142 Int. J. Cont. Engineering Education and Lifelong Learning, Vol. 10, Nos. 1–4, 2000 Four stages in designing educational hypermedia Piet Kommers University of Twente, Educational Science and Technology, Department of Instrumentation, PO Box 217, 7500 AE Enschede, The Netherlands E-mail: kommers@edte.utwente.nl Abstract: The design of educational hypermedia is often seen as a process of gradually progressing from content into interaction design. In the final shaping of the hyperlinks, menus and orientation pages, too many decisions are normally made at the same time. This article presents a four-stage design process that gives more attention to the conceptual and metaphoric aspects to be covered. Schematic representations are proposed as the main devices to validate design steps. A repertoire of concept mapping tools is discussed. The full sequence of conceptual, metaphoric, structural and navigational design is finally integrated as a scaffolding method for project teams in hypermedia developing projects. The conceptual exploration method was applied and evaluated in the 1977 Summer School of Nova University at Lauderdale, Florida. Keywords: Conceptual design; metaphoric design; hypermedia; navigation. Reference to this paper should be made as follows: Kommers. P. (2000) ‘Four stages in designing educational hypermedia’, Int. J. Continuing Engineering Education and Lifelong Learning, Vol. 10, Nos. 1–4, pp.142–166. Biographical notes: Dr. Piet Kommers is Assistant Professor at the University of Twente in the Netherlands. He specializes in media studies for educational and communicative settings: Hypermedia, multimedia, concept mapping and video conferencing for tele-learning. He is currently exploring the prospects of virtual reality for constructivistic learning; VR as conceptual space for navigation through epitomes of known and unknown topics. He has been a visiting professor at East China Normal University at Shanghai, Glushkov Institute for Cybernetics at Kiev, Colorado University at Denver, Amman University in Jordan, and NOVA University in Florida. He has coordinated and edited several books on Educational Technology: Hypermedia in Instruction, Eastern European Media Studies, Telematics, Document Management for Hypermedia Design, and Virtual Reality. 1 Introduction Education, training and lifelong learning are increasingly adopting multimedia technology in order to scaffold courses. One position is that schools will finally need professionally designed resources on CD-ROM or via the WWW, just as the book-culture has never come to this sophisticated stage compared to teachers’ handwriting. Copyright © 2000 Inderscience Enterprises Ltd. Four stages in designing educational hypermedia 143 The other position is that learners need more fresh and vivid interaction with costudents, experts and teachers; ready-made information products soon become obsolete, and thus need to be ‘living documents’ updated each time reality progresses. An easy answer to this is ‘Yes, we need both’. And indeed this has been the case in many fields. Take for instance the audio recorder; the video recorder has not supplanted it. So too the bike; whole crowds cycle whilst they also have cars etc. The ‘Iterative Development Model’ as described in the previous article by Bob Appelman, gives the course outline as given in the 1997 NOVA University Summer School at Lauderdale. Its crucial factor was that all students had one week of full-time workshops, using media such as computers, the web, cameras, scanners etc. in order to make a real multimedia product, and apply theoretical guidelines from foregoing courses on instructional design, curriculum theory etc. In other words, the course from which the next articles display their offspring demanded a high level of ‘integration’, ‘intuition’ and ‘creativity’. Bob Appelman and I were placed in the role of methodology prophet, communication facilitator and media consultant. The group process among students was vital. In this article you will find the four subsequent design stages which should always appear during media design projects to a certain extent. The rich descriptions of their outcomes later in this journal will show you what types of goals, methods and products come up in such a kind of provisional project, and may predict what you or your team can achieve towards a similar ambition. Information systems and, of course, the WWW take an ever more important role in communication among partners in the learning process. In parallel to the mere communication media we also see here that mass media give way to the more individual media: Instead of Broadcasting, Web- and Narrow casting are the dominant ways to share information and opinions. It goes even beyond that: Students are no longer merely the consumers of information, they become members of a learning community, both receiving, producing and negotiating topics and complex problems. It is this change in didactic paradigms that have played a crucial role during the Lauderdale workshop. • The initial idea that educational hypermedia are deliverables, to be accessed and studied by students has proven to be a naïve one; hypermedia has been shown to be a format to express and articulate ideas by experts and students themselves. The role of the teacher rather becomes one of arranger, group manager and facilitator. • Another paradigm shift is the one from objectivism into constructivism: Learning means not only ‘grasping reality’ but also to ‘create new realities’. ‘Instruction’ becomes ‘exploring hypotheses’ and building upon subjective perceptions of the more complex phenomena like ethical and societal issues. The quality of the students’ orientation and the discipline of argument are the more crucial factor instead of finally having a well-defined set of factual retained knowledge. • Students need each other, not only in order to learn to communicate, but also to benefit from communication as a learning method. Not famous enough is the work of Lev Vygotsky [1], who already in the thirties made explicit that language and social interaction precede cognitive (and thus intellectual) capacities. Crucial in a hyper- /multimedia design project is the reorientation into the pedagogic and didactic premises. Also the more natural ideas of what and how to teach may be called into question; the new media elicit their own ways of coping with mental tasks like 144 P. Kommers learning, communication and collaborative group work. This was the main reason the students were invited to go through an extensive conceptual stage. In the period of idea selection and implementation it proved to have been a lucky approach; ideas that seemed perfectly valid and opportune, sometimes became pale and just symptoms of underlying dilemmas or social compromises. In summary: the problem of perception and problem restructuring is not just an epiphenomenum; it is the fundamental analytic, stage to be fully undertaken before consolidating it into so-called ‘specifications’. An even more fundamental challenge is to accept the ever more important position of the World