An environment for learning through hypertext construction

Educational hypermedia systems provide a flexible style of accessing information and learning that is different from the strategies supported by traditional linear systems. In this paper, we propose that constructing a hypermedia homepage can be employed as a learning method. We first present a hypermedia courseware construction interface that provides the students a convenient authoring environment and supports effective recording and analysis functions behind the interface. The interface consists of three frames: a Knowledge Window, a Guidance Window, and a Content Window. It can be used under two authoring modes: Top-Down and Bottom-Up. According to the recorded information, we can understand how the hypermedia structures are constructed in a step-by-step manner, and consequently, how the authors transform their knowledge in their memories to hypermedia documents. The collected authoring patterns can be used for diagnosis and meta-cognition. Thus, these functions support an innovative approach for students to learn by building hypermedia, a type of constructive learning worth elaborate study. We designed instruction experiments based on the two authoring modes. We chose Natural Evolution as the learning topic and conducted a set of experiments. We defined three quantitative indicators to measure the structures and found their correlation to the authoring modes. We depict the results and give a brief discussion in this paper.