Hypermedia Technology Research Articles

Exquisite variety: computer as mirror to community

An approach is developed to building information systems whose purpose is to express (rather than regulate) the life of a community group. The story of a community group, as understood and told by its members, is taken as the basis for building a computer system which reflects the life of the community. Development of the system is seen as an open-ended process of discovery, collaboration and experiential learning. Engagement with the technology is understood as a ‘tactical’ practice on the part of the users. A fieldwork exercise conducted along these lines with one community group, in which the group used hypermedia technology to make a shared story, is described. Aspects of process and form in story making on a computer, in this project and more generally, are discussed.

Going Beyond the Code

New developments in multimedia and hypermedia technology have raised important questions for the conduct and dissemination of sociological research. Attention has traditionally focused on uses of new media for teaching, but their application to research is now also becoming clearer. There has been particular interest—although little practical work so far—on how ethnographers might use hypermedia in planning, design, analysis, and presentation of ethnographic work. This article offers findings from the authors’ current ESRC project, which examines the appropriateness of hypermedia for the production of ethnography. The theoretical and methodological implications for sociological knowledge of this new technology are discussed. The authors also address arguments about the potential for transforming the production of sociological knowledge through granting equal weight to the audio-visual plane of meaning as that given to the verbal and situate their discussion within debates over new forms of reading and authoring offered to sociology through electronic media.

Evolving open learning environments using hypermedia technology

Abstract A number of features of web‐based hypermedia are identified as providing a suitable medium for the design of open learning environments. The underlying object‐oriented architecture of hypermedia systems accords with the need for representational diversity of pedagogic mechanisms and the ongoing re‐construction that an evolutionary approach to the design of learning activity demands. A web‐based prototype has been constructed to represent aspects of the National English Board curriculum in diabetes mellitus. The design and development process tries to take account of features of the environment likely to influence or be influenced by the intervention. Quantitative and qualitative methods have been employed to enable an evaluation of the hypermedia design and its environment of use.

The application of interactive multimedia CD-ROM technology to wildland fire safety training

Interactive multimedia technology has been utilized in the development of a CD-ROM based wildland fire safety training course, Wildland Fire – Safety on the Fireline. Interactive multimedia technology allows delivery of training to a large number of students on a consistent basis. In addition, cost savings can be achieved through reduced learning time, reduced travel, minimal use of instructors, and most of all, through retention of knowledge as a result of using multimedia. The course, Wildland Fire – Safety on the Fireline, was developed and reviewed by a national team of specialists in wildland fire behavior and wildland fire safety with the intent of reducing and/or eliminating injuries and fatalities associated with the suppression of wildland fires. Wildland Fire – Safety on the Fireline focuses on due diligence, situational awareness, entrapment survival, health, equipment, and hazards encountered when working on the fireline. Each of the four sections comprising the course is followed by a board game test in preparation for a final test that is tracked by the computer. Key words: Canada, computer applications, fire behavior, fire entrapment avoidance, firefighter fatalities, firefighter physiology, fire suppression, fire survival, personal protective equipment, risk management, safe work practices, situational awareness, wildfire case studies, wildland firefighting, wildland-urban interface.

Developing a tobacco survey for deaf youth.

Formidable barriers hinder use of standard data collection methods among deaf youth. Culturally and linguistically sensitive data collection strategies are needed to identify the unmet health and programming needs of this population. Unfortunately, researchers often fail to describe the issues involved in developing such targeted methods. The authors describe development of a culturally appropriate data collection instrument for a study of tobacco-related knowledge, attitudes, and practices among deaf youth. The instrument uses interactive multimedia technology to administer a questionnaire translated into the primary languages used by the Deaf. The procedures taken to accommodate this technology to these languages and to Deaf culture are described. This process yielded useful insights with respect to data collection not only among the Deaf, but among other frequently overlooked and underserved populations as well.

Designing a Better Learning Environment with the Web: Problems and Prospects

The virtual university looms inevitably on the horizon, and Web-based education requires hypermedia technologies to be designed and implemented in a learner-centered fashion. To date, the technolog...

The button strikes back

This paper explores what has happened to hypermedia since the advent of the World Wide Web. We currently live in a world where access to the internet is dominated by Web browsers and search engines. The concept of hypermedia linking is at best added value and at worst almost irrelevant to most Web sites. But everyone who uses the Web is aware of the concept implicitly and accepts with ease the idea of clicking on a button to follow a link to another page. Search engines are the dominant means of finding information, but everyone is aware of their limitations. This is all set to change as we move into a world of pervasive computing and start to access the internet through small, hand-held devices. Agent technology will become the dominant means of building distributed information management systems. The paper argues that hypermedia technology will become more important in this world, although most users will be unaware of what software technology they are using as they navigate through global information spaces via highly personalised and adaptive environments.