Wide Web. CD-ROMS are great as its predecessors; but are a severe limitation when it comes to logistic fluency, update frequency etc. Also the mass media (fitting into the broadcasting metaphor) are steadily making room for the more tuned (interactive) media. The multitude of interpersonal communication is also expressed in the diversity of media and media architectures. Single media can hardly survive without being part of a media mix. The ‘user’ is no longer only a recipient or ‘consumer’. Users become more and more ‘players’ on the media stage. They select, interpret, reconfigure and exploit the potential of news and play a role in disseminating it through the many peer groups, special interest groups etc. So propagation is no longer a question of one single shot; it is the resonance of the message through the many circles to which a person belongs. The new media also allow a quick change between broad-, narrow- and web casting. This article will explain the various methods that play a role in hypermedia design. However the media are not a goal in themselves. They aim at supporting ambitious teachers and curriculum designers in their plans to raise highly interactive learning environments. One of the more complex dilemmas for educational media design is the question of rhetoric: The clearer the message and the more persuasive, the more students become submissive and indolent instead of active and creative. This very mechanism has been signalled many times in the field of social psychology. In order to avoid this effect, it is necessary that designers make the best possible analysis of hidden facets in the psychology of the learner. Provocation of the students’ imagination seems to be one of the key factors in escaping from this dilemma. Figure 1 The 16th century ‘book mill’ in order to address specific text fragments precisely and quickly, was used to compare bible translations Four stages in designing educational hypermedia 145 One of the key questions with which we tend to struggle with is how the interaction between the medium and the user can contribute to learning effects. Typical for hypermedia is that the user him/herself guides the presentation of information. The more traditional instruction paradigms regard optimal learning as a process of ‘guided display’. Here we see a confrontation between the instructional and the learning perspective. The instructional one would say that better instruction is needed to compensate for a weak learning attitude. The learning perspective would say that learners should be trained to become less dependent on the environment. Typical for hypermedia is the second perspective: It elicits progress decisions from the learner all the time. The control is not only to choose between ‘forwards’ and ‘backwards’; sideways excursions (so to speak) are also opened. It allows a modal reader to follow the default sequence. However, it also encourages requests for specific phenomena, reasoning chains or temporal order. After an excursion it is desirable to arrive back home. So is the user of hypermedia. After clicking one of the hotspots you land on one of the sidetracks, hoping to find what the hotspot suggested. Also the new information provides new hotspots which again draw your attention and seduce you to browse further away from your initial interest. It is similar to floundering through an unfamiliar town; the unknown attracts, but at the same time you always want to be sure you can return quickly to your point of departure. The designer of such a ‘hyperspace’ is responsible for the balance between the momentary impulse to escape from the more systematic lines and the need for a disciplined tour in order to create a valid overview. What is the benefit of freedom in a hypermedia network? In contrast to linear media, hypermedia offers optimal freedom to the user. In itself it looks attractive; freedom of choice goes together with individuality, personality and autonomy. The question however if students, who are under the regime of finally being tested for reproduction, really appreciate this kind of freedom in navigation. 2 Communication in the learning community The media seem to play an ever more important role among citizens and hence also in the situation of learning. At the same time, the media are most effective, as they are submissive to the communication partners. Media prophets have claimed that the versatility of the WWW will lead to a more democratic life: less central control and fewer barriers to publishing and gaining attention for new ideas. Does the same prediction hold for educational media? Is seems so; access to new and highly specific information has become easier. However the web is not the sole medium yet. Also, the choice of medium is not the only factor in its success. It became clear in the Lauderdale workshop that good solutions are often hybrids of various technologies. So are educational media. The WWW, the CDROM, the brochure and book, and the radio; they are only elements in a media project. Media are not only carriers of content information. They always go together with certain dramatic effects, emotions and questions if certain more traditional carriers are supplanted. So were the presentations of the team projects at the end of this week. They clearly showed that information in itself is only a tiny element in learning experiences. Drama, humour and intrigues seem to be indispensable ingredients for the necessary mental chemistry, normally named: ‘Being involved in the game, drama or adventure’. 146 P. Kommers So, communication in its more complete meaning is needed before learning happens. Media are just the packaging just as the manufacturer chooses the type of box dependant on the place where the customer lives. At the same time however we see the need to wrap learning resources in attractive boxes, since they should be pleasing to the eye of the customer while they wait on the shelves. There is no doubt that the new media 50 years ago radically influenced society and hence human communication. Think about the impact of the TV and telephone on everyday life. It is good to be aware however, that the soap series has had maybe an even bigger influence compared to the television as an apparatus itself. Just as the car has changed the way we shop, eat and socialize in the evenings and the weekends, so hypermedia in itself may not be the essential thing. It is the revolution in thinking about learning, entertainment and involvement that finally makes the difference. The more fascinating process nowadays is the integration of media that were separate before; the TV, the computer and the telephone will soon appear together in one new integrated medium. It will act as the window in the living room. Media after this enormous convergence process will change the user from the consumer into a player. Expository characters who speak to us for long periods will be felt to be offensive, authoritarian and doctrinaire. Games that challenge you, and bring you in contact with opponents at a similar achievement level, will be the next decade’s metaphor