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Hypermedia as it Applies to Educational Settings

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How Can Hypermedia Be Used in Schools?

Hypermedia can be defined as a non-sequential format that uses hypertext and multimedia elements to present information to users. There are many potential and realized advantages to using hypermedia in educational settings. The advantages of hypermedia depend on the mode of use. Allowing students to author their own hypermedia results in a different set of advantages than simply allowing students to be the audience of hypermedia presentations. The use of hypermedia must be carefully guided by teachers and other educational professionals to ensure that students are learning and focusing on valuable curricular concepts. Hypermedia can be a great tool to help facilitate differentiation of instruction in the classroom, but there are some pitfalls as well.

photo by p morgan

What is Hypermedia?

Hypermedia combines the concepts of hypertext and multimedia to allow rich interaction between the user and the material. Hypertext itself is basically the same as regular text except that it contains connections within the text to other documents (Hughes, 1994). The term multimedia has been around for a long time, long before the advent of personal computers. Today it is usually used to describe the integration of text, graphics, animation, sound, video and music in an interactive software environment (Turner and Handler, 1997).

Definitions

Webopedia definition
Hypermedia as defined by Webopedia.com
TechTerms definition
Hypermedia as defined by TechTerms.com
PC Mag Definition
Hypermedia as defined by PC Mag.com

Why Use Hypermedia?

This video gives compelling reasons to use hypermedia in the classroom.
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Teachers Developing Hypermedia Lessons

We did it!

Students as Audience of Hypermedia

In the role of audience to hypermedia, students interact with hypermedia environments developed by others. Examples of this type of interaction would include reading articles in online encyclopedias, observing a PowerPoint presentation (with links and other multimedia elements) developed by a teacher, playing interactive adventure games, or looking at various interactive websites on the Internet. Lu (n.d.) would consider this as level 1, or read only hypermedia. As an audience to hypermedia, children often still manage to control how they navigate through the information, and one child is likely to navigate the material in a different order than another. Students will choose their paths based on their interests and objectives. While students are able to have some control in this role, they are still limited by the design decisions made by the software designer or their teacher (Turner and Handler, 1997).

Reading Skills in the Computer Lab

Students as Authors of Hypermedia

The second of these broad categories would include students as authors of their own hypermedia. In this role, students will develop hypermedia projects by conducting research on a topic, identifying relevant information, and then selecting what elements to include in a final product. Students will have to consider the layout of the text as well as what multimedia components to include in their product. Students must also determine how they will link information based on whom the intended audience will be. In addition, students will have to learn how to use software components, or perfect their knowledge of the software they are using, and then debug any problems they encounter (Turner & Handler, 1997). This second broad category of authoring hypermedia would correspond to Lu's (n.d.) level 2 (participatory) and level 3 (exploratory) hypermedia. Using hypermedia in this context will not only allow students to have control over how they learn, but will also force them to learn basic information and use higher level thinking skills in the process developing their final hypermedia product.
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Advantages of Hypermedia

Learning Styles Webpage
Advantages of using hypermedia in instruction are numerous. They include the fact that differentiation of instruction is often built into the application and allows the learner to adapt information to his own learning style. Students gain control of the order they access information as well as the number of times they engage a specific piece of information. Students will often have the option of simply reading the text (verbal learning style), or hearing the text read (aural learning style), or seeing a visual representation of the text reproduced (visual learning style), among other options. Teachers can use the above webpage to assess their own learning styles as well as those of their students.
Interactive Chemistry Website
Hypermedia is not limited by physical space. The costs of paper and color photographs are no longer an issue. There is tremendous potential to save time and money in the long run. In science classrooms there is tremendous potential to save money on laboratory materials as well. The above link is just one example of using the Internet as an alternative to a chemistry lab.

Disadvantages of Hypermedia

Requires Extra Teacher Planning Time

Disadvantages of using hypermedia in an educational setting include the fact that it takes a tremendous amount of time to initially develop hypermedia lessons. Teachers must get the appropriate training in using software and other hypermedia components, and be given adequate time to plan and incorporate hypermedia lessons into their curriculum. One method to help ameliorate the lack of planning time that plagues so many public school teachers is for those teachers to allow their students to author hypermedia products in conjunction with the curriculum. Then those teachers can use these hypermedia products with other students in that same class, as well as with future students in other classes. Teachers would still need proper training to successfully guide their students through these initial creations.

