andrew dillon hypertext
61103370
HyperText and Cognition
Contents: Preface. C.A. Perfetti, La Maison Hypertext. J F. Rouet, J.J. Levonen, A. Dillon, R.J. Spiro, An Introduction to Hypertext and Cognition. J F. Rouet, J.J. Levonen, Studying and Learning with Hypertext: Empirical Studies and Their Implications. A. Dillon, Myths, Misconceptions, and an Alternative Perspective on Information Usage and the Electronic Medium. M.A. Britt, J F. Rouet, C.A. Perfetti, Using Hypertext to Study and Reason About Historical Evidence. D. Dee Lucas, Effects of Overview Structure on Study Strategies and Text Representations for Instructional Hypertext. P.W. Foltz, Comprehension, Coherence, and Strategies in Hypertext and Linear Text. H. van Oostendorp, Studying and Annotating Electronic Text. E. Esperet, Notes on Hypertext, Cognition, and Language. C.A. Perfetti, Text and Hypertext.
Andrew Dillon Rand J Spiro Jarmo T Levonen Jean-Francois Rouet
5914427
Navigation in hypertext: A critical review of the concept
With the advent of hypertext it has become widely accepted that the departure from the so called " linear " structure of paper increases the likelihood of readers or users becoming lost. In this paper we will discuss this aspect of hypertext in terms of its validity, the lessons to be learned from the psychology of navigation and the applicability of the navigation metaphor to the hypertext domain. 1. IS NAVIGATION A PROBLEM? There is a striking consensus among many of the " experts " in the field that navigation is the single greatest difficulty for users of hypertext. Frequent reference is made to " getting lost in hyperspace " (e.g. Conklin 1987, McAleese 1989) and Hammond and Allinson (1989) speak for many when they say: " Experience with using hypertext systems has revealed a number of problems for users. First, users get lost. Second, users may find it difficult to gain an overview of the material. Third, even if users know specific information is present they may have difficulty finding it " (p294) In the following section we will discuss what is known about the psychology of navigation in physical environments and show how this might have relevance to the 'virtual' worlds of information space. Individuals possess schemata or models of the physical environment in which they find themselves. This is acquired from experience and affords a basic orienting frame of reference for navigatory purposes. Thus, we soon acquire schemata of towns and cities so that we know what to expect when we find ourselves in one: busy roads, numerous buildings, shopping, residential and industrial areas, many people, churches, pubs, etc. According to Downs and Stea (1977) such frames of reference exist at all levels of scale
INTERACT
Andrew Dillon Cliff McKnight John Richardson
15153577
A Comparison of Linear and Hypertext Formats in Information Retrieval
An exploratory study is described in which the same text was presented to subjects in one of four formats, of which two were hypertext (TIES and Hypercard) and two were linear (Word Processor and paper) Subjects were required to use the text to answer 12 questions. Measurement was made of their time and accuracy and their movement through the document was recorded, in addition to a variety of subjective data being collected. Although there was no significant difference between conditions for task completion time, subjects performed more accurately with linear formats. The implications of these findings and the other data collected are discussed.
UK Hypertext
Cliff McKnight Andrew Dillon John Richardson
14282612
HYPERTEXT HYPERMEDIA
The field of hypertext/hypermedia has mushroomed so much in the last five years that an article such as this cannot hope to be all embracing. Rather, what we will do is provide a perspective on hypertext/hypermedia while offering guidance to the published literature. The perspective we give is essentially user centred since we believe that ultimately it is user issues which will determine the success or failure of any technology.