for effective learning. The question remains how educationalists can accommodate and comply with these new interaction modes. Should they forget about traditional ways of explaining, or should we try to make a continuous attempt to assimilate the new methods into everyday classroom practice? This was one of the pervasive questions during the Lauderdale Summer school. A new branch on the communication media tree is ‘Virtual Reality’. It not only allows the user to visit three-dimensional spaces and objects, VR also allows you to meet other visitors (called avatars) who manifest themselves in a different outlook compared to meeting them on the street. In VR it is essentially possible to represent yourself via a video-grabbed body. More promising is the technology to generate body language and mimic based on meaningful vectors. The new Disney movies have generated facial expressions based on emotional attributes to be reflected. It is rather unclear at the moment how avatars will finally penetrate learning environments and which roles they can effectively play for the learner. Also the learner may learn a significant amount from playing a prominent role in, for instance, a VR site for ‘peace negotiations’ once (s)he takes the role of, for instance, Kofi Anan or Yasser Arafat. The arguments from pedagogy to allow students to ‘be themselves’ is congruent with the more ideological premises such as, for instance, those of the ‘temporarily autonomous zone’. A new branch of educational media is the family of Virtual Reality, which not only allows visits to three-dimensional spaces; it also allows the meeting of other persons in the shape of cartoon-like figures: avatars. An avatar has characteristic motorics, intonation and a character. MUDs and MOOs are environments in which several users can survive, leave messages behind, arrange contacts between others and play a role in the establishment of behavioural rules; a new community is founded, in which ideological values emerge. Some of them even refer in this context to a ‘temporal autonomous zone’ similar to the time of the large pop festivals. The future will teach us if the web is allowing individuals to bring ideas to the larger public, despite publishers, governments and public organizations. To be honest, the pioneers of web democracy Four stages in designing educational hypermedia 147 have become pessimistic about this in the meanwhile. It is important to see that media do not simply ‘mirror’ the communication culture at that moment; they also cause it. The members of the ‘Toronto School’ with names like McLuhan, Havelock, Ong and De Kerckhove are convinced that media are not neutral means to transfer and deliver information. No, they decide upon our perception and consciousness and even decide upon our ways of reacting. The weekly column, the TV debate, the soap series and reality TV, they all contribute to collective awareness. 2.1 The new media and postmodern identity Both through the increase in travel and the explosion in communicative media, there is an ongoing trend to get individuals involved in many diverse situations. In former times it was the physical areas that restricted your social horizon. Since the arrival of ‘Cyberspace’ and the explosion in communicative media, there has been an ongoing tendency to bring many people into (virtual) contact. Seeing the entire world on your TV, but also making virtual tours via the internet to your next holiday destination, participating in work sessions with your colleagues in the Middle East and supervising students during their internship in the US. Fragmentation is the process of a snapshot without preamble and a gradual detachment of your actual social context. A complete immersion in a (remote) guest address would quickly lead to a multiple identity. Fragmentation can be seen as a method to prevent a threatening identity split. By only concentrating on some specific aspects of your communication partner, you have only quite a limited view on them, but it also makes it easier to maintain personal opinions and lifestyle. The many windows that are in front of our eyes already tell us the challenge of an average work place. If on top of that colleagues from abroad appear in these windows, then you may expect a change in lifestyle and social perception. Typical for the postindustrial era is the tendency to behave on the large Internet originally and authentically and get rid of one’s stigma. The citizen in cyberspace tends to reach a synthesis between personality and ideology. The threat of a multiple personality forces the inhabitant of virtual realities into an almost exaggerated articulation of his/her personality. The search for stability is a natural reflex for the ‘homo zappens’ who is teased by digression. 2.2 From linear via hypertext and hypermedia into multimedia The inventors of hypertext have made the first step from text into multimedia. They introduced the idea to cut text into small but still meaningful fragments and moreover, to make links between the fragments. As each text fragment again refers to further texts, a huge network of relationships and nodes evolves. The overkill of text is finally called ‘hyper’ text: too much text. 148 Figure 2 P. Kommers Hypertext and hypermedia as members and submembers of the multimedia family Multimedia Hypermedia Hypertext In addition to text, as soon as besides text also pictures, animations, video, audio and complete interactive programs were also embedded, hypertext changed into hypermedia. Hypermedia equals multimedia hypertext. Multimedia encompasses everything that is currently possible with computers. Crucial is that it should contain several modalities of information. It is also characteristic that the user can perform ever more diverse interactions; you may query both typed and spoken phrases. Also, as of recently, eye tracking can be used to indicate your further needs. In addition, the system’s reactions are multi modal. The modern mouse expresses in its friction or via vibrations when an action needs resistance in physical space. Three-dimensional images on the screen, the wall or in your goggle suggest that you are really in another environment. Three-dimensional sound is essential; while walking through a virtual reality, the direction, the amplitude and the pitch of the sound change. Also the contours of the sound (extreme high and low frequencies) become clearer if you approach its source. What is the importance of realistic information such as in multimedia or virtual reality? The proponents claim that reality is essential in order to penetrate our perception and memory. Some even claim that computers have changed from a storyboard into a window through which we can see the real world. Once outside in the real world we miss these views and the real world even becomes boring. Van Doorn & Room [2] quote as follows: “……..Perception psychologist Gibson [3,4] asserts that our senses have been construed in order to cope with complex streams of information in natural environments and that our perception organs have not been specialized for simple