Designing Hypermedia for Learning

This most unusual book results from a NATO Advanced Research Workshop (ARW) held in Rottenburg am Neckar, FRG, in July 1989, within the new special programme on Advanced Educational Technology. The book is an annotated collection of papers defining hypermedia in several contexts and discussing how to design the information structure, the user interface and the learning model. Hypermedia development is compared with instructional design processes, and development assumptions and processes for different hypermedia environments are discussed. The book is more than a compilation of the papers presented at the workshop. It is a print-on-paper implementation of the workshop. The workshop included presentations, hardware demonstrations, sharing and browsing of hypertexts, and much discussion of a wide range of questions about hypertext. The authors and editors have tried in the format of this book to share some of the experiences of the workshop with the reader. Thus the book exhibits some of the characteristics of hypermedia.

This most unusual book results from the NATO Advanced Research Work- shop, "Designing Hypertext/Hypermedia for Learning," held in Rottenburg am Neckar, FRO, from July 3-8, 1989. The idea for the workshop resulted from the burgeoning interest in hypertext combined with the frustrating lack of literature on leaming applications for hypertext. There was little evidence in 1988 that hypertext could successfully support learning out- comes. A few projects were investigating hypertext for learning, but few conclusions were available and little if any advice on how to design hyper- text for learning applications was available. Could hypertext support learning objectives? What mental processing requirements are unique to learning outcomes? How would the processing requirements of learning outcomes interact with unique user processing requirements of browsing and constructing hypertext? Should hypertext information bases be restruc- tured to accommodate learning outcomes? Should the user interface be manipulated in order to support the task functionality of learning outcomes? Does the hypertext structure reflect the intellectual requirements of learning outcomes? What kinds of learning-oriented hypertext systems were being developed and what kinds of assumptions were these systems making? These and other questions demonstrated the need for this workshop. The workshop included presentations, hardware demonstrations, sharing and browsing of hypertexts, and much discussion about all of the above. These were the experiences that you, the reader of this book, unfortunately did not experience.

This unusual book results from a NATO ARW discussing design aspects of educational hypermedia environments: the information model, the user interface, the learning model, and the design process. The book itself was written and designed using hypermedia techniques.