This book is based on the NATO Advanced Research Workshop on Structures of Com munication and Intelligent Help for Hypermedia Courseware, which was held at Espinho, Portugal, April 19-24, 1990. The texts included here should not be regarded as untouched proceedings of this meeting, but as the result of the reflections which took place there and which led the authors to revise their texts in that light. The Espinho ARW was itself to some extent the continuation of the ARW on Designing Hypermedia/Hypertext for Learning, held in Germany in 1989 (D. H. Jonassen, H. Mandl (eds.): Designing Hypermedia for Learning. NATO ASI Series F, Vol. 67. Springer 1990). At that meeting an essential conclusion becarne apparent: the importance and interest of hyper media products as potential pedagogical tools. It was then already predictable that the enormous evolution of hypermedia would lead to its association with multimedia technologies, namely for the production of courseware. Parallel to the improvement of the didactic potential and quality which results from this association, it nevertheless brought along a natural array of difficulties, some old, some new, in the con ception and use of hypermedia products. Today there is agreement that one of the most promising technological advances for education is represented by the use of text, sound and images based on nonlinear techniques of information handling and searching of hypermedia architectures. The problem of hypermedia is fundamentally one of communication; this leads to an attempt at defining a language for hypermedia.

Editor's Introduction.- Dialogue Constraints in Instruction.- Asymmetry & Accommodation in Tutorial Dialogues.- Negotiation in Collaborative Problem-Solving Dialogues.- Using Rhetorical Relations in Building a Coherent Conversational Teaching Session.- Graphics & Natural Language in Design & Instruction.- Simulator-Based Training-Support Tools for Process-Control Operators.- Designing Newton's Laws: Patterns of Social & Representational Feedback in a Learning Task.- Learning by Explaining: Fostering Collaborative Progressive Discourse in Science.- Tools for Collaborative Learning in Optics.- Deciding What to Say: An Agent-Theoretic Approach to Tutorial Dialogue.- Feedback in Computer-Assisted Instruction: Complexity & Corrective Efficiency.- Relying on a Sophisticated Student Model to Derive Dialogue Strategies in an Intelligent Tutoring System.- Dialogue Control Functions & Interaction Design.- The Role of Feedback in a Layered Model of Communication.- Communicative Action & Feedback.- >Reasons for Management in Spoken Dialogue.- Context Change & Communicative Feedback.- The Design of Interacting Agents.- Method for Dialogue Protocol Analysis.- Natural Dialogue in Modes other than Natural Language.- Coherence & Portrayal in Human-Computer Interface Design.- Feedback Issues in Consumer Appliances.- Advertisements, Proxies, & Wear: Three Methods for Feedback in Interactive Systems.- Author Index.

As we approach the 21st century, the need to better link research findings and practical applications of advanced educational technologies (AET) continues to be a priority. During the five-year NATO Special Programme on AET, many advanced study institutes and research workshops focused on building bridges between researchers in and users of educational technology. The organizing committee of the final capstone workshop which took place in September 1993 also chose to focus on this theme. Three position papers, written by members of the AET advisory committee, provided the background and platform for the two-day workshop that was designed to provide guidelines for future AET research and implementation projects. Nicolas Balacheff kicked off the workshop with a philosophical review of the research issues and future research agendas. Herman Bouma and his colleagues at the Institute for Perception Research discussed implementation issues and problems of technology transfer from research laboratories to educational product development.

Not long ago, projections of how office technologies would revolutionize the production of documents in a high-tech future carriedmany promises. The paper less office and the seamless and problem-free sharing of texts and other work materials among co-workers werejust around the corner, we were told. To anyone who has been involved in putting together a volume of the present kind, such forecasts will be met with considerable skepticism, if not outright distrust. The diskette, the email, the fax, the net, and all the other forms of communication that are now around are powerful assets, but they do not in any way reduce the flow of paper or the complexity of coordinating activities involved in producing an artifact such as a book. Instead, the reverse seems to be true. Obviously, the use of such tools requires considerable skill at the center of coordination, to borrow an expression from a chapter in this volume. As editors, we have been fortunate to have Ms. Lotta Strand, Linkoping University, at the center of the distributed activity that producing this volume has required over the last few years. With her considerable skill and patience, Ms. Strand and her work provide a powerful illustration of the main thrust of most of the chapters in this volume: Practice is a coordination of thinking and action, and many things had to be kept in mind during the production of this volume.

What the Book Is About This book is about the problem of organizational learning, that is the analysis of organizations conceived as learning systems. In order to survive in a period of a rapid change, organizations must innovate and than to develop and exploit their abilities to learn. The most innovative organizations are those that can respond with great efficiency to internal and external changes. They respond to and generate technological change by acting as effective learning systems. They maximize the learning potential of ongoing and "normal" work activities. The organizational structure and the technology allow members to learn while the organizations itself learns from its members. So organizations reach high levels of innovation when structured to take advantage of the social, distributed, participative, situated processes of learning developed by its members in interaction with the technological environment. Organizations should consider learning as an explicit "productive" objective. They must create integrated learning mechanisms, that encompass technological tools, reward and incentive systems, human resource practices, belief systems, access to information, communication and mobility patterns, performance appraisal systems, organizational practices and structures. The design of efficient learning organizations requires cognitive, technological and social analyses. All the computer-based technologies (e. g. office automation, communication and group decision support) not only those devoted to and used in training activities, have to be considered as tools for organizational learning and innovation.

As the role of the modern engineer is markedly different from that of even a decade ago, the theme of engineering mathematics educa tion (EME) is an important one. The need for mathematical model ling (MM) courses and consideration of the educational impact of computer-based technology environments merit special attention. This book contains the proceeding of the NATO Advanced Research Workshop held on this theme in July 1993. We have left the industrial age behind and have entered the in formation age. Computers and other emerging technologies are penetrating society in depth and gaining a strong influence in de termining how in future society will be organised, while the rapid change of information requires a more qualified work force. This work force is vital to high technology and economic competitive ness in many industrialised countries throughout the world. Within this framework, the quality of EME has become an issue. It is expected that the content of mathematics courses taught in schools of engineering today have to be re-evaluated continuously with regard to computer-based technology and the needs of mod ern information society. The main aim of the workshop was to pro vide a forum for discussion between mathematicians, engineering scientists, mathematics educationalists, and courseware develop ers in the higher education sector and to focus on the issues and problems of the design of more relevant and appropriate MM courses for engineering education.