stimuli. Our visual system would have been developed in order to cope with continuous streams of changing information instead of static images. This would plead for recording dynamic data like moving pictures and sound. Faber et. al [5] found that moving images are most effective in learning conditions in which spatial or dynamic properties of complex movements have to be learned. They also found that learning with moving images is perceived to be easier and more attractive compared to learning without them. These results confirm the idea that multimedia with well-proportioned audio-visual ingredients can lead to improved information and knowledge transfer and to an increased attraction, which finally leads to a better learning attitude and motivation”. Story telling, gesture language, music and later also drama, ballet and movies have been the basis of our methods to convey meaning and emotion, understanding and intriguing. It would seem that they are the most appropriate ways to articulate emotion and Four stages in designing educational hypermedia 149 experiences. The display of what you can see does not need to be the same as your visual impression. It may empower, delete or stylize. We always need episodic lines to take away ambiguity. The story prompts interpretation and attempts to make strange things understandable. A crucial difference between the story and the image is that the latter leaves the recipient free in the spread of attention; where you look first, how long, and in which sequence. Hypermedia are an attempt to give control to the receiver of linear information. It is also true that a book leaves control to the reader. Successful readers select carefully what to read and what to skip, except that the author did his best to make the story understandable for those who read from the beginning to the end. Jumping into a linear text endangers coherence, increases the risk of fragmentation and does not necessarily convince the reader. Hypermedia are inherently tuned to provide the reader with optimal freedom. The links between keywords have been selected with care. The author asks himself: Where would the reader prefer to leave my rhetoric and why? At which places should I refer back to the core arguments? Is it wise to construct a kind of roundabout so that readers do not need to return to previously visited fragments? Etc. 2.3 Public information systems A simple definition of ‘public’ is: the collection of all those persons who are potentially interested in your message plus those who you would like to address yourself. In many cases the potential audience is so large that we had better refer to ‘public segments’. A public segment has in common that it has a common location, newspaper or listens to the radio at the same time of day. Also it is often the case that such a group has a similar sensitivity to kinds of messages or modalities of messages. For instance, employees who arrive by bike in the morning have in common that they have a strong preference to reduce the unnecessary use of cars. They will hence be sensitive to arguments not to enlarge the parking lots around the campus, etc. Targeting public segments is the same for the public at large, when it comes to education or campaigns. Authorities know how reach their voters most efficiently. Also they know how to reach the public with a restricted budget. It is well known to propagation officers that diverse public segments need to be addressed with different media. The use of various media simultaneously is also called: the media mix. Media amalgams do not necessarily imply weakness; on the contrary, the broadcasting metaphor has generally given space to narrow casting and more in particular to web casting. The request for interactive systems is the loudest where users feel little commitment to the initiator. Authorities may formally represent society, but this is often not recognized sufficiently. The anonymity of offices and formal transactions desperately need compensation. The term ‘education’ and ‘civil information services’ ask for communication concepts. Information kiosks for instance only deliver factual information. The concept of ‘information delivery’ is poor and no longer adequate to convey ethical and ideological campaigns. They need more dramatic carriers with emotion and a personal touch. The same is true for the design of the educational systems we eagerly adopt in the CD-ROM and WWW era. 150 3 P. Kommers Designing hypermedia In order to design hypermedia with a specific communicative effect we need a stepwise design cascade. It does not mean that we do not need the anarchy of creative moments; only that creative ideas need to be consolidated in formal decisions, statements and documents. Hypermedia projects involve teams. Documents then support the communication between team members or even generations of the team. I will highlight here four stages in the hypermedia design process. Ideally they should be performed sequentially, without backtracking or iterations. In some cases, however, it may appear that the view on the global approach from the conceptual stage is less adequate. Of course, in that case, no hesitation should be felt, and you should go back in order to repair an early misconception without delay. Figure 3 Four stages in hypermedia design Conceptual Design Metaphoric Design Structural Design Navigational Design Conceptual Design is about the imagination of the ideal product. The clarification and identification of the target group is one of its components. It is possible however that at a later stage one perceives that the chosen concept is not adequate at all. It is even possible that one sees only at the end that the conceptual choices have to be revised. ‘Concept’ has to do with the generation of good ideas, the subsequent selection of the best ideas and their implementation. In the world of advertising it is the ‘art director’ who develops the concept. The graphic designers shape and visualize the concept by sketching, macquettes, test runs and mock-ups when the concept is about interactive programs. In short: There is a need for rapid prototyping and immediate empirical testing if the concept is as good as it looked during its inception. Often a concept proves to be disappointing and a new conceptual round will be started. Only if the principal agrees with the concept, can the phase of ‘structural design’ be started. You could say that from now the architectural phase begins. The bigger components of the program become manifest through logical analysis. If software programs are concerned, flow charts and structure diagrams give an answer as to which mechanisms (algorithms) and data structures are needed. Programs need to respond to their users. The structure of a program does not entirely predict how it will present itself to the user. ‘Structure’ in this design stage means ‘internal’ structure. Navigation concerns the control of the user upon the program’s behaviour. Characteristic for hypermedia is their optimal freedom for the user, as stated before. However, by displaying a set of selection