Linguistic mechanism of hypermedia structure in multimedia electronic atlas

With hypermedia technology the structure of a publication can be re-arranged to accommodate more easy cognition of the idea and concept by linking the concepts which are represented by different media forms into an integrated concept. Essentially, multimedia electronic atlas is a kind of electronic publication, which has many common characters with ordinary CD-ROM publications. For the deeper exploration of electronic atlas it is very important to understand the internal and general structure of the new media structure. The aim of this paper is to discuss the internal structure of multimedia electronic atlas as a whole by applying the methodology of linguistics.

Integrating case-based reasoning and hypermedia documentation: an application for the diagnosis of a welding robot at Odense steel shipyard

Reliable and effective maintenance support is a vital consideration for the management within today’s manufacturing environment. This paper discusses the development of a maintenance system for the world’s largest robot welding facility. The development system combines a case-based reasoning approach for diagnosis with context information, as electronic on-line manuals, linked using open hypermedia technology. The work discussed in this paper delivers not only a maintenance system for the robot stations under consideration, but also a design framework for developing maintenance systems for other similar applications.

HypEs: an architecture for hypermedia-enabled expert systems

Expert systems and hypermedia constitute two important technologies for organizations to create, store, and manage information products. The purpose of our research is to develop an architectural blueprint for the construction of hypermedia-enabled expert systems. We propose an architecture termed HypEs ( Hypermedia-enabled Expert System) for the development of media-rich expert systems. The integration of hypermedia technologies and expert systems can provide significant potential benefits by enabling the storage and manipulation of non-textual knowledge, enhancing the effectiveness of both knowledge acquisition from the sources of expertise and knowledge transfer to non-expert users. An experimental analysis that contrasts the hypermedia-enabled and text-restricted expert systems provides results that underscore the usefulness of hypermedia techniques in enhancing the effectiveness of expert systems in practical applications.

Multimedia educational services in stereotactic radiotherapy

The computer-based learning methods in medicine have been well established as stand-alone learning systems. Recently, these systems were enriched with the use of telematics technology to provide distance learning capabilities. Stereotactic radiotherapy is one of the most representative advanced radiotherapy techniques. Due to the multidisciplinary character of the technique and the rapid evolution of technology implemented, the demands in training have increased. The potential of interactive multimedia and Internet technologies for the achievement of distance learning capabilities in this domain are investigated. The realization of a computer-based educational program in stereotactic radiotherapy in a multimedia format is a new application in the computer-aided distance learning field. The system is built according to a client and server architecture, based on the Internet infrastructure, and composed of server nodes. The impact of the system may be described in terms of: time and transportation costs saving, flexibility in training (scheduling, rate and subject selection), online communication and interaction with experts, cost effective access to material (delivery or access by a large number of users and revision of the material by avoiding high costs of computer-based training systems and database development).

Issues of data scalability in open hypermedia systems

One requirement placed on open hypermedia technology is the ability to support relationship management in large-scale information environments. We examine the issues of scalability encountered in supporting open hypermedia in a large-scale software development environment. The World Wide Web is discussed as an alternative approach to supporting relationship management in these environments and we identify reasons why open hypermedia is a superior approach. We also report on a research project where the Chimera open hypermedia system was used to support the relationship management needs of an industrial-scale development project of an aerospace organization. The results of this project supply insights to developers about the implications of supporting data scalability in open hypermedia systems. We conclude by evaluating the level of scalability achieved by our efforts and describe our future plans with respect to supporting additional orders of magnitude.

An Evaluation of the Use of Problem-Based Learning Software By Middle School Students

Research has shown the potential of a problem-based approach to enhance students' learning. The interactive nature of hypermedia technology and its ability to deliver information in different media formats can provide unique capabilities for implementing problem-based learning (PBL) environments. Yet, we know little about the types of tools that are effective in supporting students' learning in a hypermedia supported PBL environment. The purpose of this study was to investigate both the use of tools and design features in a piece of PBL software and their effectiveness on middle school students' learning. The findings of this study show that students who were exposed to the PBL environment increased their achievement scores from pre to posttest more than those students who learned the same content in the traditional classroom. Students' reading ability was found to be a better predictor for their achievement in PBL than their math ability. However, the brief treatment of the study had only limited impact on students' attitude toward learning science. The findings of the study and their implications are discussed in detail.

Interactive multimedia: from couch potato to nerd?

The viewing figure of 2 billion people who watched the funeral of Diana, Princess of Wales, on TV indicates that the potential market for interactive multimedia services is many times the 60 million or so people who surf the Internet from PCs. However, the various technologies of multimedia are not always easy to use, may not be interoperable or even stable, and, perhaps like telephony over the Internet, can even challenge a computer nerd. Does industry expect a population of couch potatoes to turn into nerds? Surely not. Without total system design at the national level the ease of interoperability needed for early take-up of interactive multimedia technology in health and education may not be achieved.

