• The Problems Inherent in Creating Hypermedia for Instructional Purposes
  • reader is constantly aware of both the presence and absence of the author in the text
  • reader is constantly confronting structural choices the author established
    • creates randomness and an instability in the text, especially when the reader is asked to make choices about what to study and has the ability to change the text or add links to the existing text.
  • determining individual learning paths and objectives can be difficult for students
  • assumptions behind the structure of hypertext implies structured learning experiences
  • questions left with this form of instruction
    • how do learners know what they don’t know?
    • how will they be encouraged to discover what they don’t know?
    • Should this discovery be allowed to occur by chance?
    • How much structure should be included in an effective hypermedia instruction?
    • What should be the characteristics of the hypermedia structure?
• Some Solutions to Problems in Creating Instructional Hypermedia and Their Limitations
  • Two Categories of solutions
    • product-oriented
      • deal with structural patterns of organization
      • tend to catalog possibilities for organizing material
      • approaches
        • Jonassen–use concepts from the study of reading and rhetoric, and consider employing possible structures found there
          • problem solution
          • chronological
          • sequential
          • parts-wholes
          • cause-effect
          • antecedent-consequence
      • • Robert Horn–hypertext should be structured according to its links
          • associative links writers try to get onto paper integrate easily into the link and node structure of hypertext
          • library card catalogs
          • footnotes
          • cross-references
          • sticky notes
          • commentaries
          • indexes
          • quotes
          • anthologies
        • Horton–use popular means of organization
          • sequences
          • grids
          • hierarchies
          • webs
      • all of these product-oriented approaches rely on existing paper-based formats
    • process-oriented
    • • deal with how-to information
      • suggest activities and methods for ascertaining effective techniques for organizing hypermedia instruction by examining its users’ needs and actions
      • approaches
        • Jonassen–information models can be either deductively or inductively developed
          • Deductively Developed
            • top down approach–starts with a content structure or expert’s knowledge
              • assuming that knowledge occurs through replicating the expert’s knowledge structure
          • Inductively Developed
            • bottom-up approach
              • based on observations of how users navigate through unstructured hypertext and assimilate information from hypertext
        • McKnight, Richardson, and Dillon–similar to Jonassen’s inductive model
          • suggest that when a paper document is converted to hypermedia it can be done by studying interactions with paper documents first–enables hypertext to be created in a manner that mimics the way users work with the paper document
        • Patricia Wright and Ann Lickorish–show that discourse structures influence design options in terms of selecting content, creating links, and offering signposts to readers.
          • highly cohesive text structures
            • assume that the learner will start at the beginning and read through to the end
          • Modular Text structures
            • composed of independent modules and provide no requirement that the reader return to the original text
          • Hierarchical Text Structures
            • offer no symmetry either in format or content across the information in different branches of a hierarchy–mental metaphors work as the tour
          • Multi-Theme Text Structures
            • present a wide variety of options for ordering information. Can be cross-referenced using verbal or visual information and may be thought of as multidimensional
• Recommendations for Developing a Rhetoric for Instructional Hypermedia
  • Four Categories of Cognitive Architectures in hypermedia
    • Cognitive Architectures inherent in the subject matter itself
    • Cognitive architectures which are imposed on the hypermedia instruction by the designer
    • Cognitive Architectures brought to hypermedia instruction by the learner
    • Cognitive architectures which are made possible by the medium of hypermedia itself

Shirk, Henrietta Nickels. “Cognitive Architecture in Hypermedia.” In Sociomedia: Multimedia, Hypermedia, and the Social Construction of (Digital Communication), Ed. Edward Barrett. MIT U Press, 1994.

In “Cognitive Architecture in Hypermedia” (1994) Henrietta Nickels Shirk summarizes the problems and solutions being presented in regards to using hypermedia and hypertext as means of instruction. Shirk first presents the four main problems with instructional hypermedia: (1) that the reader is constantly aware of both the presence and absence of the author in the text, (2) constantly confronting structural choices the author established, (3) determining individual learning paths and objectives can be difficult for students and (4) assumptions behind the structure of hypertext implies structured learning experiences. With the problems analyzed, Shirk relates the specific theories posited by scholars for solving the problem of instructional hypermedia; she presents the product-oriented solutions of Jonassen, Horn, and Horton and the solutions presented for the process-oriented method by Jonassen, McKnight, Richardson and Dillon, and Wright and Lickorish. Finally, Shirk summarizes her four recommendations for incorporating instructional hypermedia and groups these into areas of importance based on (1) subject matter, (2) designer, (3) learner, and (4) hypermedia itself. Shir’s article seeks to reach an audience of teachers interested in using hypermedia to enhance their students’ education. The article summarizes developments in hypermedia in order to familiarize teachers with the dialogue that accompanied the first ideas behind using hypertext in the classroom.