choices, the programs has implicit control and even a coaching role. In advertising campaigns it is important to guide the user’s attention in quite a subtle way. The same is true for learning programs, as students do not like to be regulated. However there are laws that predict how and when our senses are triggered. Shapes, Four stages in designing educational hypermedia 151 colour and language define the emotional fundamental for certain reactions from the user. Also we will see further how the links decide upon the probability that certain information will be visited. During the entire design process it is of continuous priority to focus upon the product to be made. This means that it is of importance to know already if a certain hypermedia program should be installed in a hospital’s waiting room, a school, the living room or in an anonymous place on the WWW. The information itself might be identical; the social setting decides if and how the user will ‘surrender’ for the message to be transmitted. During the entire design process, the awareness of the target context is of prime importance; both situational and psychological variables play a crucial role. The designer should precisely know and feel the intended setting; If (s)he does not have this experience naturally, it is best to go and live there for some time. 3.1 Conceptual design The research into conceptual design tools addresses the procedures, methods and software tools for the explicit representation of conceptual schemes. These are diagrammatic and more expressive drawings that mimic one’s rational but mainly one’s more intuitive and emotional ideas. In fact the goal goes beyond the precise display of one’s ideas; it should preferably articulate one’s ideas in order to negotiate them with team members. One could call them ‘communicative resources’. Concept mapping facilitates the elements of content while Mind Mapping elicits the more subtle emotional thoughts/feelings. Mind Mapping as a method stimulates the designer to take a personal attitude towards the design topic. You could even assert that Mind Mapping derives its power from identifying yourself with the program to be designed: You immerse yourself in the theme and its appearance. Figure 4 Elementary analysis of the making of cheese milk whey curdling rennet pressing curds cheese Currently there is an entire spectrum of ‘conceptual support tools’ which claim to address profoundly the mental process by the designer. However it is good to distinguish between schematizing and ‘structured content analysis’ versus mapping the more personal associations. In order to contrast clearly the difference between both, let us look at the concept map first. Here it concerns the production of cheese. The analysis is at the halfway stage; the stages and part products have been identified, but the process 152 P. Kommers mechanism is still left open. This more procedural assignment can be added later by labelling the links and defining its direction. Here, an analytical approach has been chosen. The criterion is to find objective elements that always occur in the reality domain, with little personal perception. One could also say that it attempts to find the undisputed core of expert knowledge. In order to transfer opinions, feelings and moral values, such a diagram is just the first step. It is not wrong to start media design with an overview of factual information; however it is not sufficient at all. A famous saying here is: ‘Paralysis by Analysis’, which means: ‘Mind you, don’t go too early into details; try first to get an overview of the global structure of a subject. An untimely return from navigational into conceptual design is one of the escapes from the paralysis effect. Backtracking into the concept stage elevates you above the details, providing you with a better overall picture’. Famous creativity gurus in the tradition of Edward de Bono, like Van Gundy [6] and Buzan [7] essentially build upon the conviction that creativity is helped by flexibility and the making of connections between notions that normally do not go together. From this point of view it is recommend that techniques are applied, such as, brainstorming, during the conceptual design stage. Also remaining in unfamiliar environments stimulates the generation of new ideas. Do not forget that besides the generation, the selection and implementation of ideas is also needed. Let us first look at an example of Brain Mapping, in this case concerning the elements that play a role during the elections for Parliament. Figure 5 Factors that play a role in the elections of members of the Dutch Parliament Source: Lanzing [8] Four stages in designing educational hypermedia 153 The power of visualizing a mental framework is that it creates a mental space. Graphical expression plays a crucial role: What should be placed in the centre? How large should it be displayed? How strong are the associations? Which icons should I use? Etc. Also the colour and character of the lines in order to express sensations and beliefs need to be considered. It is not only important to express evidence. In particular expressing the elements with doubt or pertinent ignorance may be indicated. You could say that the Mind Map (See [9]) becomes a first exploration of the topic ‘elections’. Its goal is to activate prior knowledge and latent ideas. It does not pretend to be ‘complete’ or ‘correct’. This will arrive at a later stage. ‘Inspiration’ is one of the more robust and generally available programs which allows Concept Mapping. It enables you to consolidate ideas during and right after a brain storming process and share with team mates. In order to avoid misconceptions, a concept map is not the same as a flow chart. Figure 6 Flow chart with the actions and decisions during the operation of a chip card machine. Source: Lanzing [8] In contrast to the flow chart, the concept map displays the momentary thoughts of a person. Of course our thoughts may go back to the stepwise procedure as in the flow chart above, however, they do not often emerge if we think about non-algorithmic procedures like persuasive communication or the more ideational domains as in many teaching programs. The mechanism of ‘divide and concur’ is dominant during flowcharting. Concept mapping demands a less rigid discipline. Concept mapping preferably evolves during brainstorming sessions. The screen dump below demonstrates that it is relatively easy to adapt concept icons in terms of shape, locations and links with surrounding spheres. Choosing graphical attributes underlines the process of articulation by the designer. The central and more peripheral aspects become ever clearer. In teams, the members can work simultaneously at a concept map, particularly if it is drawn on an A2 or A1 sized sheet. In the case where the members significantly agree upon the conceptual basis, it is more productive first to let each complete his/her own individual concept map, followed by an attempt to reconcile the differences at a later stage. The concept map then acts as a tool to make partners aware of underlying differences in opinion. Do not only defend your own choices, try to make a superordinate concept map in which two or three perspectives are unified. 