Hyper-authoring for education: a qualitative evaluation

Abstract

The complexity involved in hypermedia authoring has lead to many different proposals of models, methodologies and systems. And this complexity can become even greater when the purpose is to develop applications for education. In this paper we describe a qualitative evaluation that analysed the processes involved in the authoring of hypermedia applications for education by interviewing both researchers and lecturers from the University of Southampton involved in the development of hypermedia. This study is part of a research project called SHAPE, the aim of which is to aid authors in the development of good quality large-scale applications for education. In the project, the quality characteristics considered are reusability of information, maintainability of applications and authoring effort. The results show that there is little point in trying to improve the authoring of hypermedia applications for education by proposing an authoring methodology. So, rather than trying to improve hypermedia authoring by proposing an authoring methodology, we decided to define hypermedia metrics to measure the quality characteristics of hypermedia applications and systems and to give the necessary feedback for the improvement of authoring.