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.

Hypertext, in simple terms is the ability to create an electronic text that links to other works on the world wide web that support what the author says or aids the reader in further comprehending the text.

But this definition is too simple since readers and authors both interpret hypertext in different ways. As an author, I may feel that to fully understand the concept of hypertext a reader needs to begin with a background to hypertext. I may also feel that my reader needs to have an interactive hypertext to work with, so I could include a hypertext link with other accessible hypertexts for the reader to fully interact with. At this point, feeling that the reader has the references to comprehend the remainder of my definition, I could return to the definition and reach a quick conclusion. Therefore, as an author, my definition would look something like this:

From its origins in the late 1960s, hypertext has continued to grow as a means of allowing readers to enhance the reading of texts online with links within the text itself or to outside sources. As technology advances, the definition of hypertext alters as its uses alter.

As a reader, the definition may emerge into this one as you continue to click links:

From its origins in the late 1960s, hypertext has continued to grow as a means of allowing readers to enhance the reading of texts online with links within the text itself or to outside sources. As technology advances, the definition of hypertext alters as its uses alter. This is advantageous to the reader who can decide they want to know more about the author’s process,the idea of hypertext on the web, or even the writer’s comments that the author of the definition does not include.

When Jerome Mc Gann wrote that scholars no longer need to be limited to using “books to study books” he was already ahead of his time. As scholars, we now have access to materials that could often only be obtained in the past with a lengthy sabbatical, passport, and our life savings. Okay, so that is the worst case scenario, but the best case would have been a sympathetic librarian in charge of interlibrary loan. Today, we can access a majority of the material we need for research online: many books have been created in e-text format, journal articles can be accessed through online archives, and many other resources are available through similar resources. In addition, scholars now have the ability to publish their own webpages allowing scholars more resources for finding exactly what we need. No longer do we need to rely soley on a musty, moth-eaten copy of a book that may or may not be found in its place in the library stacks. We’ve come a long way, baby!

But I don’t think we’ve come to the end of the road. With the more recent emergence of wikis and collaborative websites, I think we will be able to see more of a dialogue between scholars than we have in the past. This will ultimately lead to more timely dialogues; no longer will we need to wait months (or years) for a scholar’s rebuttal to an article to appear, we’ll be able to access it as soon as it’s available. When we want to examine draft changes within a text, we’ll be able to access various versions of the text through PDF or GIF files from our desktop. While this feature is already available for authors of incredible notoriety who lived centuries ago, we’ll be able to see more current authors. For example, if a student was working on a paper based on J.K. Rowling’s novels, there would be more of a chance that Rowling had made these changes available online.

Another advantage we have that continues to grow is the ability to contact the author via email. In the past, this has been an availability since the beginning of email. However, authors are becoming more receptive to speaking via email with an individual working with their text. (I support this fact with the recent comments made on my student blogs by the author of one of the articles they are currently blogging on.) Now, authors have the ability to Google themselves, see what is being written on their work and reply as they see fit. This has the potential to lead to diret dialogue between author and scholar, between writer and student.

For teachers, this ability to present such broad means of readily available research to students provides us with a chance to expand their horizons while also teaching them about the importance of judging what they read or hear so that it meets or exceeds their own standards. In addition, as teachers, we can require more sophisticated research and refuse to accept the highly popular “they didn’t have a book on that in the library.” At the same time, if we are receptive to the “tools” of our students’ world, we will be able to enhance the tools of our own scholarship.

In order to examine how hypertext supports these theories, we first must look at the actual concepts in which the theories exist. Reader response, in a nutshell, focuses around the response of the reader to a text. On the other hand, deconstruction requires a reader to look specifically at the author’s choice of words, concepts, and oppositions in order to take apart what the author uses as the axiom of the text. In other words, deconstruction provides a reader with a means of poking holes in the text and reader response allows the reader to present a response after reading a text. I think the key to understanding how hypertext destabilizes these theories is to look at how the theorists expected a reader to use the theories to examine the text and how hypertext aids in the use of these theories.

I choose reader response. Given the fact that the general concept of reader response lies in how the reader responds, I think hypertext only aids in this study. When an author uses hypertext, the reader has a chance to interact more fully with the text itself. The reader immediately has the opportunity to click all, some, or none of the links to the text. Since reader response already assumes that a text is “alive” hypertext itself adds to the life of a text. Now the text is not only alive, but the reader can, in essence, communicate with the text. By clicking the hyperlinks, the reader responds to the text by investigating a term or concept that the text discusses. When the link appears, the text has, in a sense, responded. Therefore, the ability of a reader to choose to respond by clicking a hyperlink supports the use of reader response with hypertext. No longer is the reader’s response postponed until time manifests in which he can take the text away and research the concept spoken of in the text. Additionally, if the reader continues to click new links on the original hypertext link, they continue to add layers to their response. Essentially, it is still up to the reader to respond by clicking these links, but since hypertext makes these links readily accessible, reader’s are more prone to engage (whether they know it or not) in a reader response criticism. If you clicked the link above, you initiated a reader response. The depth and ways the reader chooses to respond to a text only deepens with the amount of hypertexts an author includes, but can also be enhanced with the amount of subsequent hypertext the reader follows.

Yet in the same way that hypertexts support reader response, it can also destabilize the theory easily. For example, if a writer publishes an article on a website today and does not maintain the hyperlinks, there will come a time in the future when the hyperlinks become inactive. Therefore, if a reader wishes to respond by using the hypertext, selects it, and gets this obnoxious page the reader cannot respond to the text as he wishes; instead, he is forced to settle with what responses the text still allows. In a sense, the dead links “age” the text and give it a certain sense of “mortality.” On the other hand, if a text contains a link to an article contained in a subscription service, like this example , then the reader may be denied the chance to continue their response as they wish. In this scenario, the text is not dead, but becomes somewhat of an elitist and allows access to only specific readers.

Obviously, reader response can be both influenced and destabilized with the use of hypertext. Even though many theorists see the growing use of electronic texts and hypertext as the death of the author, I believe that this death is entirely in the hands of the author. If the author chooses to adequately maintain the hypertext in their written work, the author continues to survive. I’ll post more as they come to me (through the week’s readings).