154 Figure 7 P. Kommers Example of a Concept Map with the program ‘Inspiration’ Inspiration is one of those programs. Though initially meant solely as a Concept Mapping program, it has gradually been accepted as a Mind-Mapping program, due to its extensive graphical possibilities as described by T. Buzan. Figure 8 Sefiroth: The Knowledge Tree as Ritual Thought Scheme Four stages in designing educational hypermedia 155 Concept maps as a format and method for generating ideas, stem from old rituals to build up thought schemes. One of the better known is the Sifiroth knowledge tree, stemming from the 13th century. The leaves (rather: nodes) contain concepts like Power, King, Passion etc. The branches (rather ‘links’) represent thought transitions. You may even assert that this representational paradigm presupposes that human thoughts arise during the transitions between concepts. Figure 9 Goals of Concept Mapping Controllability Small text fragment Concept Mapping Can it serve as ‘ paper memory?’ Se arch quickly for i nformation N on-linear Vi sualization N etwork representation Way of working Correctness? Adequate to specify complex relations? Scanning Al ternative representation Offers new view on information Useful repetition or reformulation Stimulates the h uman memory R esemblance to a ssociative structures Adequate for knowledge d iagnosis Stimulates brainstorming C an be used for knowledge assessment Source: J.W.A. Lanzing (1998) [9] Mind mapping is the freest and most expressive method in the family of conceptual tools; it places one’s central concerns in the centre. The I: One’s goal in life, one’s main concern at that moment etc. This allows making ever wider circles around this centre with the more subtle and subordinate concerns: New or unknown thoughts, facts from history etc. One could say that the centre of the mind map is the launching base from which new ideas are projected. The mind mapping method stimulates in interrelationship between the new and the more familiar ideas, in order to get a more solid and robust structure. 156 P. Kommers In contrast to mind mapping is concept mapping (as depicted in Figure 9 above), which inherently stimulates the user to distinguish several types of relationships, and concept classes and cluster and order them from central to peripheral. Figure 10 Concept map in TextVision, displaying centrality based on the number of outgoing links As the level of detail and the granularity of a concept map increases, it becomes possible to let the computer give a return on the created structure: Centrality, causal/temporal chains, hierarchical subsets with inheritance, reasoning chains etc. can be evaluated [8]. In the research of Dr Jan Lanzing it was found that the cognitive style of the user had an impact on the types of network structures that were created: Serialists tend to make tree structures while holists make cyclical webs, in which there are no clear hierarchies [10]. Four stages in designing educational hypermedia 157 Figure 11 Three-dimensional concept map on the relationships between kinds of popular music The 3D-concept map above is a snap shot of one’s mental exploration of how the developments in popular music, jazz and rock ‘n’ roll are related. The depth dimension (Z-axis) is used to express the level of attention. Indeed concepts located in the background get less attention. The shadows of the concept nodes on the tile floor can be dragged (both on the X- and the Z-axis). This allows the creation of spatial structures quite smoothly, without the need to rotate the evolving structures every time. In contrast to the 2D version of TextVision, here the size of the nodes is no longer an expression of the centrality of the node, it simply reflects the distance to the spectator. Centrality here is expressed in the colour of the nodes and their outgoing relationships. Red is used to signify a high degree of centrality, while at the other end of the continuum, blue corresponds to a peripheral position. Also the centrality is assessed here by graph computation. Another important application of concept maps is the navigation through hypermedia networks. The nodes represent the information elements to be accessed, such as, for instance, the web pages during browsing on the Internet. The links represent the transitions to the topics to be visited. The effect of this additional browsing map is that the user can now anticipate the consequence of taking a certain direction. The effect of conceptual support for learning and designing will initially be ‘reflection’ and ‘metacognitive’. In the longer run, users will build up their personal trails on the web and build their own ‘brainweb’ functioning as an external long-term memory. Natrificial Software Technologies can already see a magnificent example of this. The program can be found at http://www.thebrain.com/. 158 P. Kommers ‘The Brain’ allows you gradually to build up your own perspective and express it in a subject matter diagram. References to your own documents, web pages and files on your own Intranet are transparent; you will not be bothered by technical details. The new generation of web-based concept mapping tools can help you in mapping ‘agents’ who search the internet for you. ‘Agents’ or ‘search engines’ can trace the WWW based upon one’s brainweb, and try to find missing and highly interesting descriptions. Finally it is up to the designer to decide if the retrieved information and its embedding in the concept map really reflects his/her image of the prior knowledge and its way of thinking. 3.2 Metaphoric design The envisaging of all possible aspects of a communicative hypermedia program is the first step to be sure that you do not overlook important factors. After the conceptual stage we are concerned with the question of which ‘personality’ or ‘model’ the hypermedia program should have in order to present itself to the user. The ‘normal’ conversation between individuals seems a natural modality for the interaction between the system and its user. It implies however that the program should manifest a certain dialogue quality that is similar to a human partner. Alternatively, the program could arrange a real-time contact between another person that we know as video conferencing. The first alternative is still virtually impossible. The second is technically possible, apart from the complexity of finding the right moments for synchronous communication. Time resource is becoming more and more the critical factor for persons in communication space. However as we see in the fast propagation of call centres, kiosks and electronic databases, there is an ever growing need for just-in-time learning, which forces users to accept the book shelf metaphor in which the document and the database are the dominant model. Communication here is reduced to ‘searching information’. Figure 12 The document-metaphor: On the left, the more expressive, on the right, the