publication was also supported by Freunde und Förderer der Hochschule Hof (grant ID "Digitalization in University Teaching Award 2018").

Claus Atzenbeck and Jaesook Cheong. 2021. International Teaching and Research in Hypertext. In Proceedings of the 32nd ACM Conference on Hypertext and Social Media (HT '21). ACM Press, New York, NY, USA, 271–276. https://doi.org/10.1145/3465336.3475124

Claus Atzenbeck, Peter J. Nürnberg, and Daniel Roßner. 2021. Synthesising augmentation and automation. New Review of Hypermedia and Multimedia 27, 1–2 (2021), 177–203. https://doi.org/10.1080/13614568.2021.1942237

Claus Atzenbeck, Daniel Roßner, and Manolis Tzagarakis. 2018. Mother – An Integrated Approach to Hypertext Domains. In Proceedings of the 29th ACM Conference on Hypertext and Social Media. ACM Press, New York, NY, USA, 145–149. https://doi.org/10.1145/3209542.3209570

Daniel Roßner, Claus Atzenbeck, and Sam Brooker. 2023. SPORE: A Storybreaking Machine. In 33rd ACM Conference on Hypertext and Social Media (HT'23). ACM Press, New York, NY, USA. https://doi.org/10.1145/3603163.3609075

Daniel Roßner, Claus Atzenbeck, and Daniel Urban. 2020. Weblinks: Augmenting Web Browsers with Enhanced Link Services. In Proceedings of the 3rd Workshop on Human Factors in Hypertext. ACM Press, New York, NY, USA, Article 5, 5 pages. https://doi.org/10.1145/3406853.3432663