Modelling User Navigation Behaviours in a Hypermedia-Based Learning System: An Individual Differences Approach

The rapid evolution of hypermedia technology makes it possible to access an immense volume of information in an educational setting, This research examines the relationship between individual differences (in particular, cognitive styles) and navigation strategies using a WWW-based hypermedia learning system. The hypermedia learning system was used at Sheffield University's Department of Information Studies. Twenty Masters students were pre-tested for their cognitive styles. Dependent variables included navigation patterns, selection of navigation tools, and reactions to the hypermedia system. The results indicated that students with differing cognitive styles and individual characteristics selected different access facilities and applied different navigation patterns. The implication of these findings and the role of individual differences in designing hypermedia-based learning systems are discussed.

Hypermedia as an Educational Technology: A Review of the Quantitative Research Literature on Learner Comprehension, Control, and Style

By virtue of its enabling rapid, nonlinear access to multiple forms of information, hypermedia technology is considered a major advance in the development of educational tools to enhance learning, and a massive literature on the use of hypermedia in education has emerged. The present review examines the published findings from experimental studies of hypermedia emphasizing quantitative, empirical methods of assessing learning outcomes. Specifically, the review categorizes this research into three themes: studies of learner comprehension compared across hypermedia and other media, effects on learning outcome offered by increased learner control in hypermedia environments, and the individual differences that exist in learner responses to hypermedia. It is concluded that, to date, the benefits of hypermedia in education are limited to learning tasks reliant on repeated manipulation and searching of information and are differentially distributed across learners depending on their ability and preferred learning style. Methodological and analytical shortcomings of the literature limit the generalizability of all findings in this domain. Suggestions for addressing these problems in future research and theory development are outlined.

The Effect of Hypermedia Authoring on Elementary School Students' Creative Thinking

Promoting creative thinking in children has been an issue of critical importance to educators. Research shows that appropriate uses of computer programs such as word processing, computer imaging, and Logo programming have the potential to enhance children's creativity. Little is known, however, about the impact of hypermedia technology on children's creative thinking. This study examined whether engaging elementary school students in hypermedia authoring would promote their creative thinking. It was found that after engaging in an extended period of hypermedia authoring, the fourth graders increased their creativity scores in a number of areas. The low and intermediate ability students appeared to benefit from the hypermedia authoring environment more than the high ability students and working collaboratively on the hypermedia authoring projects enabled students to demonstrate higher creativity scores than when working individually. The findings are consistent with research on hypermedia and creativity with Logo in showing that by offering a new dimension for expressing thoughts and encouraging novel ways of presentation, hypermedia authoring is another way to facilitate children's cognitive development and promote their motivation toward learning.

A hypermedia version control framework

The areas of application of hypermedia technology, combined with the capabilities that hypermedia provides for manipulating structure, create an environment in which version control is very important. A hypermedia version control framework has been designed to specifically address the version control problem in open hypermedia environments. One of the primary distinctions of the framework is the partitioning of hypermedia version control functionality into intrinsic and application-specific categories. The version control has been used as a model for the design of version control services for a hyperbase management system that provides complete version support for both data and structural entities. In addition to serving as a version control model for open hypermedia environments, the framework offers a clarifying and unifying context in which to examine the issues of version control in hypermedia.

Distance learning in mammographic digital image processing.

The potential of interactive multimedia and Internet technologies is investigated with respect to the implementation of a distance learning system in medical imaging. The system is built according to a client-server architecture, based on the Internet infrastructure, composed of server nodes conceptually modelled as World Wide Web (WWW) sites. Sites are implemented by integration and customization of available components. The system evolves around network-delivered interactive multimedia courses and network-based tutoring, which constitute its main learning features. This potential has been demonstrated by means of an implemented system, validated with digital image processing content, specifically image enhancement. Image enhancement methods are theoretically described and applied on mammograms. Emphasis is given in the interactive presentation of the effects of algorithm parameters on images. The system end-user access depends on available bandwidth, so high speed access can be achieved via LAN or local ISDN connections.

A network-based training environment: a medical image processing paradigm.

The capability of interactive multimedia and Internet technologies is investigated with respect to the implementation of a distance learning environment. The system is built according to a client-server architecture, based on the Internet infrastructure, composed of server nodes conceptually modelled as WWW sites. Sites are implemented by customization of available components. The environment integrates network-delivered interactive multimedia courses, network-based tutoring, SIG support, information databases of professional interest, as well as course and tutoring management. This capability has been demonstrated by means of an implemented system, validated with digital image processing content, specifically image enhancement. Image enhancement methods are theoretically described and applied to mammograms. Emphasis is given to the interactive presentation of the effects of algorithm parameters on images. The system end-user access depends on available bandwidth, so high-speed access can be achieved via LAN or local ISDN connections. Network based training offers new means of improved access and sharing of learning resources and expertise, as promising supplements in training.