more concise variation Four stages in designing educational hypermedia 159 As media can only emulate a rough approximation of reality, the designer is bound to choose a persuasive metaphor, in order to convince the user. You may compare it to the effect of the puppet theatre: You know that they are only wooden dolls, however the people behind them make us sensitive to their characters. The convention of ‘playing through dolls’ makes the visitor ready to watch the story and accept the moral. Similar to that is the brochure, the TV program and also hypermedia programs. Shape and visual appearance do not disturb the message. We even become more sensitive to the symbolic value when the external shape does not match reality. The artistic design such as the reduction in cartoons increases the emotional appeal. Why is the metaphoric choice so important for hypermedia design? Simply because it brings the user in one stroke to the right suggestion or not. In learning programs we talk about the selection of the right ‘advance organizer’; it is a compact image of the task or topic to be understood. Similar to this is the metaphoric shape in media campaigns with persuasive messages such as ‘don’t smoke’ or ‘have safe sex’. It decides the user’s openness, the psychological ambiance. In fact it defines the contract between the program and the user: Is it a situation of information seeking, a matter of conviction, sensation seeking, etc? In other words: the metaphor selection decides if the program becomes ‘intuitive’, and if the user spontaneously catches the meaning of the program. It saves complex instructions and pervasive misconceptions. 3.3 Structural design: a logical analysis After the conceptual and metaphoric design, the next step involves the necessary architecture: Which are the needed components in terms of databases, dialogue and algorithmic elements? Though many components still remain unclear, it is the designer’s main interest to identify the global structure of the program: should the user be verified? Do we need to identify the type of user? Should the session be captured for later reconstruction? Are there several users simultaneously at stake? Which problems are addressed? Etc. The example below concerns the discussion on the introduction of the Major/Minor study stages in our university. The phase of structural design brings up three main components: • General Information • Why Major/Minor? • When Major/Minor? The main menu, the links and the start-stop buttons are more or less self-evident. The structural design can progressively be analysed in further detail. 160 P. Kommers Figure 13 Structural analysis of the Hypermedia Program on the Major/Minor discussion Intro Main menu General Information Why Major/Minor? Advantages When Major/Minor? Links Stop Disadvantages The transition between the conceptual and the metaphoric phase is a matter of courage. Staying too long in the association stage causes the ‘fear of cold water.’ It can be quite a relief once you have more concrete imagination about the physical architecture of the concrete program. During the course ‘Media Design for the Communication Studies Program’, Ilja Froklage and Ratna Toering designed the program architecture in Figure 13. It became the global skeleton for their hypermedia program ‘The comfortable Campus’ (June 1998). 3.3.1 Screen layout As a direct consequence of the structural design stage, the initial screen layout can be made. Often it proves the structural design to be wrong or shallow, in the sense that important parts of the dialogue have not been taken into account. Another important factor to be thought of is the overload of too many decisions to be made by the user. Four stages in designing educational hypermedia 161 Figure 14 Screen layout of the program on the Major/Minor study stages The screen layout is a marvellous intermediate stage between the structural and the navigation design. The Selection Menu at the left side reflects the main components of the program. At the same time it anticipates the navigational alternatives. The user will repeatedly return to this screen as he changes perspective. 3.4 Navigation design: anticipation of the routes by the user Orientation and navigation play a major role in the usability of hypermedia programs. The advantage of continuously jumping to any part of the information resource has its price; instead of the author, it is the user who is responsible for the presentation sequence. The hypermedia structure, especially the linking pattern (through the ‘hot spots’), decides the navigational ‘space’. Figure 15 Program architecture for the hypermedia-program ‘The comfortable campus’ (June, 1998) 162 P. Kommers A hypermedia program is like a web of links. The designer has made it and subsequently prescribes the browsing contours for the user. Inasmuch as the user is allowed freedom, we talk about ‘navigation space’. Figure 16 Navigation through the hypermedia network 3.4.1 Two parameters to anticipate the navigation In order to provide the user with an optimal balance between freedom and complexity, it is of importance to ask every time: Where should I place a certain piece of information? Or in other words: Which links should be made in order to provoke a certain effect on the user? Two parameters play a dominant role here: • Importance The most important messages ought to be located at the entrance of the program: ‘What can you expect in the program? What do you get from it? How can you arrive at certain information?’ etc. You could say that the main entrance should be the ‘launching platform’; it should be the shortest route to the most important information. From a rhetorical point of view, it may not be wise to give away the crux at the beginning, but just confront the user with a number of pictured situations or sounds, in order to establish a certain ambiguity. It is crucial however that we as designers cannot predict which hotspot the user is going to select. We can just estimate with a certain probability the chance that a user migrates from one node to another. Assessment of the importance of the information elements is helped by the Mind Mapping technique. • Centrality The user’s interests not only determine browsing through the hypermedia network, but also the structure of the network. Certain nodes will hence be visited, as they are located Four stages in designing educational hypermedia 163 on several routes at the same time. Other nodes can only be reached after tracing a long and quite specific tour. It is of importance that the information we consider to be essential for all users, is located in central position in the network. This preference is similar to the location of an important building in a constellation of one-way roads in a city. It should be easy to arrive over there; the more incidental visitors the better. A simple indicator is to count the number of ingoing relationships. The assessment of the centrality of information components can be supported by the concept mapping technique. Figure 17 Hypermedia network with ‘d’ as ideal departure and ‘f’ as central point in terms of reachability h e d g i a b c f The node with the most incoming links is the most attractive one to place on a poster. The first-order approach is only a rough estimation. It is better to count the number of steps from the point of departure (entry of the hypermedia program). The fewer steps necessary, the more attractive its position. If several nodes are at the same distance from the entrance, a second-order approximation can be made; the weights of the nodes that support incoming links are taken into account. This is a recursive measure as the more remote neighbours also have to be taken into account; quite a nice job for the graph analysis to do the computation. ‘TextVision’ is a computer program that reflects ‘departure’ and ‘reachability’ in the size of the nodes. A first glance offers the creator and user of the network a view of the better candidates. 