Cliff McKnight Andrew Dillon John Richardson
44992937
The Authoring of HyperText Documents
UK Hypertext
Cliff McKnight John Richardson Andrew Dillon
9396952
User Centred Design of Hypertext/Hypermedia for Education
The chapter begins by describing the fundamental concepts of hypertext and gives a brief overview of the different philosophical perspectives manifest in the key figures of the field. It then considers the role of hypertext in learning, concluding from a review of empirical evaluations that many of the claims for hypertext have failed to be substantiated. It is argued that for a variety of conceptual and methodological reasons, it is extremely difficult to evaluate hypertext experimentally in an educational context. However, rather than simply abandon either hypertext or empirical evaluation, the chapter concludes by arguing for an empirically grounded, user centred approach to the design of hypertext based on a knowledge of the users, their tasks, the information space and the context in which the three interact. What is hypertext, what is hypermedia? The prefix 'hyper' usually means 'more than' so we may begin by asking what is it that hypertext has that makes it more than text. The simple answer to this is that as well as text, hypertext has 'links' The text is usually organised into chunks, units, or 'nodes' as they have come to be known and the links form connections between certain nodes. There are no rules about how big a node should be or what it should contain. Similarly there are no rules governing what gets linked to what. Hence, there can be many different kinds of hypertext in the same way that there are many different kinds of text. Furthermore, hypertext allows the concept of 'document' to be extended since, logically, entire documents can be treated as nodes and linked together to form a single hypertext. The concept of links between units of information has a history almost as old as writing itself. Think of a footnote marker in a text: it links the main text with the footnote text, although in this case the marker is a static link the reader must make the movement between text and footnote. In hypertext, the links are active selecting the link moves the reader to the linked text in some way. It is this dynamic aspect of presentation that is the principal difference between text and hypertext an alternative term for hypertext which never gained the same currency was 'interactive documentation' (Brown, 1986) and a recent paper used the term 'responsive text' (Hillinger, 1990) If hypertext isn't a new idea, why has it recently become so popular? In fact, hypertext has been an idea waiting for technology to catch up with it. In order to implement active links, it is necessary to use a dynamic display medium such as a computer screen. Hence, in the 1960s in the research laboratories, several groups started using large mainframe computers in order to explore the potential of hypertext. Advances in computer technology have led to the development of the minicomputer and the microcomputer, making considerable computer power available to the individual user the personal computer with so called 'user friendly' interfaces. On such computers, 'popular' hypertext becomes feasible. Hypermedia is presented as a further development of hypertext. As computers have moved from being able to present little more than upper case text to being able to present information in a variety of communication media sound, graphics, video so it is possible to link these media together using hypertext techniques, hence the term hypermedia. However, in the same way that a book can contain text, drawings, tables, photographs or even pop up models, so the distinction between hypertext and hypermedia is somewhat arbitrary. We will use either term to refer to a set of nodes of information which are dynamically linked. By way of example, consider how information relating to the European Union (EU) could be presented. At the top level the reader could be presented with a map of Europe and then be able to select various aspects of the EU or any particular member state for more information [see Figure 1] This may take the form of a more detailed map showing the major cities which, when selected, showed some information about the city. Alternatively, the reader may be offered other information about the country, such as the currency, culture, audio clips of common words in the language such as please and thank you, and so forth [see Figure 2] The city maps could offer sites of interest such as museums, local transport details, entertainment sites such as theatres or even restaurants and pubs; they could include video clips of the major tourist sites, on the beach or at the disco. Now the tourist 'brochures' can feature live action and be interactive in a way that the present printed chapter cannot. Hence, the extraor hypertext nature of the medium. Figure 1: The top level of the Euro Base hypertext a wealth of information at the click of a button. Figure 2: See and hear the sights and sounds of Europe. The Genesis of Hypertext We do not intend this section to be a general overview of everything which has gone before. The reader who is interested in such a description would do well to read Jeff Conklin's excellent review (Conklin, 1987) followed by Jakob Nielsen's popular book on the subject (Nielsen, 1995) Rather, we would like to present some of the historical highlights as being representative of three different conceptual stances towards information technology and we represent each of these by an influential figure in the field. These stance are: technology designed to work in a manner akin to human cognition the view of Vannevar Bush; technology as an augmenter of the human intellect the personal philosophy of Doug Engelbart; technology as a flexible and usable access mechanism to a complete world of interrelated information the dream of Ted Nelson. The article most often cited as the modern birthplace of hypertext is Vannevar Bush's "As we may think" (Bush, 1945) Bush was appointed the first director of the Office of Scientific Research and Development by President Roosevelt in 1941. He saw clearly the problems associated with