AUSTIN, TEX.

IF Leslie Jarmon had been content to play by the rules, her doctoral dissertation would have looked like thousands of others--a bound stack of 8 1/2-by-11-inch paper with one-inch margins topped by a title page.

Instead, she hopes to become one of the first in the nation to give readers a more interactive, and informative, summary of her research by publishing it on a CD-ROM.

Ms. Jarmon, whose dissertation focuses on non-verbal communication, says the high-tech format offers her new ways to analyze and compare body language.

Rather than wade through page after page of descriptions of facial grimaces, hand gestures, and other body language, readers will simply point and click to bring up video images. They'll see actual people engaged in conversation, hear babies fussing, and, she hopes, gain a deeper understanding than they would from words and still pictures alone.

"The technology is actually a partner in the research," she says. "It's opening up areas of study we just couldn't do before. "

It is also opening up plenty of controversy at Texas and other universities where students are challenging traditional assumptions about how dissertations should be presented.

Skeptics question whether scholars 20 or 30 years from now will be able to gain access to dissertations on CD-ROMS, given how rapidly technology is changing. Even today, some scholars do not have the hardware or software needed to read material published on the shiny disks.

FEAR ABOUT THE FUTURE

"When the Dead Sea scrolls were discovered, they were 2,000 years old and we could read them," says Tom Griffy, professor of physics and associate dean for graduate studies at the University of Texas. "Yet there are electronic documents less than 20 years old that we can't read.

"My fear is that it would only be through herculean efforts that future generations of scholars would be able to recover this information, and I don't think they would do it for a dissertation."

While the university gave Ms. Jarmon approval to go ahead with the dissertation as a test case, it also formed a committee to consider guidelines for future submissions.

A similar committee has been set up at Bowling Green State University, where Dean Kohrs, a doctoral candidate, is working on a dissertation that he plans to publish on a CD-ROM. The dissertation, which will examine the effect of the author Joseph Campbell on popular culture, will include videotaped interviews with writers, actors, and musicians.

"You can sit down and do your best to describe someone, but if you have a 40second video clip, it brings that person into your life in an instantaneous way that writing just cannot," says Mr. Kohrs.

"This isn't about getting away from writing. It's about extending writing and giving the reader a richer, more interactive experience."

Bowling Green's graduate dean, Louis I. Kazner, says he might have had more qualms about venturing into such new territory if he hadn't had the support of the nation's main repository for doctoral dissertations.

University Microfilms Inc., the publisher and repository for about 98 per cent of the doctoral dissertations published in the United States, will begin accepting dissertations in CD-ROM format this spring.

William E. Savage, director of academic relations at University Microfilms, acknowledges that dissertations on CD-ROM "pose a bit of a problem" for long-term storage.

"We will store them in the vaults along with our microfilm and hope the technology remains current and available, so people can access these documents for generations to come," he says.

Despite such uncertainty, Mr. Savage agrees that a CD-ROM, with its ability to store videos, sounds, and photographs' as well as written words, offers scholars like Ms. Jarmon and Mr. Kohrs an exciting way to present their research.

DIVERSE TOPICS

The technology lends itself particularly well to scholars who are describing processes that change over time, Ms. Jarmon says. Rather than go through lengthy descriptions of an evolving process, they can incorporate video or sound clips that accomplish the goal faster and more effectively.

The topics, she notes, could be as diverse as a dance performance or a chemical reaction.

Ms. Jarmon, who is pursuing her doctorate in speech communication, eagerly demonstrates how a CD-ROM allows her to call up a video clip, zoom in on a particular expression, and analyze it. "Before, I would have had 45 pages describing someone's face. It's extremely cumbersome for readers, as well as the researcher."

In many ways, her dissertation will have a traditional structure, with a table of contents, chapters, a bibliography, and an index. It will, however, have an undeniable high-tech feel. Text will appear in a large window on the right side of the screen, while the upper left will feature a smaller window for video. Play, pause, and stop buttons will appear whenever the text indicates a video clip is available.

Below the video window will be a contents box that allows the reader to move around in the document. A window displaying still photographs will appear below that.

Having video clips so readily accessible makes it easier to locate and compare examples of non-verbal communication, Ms. Jarmon says. "This technology will speed up the process of our research considerably," she says.

Once recorded material is transferred to the computer from a videocassette, the information is "right here at my fingertips," she says. The clips also can be sent over the Internet to colleagues to get their feedback.

'THE ACTUAL EXPERIENCE'

Constanze Witt, a graduate student at the University of Virginia, will bring readers into ancient Celtic tombs with a click of a button when she finishes her dissertation in classical archaeology. Ms. Witt is reconstructing on her computer three-dimensional models of tombs, dating from the fifth and sixth centuries B.C. Artifacts that were found together in the tomb and are now scattered in museums around the world will be reunited in her digital tomb.

"I can bring the reader much closer to the actual experience I had, being in the museums and walking around these objects," says Ms. Witt.

Despite the rigid format of the traditional paper dissertation, students who are pioneering the new CD-ROM dissertations have, by and large, been left to create their own formats. "Since this is so new, we're all flying by the seat of our pants," says Ms. Witt.

Her dissertation committee isn't willing to relinquish all control though. Just when she thought she was free to let her hair down, "they told me I had to submit a title page on watermarked paper, with one-inch margins."

REQUIREMENT AT VIRGINIA TECH

Officials at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University feel so strongly about the advantages of electronic publishing that they have required that all theses and dissertations be submitted electronically, beginning next January.

The new format could be extended to include--but not require--CD-ROMS, says John L. Eaton, associate provost for graduate studies at Virginia Tech.

"For students, the electronic dissertation can be easier to prepare, more error free, less expensive, and more flexible in format," he said in a statement announcing the new policy. "It can also allow more creativity on the part of the author by permitting inclusion of hypertext links and, soon, digital audio and video recordings."

Because the research will be available on the World-Wide Web, it will not require shelf space in the library and will be more accessible to other scholars, he added. Virginia Tech has received funds from the Southeastern Universities Research Association Inc. to come up with technical standards for making graduate research available on-line, which it will share with other universities in the Southeast.

The decision to embrace technology in areas so steeped in tradition has not come easily. Says Teresa A. Sullivan, dean of graduate studies at the University of Texas: "I have this daunting sense that I'm standing on a precipice, but I have a feeling it's time for graduate schools to consider stepping over it."

Mr. Kohrs, the Bowling Green student, believes graduate schools cannot afford to ignore technological change and the opportunities it offers to scholars.

"The genie's out of the bottle and there's no going back," he says. "Unless the academy embraces it, it's going to be left behind."