3.4.2 Hypermedia presentation and their underlying reference structure Hypermedia are essentially based upon hypertext and contain three basic entities: 1 Presentation windows (A, A1, A2 and A3 in the Figure below) correspond to the content of a window or ultimately the entire screen at a certain moment. In order to access the widely spread information network, it is vital to divide it into shorter fragments. Each fragment should fit on a screen. In terms of readability it should be known how many lines and size of the visual fits on the particular screen. Also it is of importance to know if the user sits before the screen, or if it is a kiosk screen with more incidental and quick-glance users. For the sake of clarity, it is desirable to develop a hypermedia application on exactly the same screen as the target systems for the end users. The question of how to lay out textual fragments, and which 164 P. Kommers hotspots should occur is crucial for the user’s navigation. A large research domain is the request for the ideal number of reference links and the depth of entailments. For instructional and communicative programs it is essential to be aware if and how easily a certain node can be reached. 2 Each presentation screen or ‘fragment’ has a main concept which labels its content. From a more practical point of view it is recommended that it is kept unique and that it is articulated it in the screen design. Usually a screen is retrieved by activating a help concept in a preceding screen. Alternative ways to activate a main concept with its subsequent explanation is via an alphabetic index list or via clicking the contents in the main menu. The rule of thumb here is to provide the user with optimal flexibility while still keeping a minimum of complexity. 3 Help concepts (for instance a1, a2 and a3 in screen A and a3.2) are the clickable key words in a fragment (called ‘hotspots’). By its physical appearance they prompt the user to digress via related help concepts. The consequence of clicking ‘interesting’ hot spots should preferably bring information that is expected by the user. Current hypermedia systems however cause too many new elements and perspectives so that the user gets confused and loses focus. Ideally, a mouse click brings the elaboration of the clicked term onto the screen. The subsequent chaining to highlighted concepts and underlying web pages is called ‘surfing’. Figure 18 Screens, main – and help concepts and their interrelationships Before starting the production of text screens and the choice of help concepts, the underlying relational structure should be drawn. The initial concept map can be used for this purpose. A relational diagram is often a simplified version of the preceding concept map. On many occasions it is a good idea to present the end user with this relational Four stages in designing educational hypermedia 165 diagram and let it help navigation. In other words: The user should be able to call upon this overview from the main menu. It is no trivial task to optimize the layout of a concept map for navigational purposes. The video program on the London Underground provides a clear and fine description of the genesis of the current map of the complex transportation network. It lasted for more than 30 years before the current shape developed. The big step was to neglect its coordinate correspondence and focus just on the aspect of travel sequences and line intersections to change trains. Similar to this goal is the concept map for navigation purposes in hypermedia systems; its main goal is to access relevant browsing sequences rather than reflect semantic relationships between concepts. Optimizing the layout of a concept map implies: 1 Reducing the number of crossings between the connection lines 2 Having the central concepts in the centre 3 Bringing the semantically-related nodes together 4 Bringing types of links in one cluster (e.g. causal, taxonomic and temporal links) 5 Keeping connection lines as short as possible. Drawing and layout networks of more than eight nodes or more then 12 links already cause a high load on the user. It soon pays off to perform a graph analysis; see the centrality index as discussed before. After completing the navigation design, the team is ready to produce textual, pictorial and video resources. Afterwards the program implementation in a dedicated authoring system like Authorware, HyperStudio or ToolBook can be started. 4 Conclusion The design of a hypermedia program for learning needs distinguished stages and they should all occur before any system implementation starts. It is true that rapid prototyping assist in design greatly, as it allows creators to anticipate what will happen once the target system is ready. However it should be clear to its developers that after confrontation the prototype should be thrown away. It is recommended that you are explicit about the time needed for each of the four design stages; realistic estimates of the design episodes should be made. Provide good documents and sketches and screen designs. You will see that after few days you have forgotten which design choices were made and why. Make clear appointments about roles and responsibilities: Coordinator (chairman), domain expert, process reporter etc. Don’t forget to look back to the group process: Was it pleasant, adequate, not too controlled? Please feel free to make variations on the prescribed design method. Consolidate them and bring them forward during the plenary presentation. The team members may learn from each other. References 1 Vygotsky, Lev S. (1934) Thought and Language. Cambridge University Press, 1962, translated by Eugenia Haufmann and Gertrude Vakar. 166 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 P. Kommers Doorn, A.B.D. van and Room, P. (2000) De interactieve audiovisuele leeromgeving in het jaar 2000, http://www.econ.vu.nl/vakgroep/bik/wcis97/ Macnab, B.I.E. (1987) ‘Perceptions of phobia & phobics. The quest for control’, Unpublished doctoral dissertation, Universiteit van Amsterdam, Amsterdam, The Netherlands. Marmolin, H. (1991) ‘Multimedia from perspectives of psychology’, in Kjelldahl, L. (Ed.) 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