the ever increasing volumes of information that were the product of World War II research and technology initiatives: "There is a growing mountain of research. But there is increased evidence that we are being bogged down today as specialization extends. The investigator is staggered by the findings and conclusions of thousands of other workers conclusions which he cannot find time to grasp, much less to remember, as they appear. Yet specialization becomes increasingly necessary for progress, and the effort to bridge between disciplines is correspondingly superficial." It surprises many people to learn that this statement was made 50 years ago the information explosion is not such a modern phenomenon after all! To cope with this plethora of information, Bush conceived the memex, a device ".in which an individual stores his books, records, and communications, and which is mechanized so that it may be consulted with exceeding speed and flexibility." More than a simple repository, the memex was based on the principle of association, the notion that all facts, concepts and ideas are linked in the mind and that any one knowledge chunk can act as a stimulus or trigger to remember another. In devising a supporting technology of this kind, Bush sought to create a means of information storage and retrieval that was intuitive to the user by virtue of its similarity to the workings of the mind. The appeal to intuitive operation predates many of the arguments that have subsequently emerged in the design of information technology. For Bush, it was sufficient that a principle such as association at that time a popular view of human cognition would satisfy the organisational requirements of information users, an approach to design that is also partly mirrored in current user centered design thinking. However, given the volume of information a person might need to handle and what we now know about the vagaries of human association (e.g. Howe, 1980) it appears unlikely that such a principle alone could act as a sufficient design constraint on a hypermedia system. Objections aside, it is interesting that Bush viewed the need for system design in such a user centred manner. Unfortunately, the technology of the day was not as developed as the ideas Bush conceived of the memex as being microfilm based. Hence, his ideas lay dormant for at least two decades, waiting for the technology to catch up. However, it is still commonplace to hear hypertext spoken of as a 'natural' information system and even a viable model of the human mind *CLIFF WE DO NEED A REF to SUCH COMMON SPEECH Whereas Bush (and others) sought to devise systems based on cognitive equivalence, Doug Engelbart has been developing his conception of hypertext since the early 1960s by placing his emphasis on augmenting or amplifying of human intellect (cf. Engelbart 1963) as reflected in the naming of his system as Augment. Engelbart's first implementation was NLS (oN Line System) which was meant as an environment to serve the working needs of his Augmented Human Intellect Research Center at Stanford Research Institute. This was a computer based environment containing all the documents, memos, notes, reports and so forth in addition to supporting planning, debugging and communication. As such, NLS can be seen as one of the earliest attempts to provide a hypertext environment in which computer supported collaborative work (CSCW) could take place. Engelbart's pragmatic position is less concerned with supporting via mimicking the information processing tendencies of the human (a la Bush) than with extending cognition, although to some extent such a position is equivalently determined by an image of the mind which one is trying to enhance or augment. In conceptualising the technology in this way, Engelbart espoused the notion of hypertext as some form of cognitive artefact, extending the capabilities of the human and offerin
Cliff McKnight Andrew Dillon John Richardson
62171845
The construction of hypertext documents and databases
The availability of powerful desktop microcomputers has meant that the ideas underlying hypertext can now be implemented in readily available software packages. However, despite the fact that many writers on the subject assume that hypertext removes the reader/author distinction, it appears that, for a variety of reasons, many people will access hypertext documents in 'read only' form. The present paper discusses the implications of this for authors of hypertext documents. The creation of a hypertext version of a journal article, and the way in which a hypertext database of such articles is being constructed, is described.
Cliff McKnight John Richardson Andrew Dillon
59829222
Journal articles as learning resource: what can hypertext offer?
Although paper has reigned unchallenged for hundreds of years as the only viable publishing medium, recent advances in computer based technology have demonstrated that electronic storage and retrieval have several advantages such as speed of access and cost effectiveness. Furthermore, these advances have also led to the development of alternative publishing media. In particular, the optical disk based systems such as CD ROM have been shown to be viable both technically and commercially for a variety of publishing ventures ranging from music to encyclopaedias. Conceptually at least, the age of the electronic book is upon us.
Cliff McKnight John Richardson Andrew Dillon
12833811
The Human factors of hypertext
The present paper reviews the human factor issues pertinent to the design and use of hypertext documents. It is argued that many of the claims for the new medium are based largely on subjective impressions of its advocates, rather than empirical demonstrations of its advantages. Hypertext applications are presented here as a structured subset of an information world that the user can access through an interface. Research relevant to all aspects of reading from screens is reviewed and conclusions for the development of more usable electronique documents are presented
Andrew Dillon
60160971
Never mind the theory, feel the data: Observations on the design of hypertext based user interfaces
Andrew Dillon Cliff McKnight