Student Focus Issues

Another potential disadvantage in using hypermedia involves students who already have trouble focusing on specific tasks. Those students who have trouble focusing on assignments in general may be overwhelmed by hypermedia lessons. They may lose focus entirely or they may learn a little bit about a lot about different things, but they might miss the central purpose of an assignment. Teachers would have to take extra time to re-focus students' attention on what is truly important in the context of the curriculum-based lesson. Therefore, the use of hypermedia must be carefully guided by teachers and other educational professionals to ensure that students are learning and focusing on valuable curricular concepts.

HowStuffWorks.com
An example of an educational website that has so much good information that it could easily distract a student away from the task at hand.

Boohbah.com
Just a Really Pointless Website

Issues with Literacy

Hypermedia is causing educators to redefine literacy. Educators have to be careful to teach students how to glean information from the Internet and other hypermedia environments. These environments can be very different, and often better, than simply reading from a textbook. Despite the advantages of presenting content in multiple formats including video and audio, hypermedia can also mask fundamental reading problems. Students with difficulty reading may be able to glean just as much information from certain hypermedia formats as students who can read well. However, in the long run, these reading-deficient students may not be identified as needing extra help in the area of reading, and then in turn suffer the consequences further down the road, when the ability to read text well becomes essential.

Reading Skills in the Computer Lab

Issues with Internet Safety

Hypermedia lessons must be designed with the safety of the student in mind as well. While not all hypermedia lessons will involve the Internet, many will. Those that do should be carefully designed by the teacher to prevent students from straying to websites that contain inappropriate material. A well-designed hypermedia lesson could utilize all of the good things on the World Wide Web without burdening it with the pop-up advertisements and questionable material that seems to abound.
Addressing Issues of Internet Safety
This website gives tips for navigating the Internet safely.

Conclusion

Hypermedia is a term that has been around for many years now, and its definition continues to undergo slight changes as time passes. As an educational tool, hypermedia offers many potential benefits for the teacher in the classroom as well as a few potential pitfalls. Perhaps the most pertinent advantage to 21st century teachers in the United States is the potential to create differentiated lesson plans that cater to a variety of learning styles and a multitude of English Language Learners. The software tools currently available already provide some content translated into Spanish and other foreign languages. As these tools are improved teachers will eagerly make use of the best applications.

Links to Pertinent Articles

As We May Think by Vannevar Bush
An article from 1945 by forward thinking Vannevar Bush that has ideas eerily similar to our modern Internet.
Ted Nelson
An article about Ted Nelson who was the pioneer for the term hypertext.
A Guide to Cyberspace
This link describes hypermedia and hypertext.
Three Levels of Hypermedia in Education
This is an article by a graduate student about different ways that hypermedia can be used in education.

References

Bush, V. (1945) As We May Think. Atlantic Monthly. Retrieved March 5, 2009 from http://www.theatlantic.com/unbound/flashbks/computer/bushf.htm

Edwards, O. (1997) "Ted Nelson." Forbes ASAP. Retrieved March 5, 2009 from http://www.forbes.com/asap/97/0825/134.htm

Hirsch, E.D. Jr. (2007). The Knowledge Deficit: Closing the Shocking Education Gap for American Children. Boston: Houghton Mifflin

Hughes, Kevin (1994) Entering the World-Wide Web: A Guide to Cyberspace 6.1: What is hypertext and hypermedia? Retrieved February 14, 2009 from http://bid.ankara.edu.tr/yardim/www/guide/guide.02.html

Lu, H. M. (n.d.), Three levels of hypermedia in education. Retrieved February 17, 2009, from http://coe.sdsu.edu/eet/Articles/HyperLevels3/start.htm

Turner, Sandra V. and Handler, Marianne G. (1997). Hypermedia in Education: Children as Audience or Authors? Journal of Information Technology for Teacher Education, 6 (1), 25-35.

All images used on this web page that are not specifically of the web designer are images from Flickr.com. The copyright owners have given limited permission to use these photos.

Videos are from YouTube and are internal links.

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