Adaptive hypermedia for education and training

Adaptive hypermedia (AH) is an alternative to the traditional, one-size-fits-all approach in the development of hypermedia systems. AH systems build a model of the goals, preferences, and knowledge of each individual user; this model is used throughout the interaction with the user to adapt to the needs of that particular user (Brusilovsky, 1996b). For example, a student in an adaptive educational hypermedia system will be given a presentation that is adapted specifically to his or her knowledge of the subject (De Bra & Calvi, 1998; Hothi, Hall, & Sly, 2000) as well as a suggested set of the most relevant links to proceed further (Brusilovsky, Eklund, & Schwarz, 1998; Kavcic, 2004). An adaptive electronic encyclopedia will personalize the content of an article to augment the user's existing knowledge and interests (Bontcheva & Wilks, 2005; Milosavljevic, 1997). A museum guide will adapt the presentation about every visited object to the user's individual path through the museum (Oberlander et al., 1998; Stock et al., 2007). Adaptive hypermedia belongs to the class of user-adaptive systems (Schneider-Hufschmidt, Kühme, & Malinowski, 1993). A distinctive feature of an adaptive system is an explicit user model that represents user knowledge, goals, and interests, as well as other features that enable the system to adapt to different users with their own specific set of goals. An adaptive system collects data for the user model from various sources that can include implicitly observing user interaction and explicitly requesting direct input from the user. The user model is applied to provide an adaptation effect, that is, tailor interaction to different users in the same context. In different kinds of adaptive systems, adaptation effects could vary greatly. In AH systems, it is limited to three major adaptation technologies: adaptive content selection, adaptive navigation support, and adaptive presentation. The first of these three technologies comes from the fields of adaptive information retrieval (IR) and intelligent tutoring systems (ITS). When the user searches for information, the system adaptively selects and prioritizes the most relevant items (Brajnik, Guida, & Tasso, 1987; Brusilovsky, 1992b)

Designing the printed book as an interactive environment

Reading a book demands a certain level of interaction from the reader. The cover must be opened and pages turned to navigate the information inside. Conventions have been developed over the life of the book to assist the reader in this navigation and provide orientation. The evolution of electronic reading material has given readers greater opportunities for interacting with their reading material, but many readers still prefer reading from a printed book. This paper investigates how the interactive organizational paradigm of hypertext can be implemented in a printed book to give the reader the opportunity for greater interaction and benefit from some of the advantages that electronic reading environments provide. The investigation in this paper follows an iterative design process in consultation with a panel of four experts. Through four rounds of consultation and refinement two potential solutions were developed for the incorporation of hypertext methods in a printed book

Blue hypertext is a perfect design decision: No perceptual disadvantage in reading and successful highlighting of relevant information

Highlighted text in the Internet (i.e. Hypertext) is predominantly blue and underlined. The percept of these hypertext characteristics were heavily questioned by applied research and empirical tests resulted in inconclusive results. The ability to identify blue text in foveal and parafoveal vision was identified as potentially constrained by the low number of foveally centered blue light sensitive retinal cells. The present study investigates if foveal and parafoveal perceptibility of hypertext is reduced during reading. A silent-sentence reading study with simultaneous eye movement recordings and the invisible boundary paradigm, which allows the investigation of foveal and parafoveal perceptibility, separately, was realized. Target words in sentences were presented in either black or blue and either underlined or normal. No effect of color and underlining, but a preview benefit could be detected for first pass reading measures (comparing fixation times after degraded vs. un- degraded parafoveal previews). Fixation time measures that included re-reading (i.e., total viewing times) showed, in addition to a preview effect, a reduced fixation time for not highlighted (black not underlined) in contrast to highlighted target words (either blue or underlined or both). Thus, the present pattern reflects no detectable perceptual disadvantage of hyperlink stimuli but increased attraction of attention resources, after first pass reading, through highlighting. Blue or underlined text allows readers to easily perceive hypertext and at the same time readers re-visited hypertext longer as a consequence of highlighting. On the basis of the present evidence blue hypertext can be safely recommended to web designers for future use.Comment: 15 pages, 1 figure, 1 tabl

What is an Analogue for the Semantic Web and Why is Having One Important?

This paper postulates that for the Semantic Web to grow and gain input from fields that will surely benefit it, it needs to develop an analogue that will help people not only understand what it is, but what the potential opportunities are that are enabled by these new protocols. The model proposed in the paper takes the way that Web interaction has been framed as a baseline to inform a similar analogue for the Semantic Web. While the Web has been represented as a Page + Links, the paper presents the argument that the Semantic Web can be conceptualized as a Notebook + Memex. The argument considers how this model also presents new challenges for fundamental human interaction with computing, and that hypertext models have much to contribute to this new understanding for distributed information systems

On the writing, reading and publishing of digital stories

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to describe a study set up to investigate and map the landscape of digital writing today. A holistic perspective has been adopted involving writers, readers and publishers alike. Design/methodology/approach – The research uses a qualitative approach and combines interviews and direct observations. In in-depth interviews 13 participants (four writers, four publishers, three readers and two on-line readers) were questioned for their opinions on issues related to writing, publishing and reading digital fiction. The three readers were also observed while interacting, for the first time, with three digital stories. Findings – Results show that the area is still unsettled though much excitement surrounds experimentations and freedom of publishing online. Readers seem uneasy with the role of co-creators that writers want to assign them and prefer linear stories to more deconstructed ones. Writers like to experiment and combine multiple media and readers like to interact with multimedia stories; this seems to open interesting perspectives over interactive narrative. Publishers are not yet involved in digital writing and this is seen simultaneously as a blessing (unfiltering of innovative ideas) and a curse (lack of economical support, lack of quality selection). Despite disagreement and ambiguity all interviewees agree that digital fiction will come, likely prompted by new reading technology. Originality/value – This paper is the first attempt to understand the phenomena of digital writing taking into consideration the perspectives of writers, readers and publishers simultaneously and comparing their different views

Investigation of the use of navigation tools in web-based learning: A data mining approach

Web-based learning is widespread in educational settings. The popularity of Web-based learning is in great measure because of its flexibility. Multiple navigation tools provided some of this flexibility. Different navigation tools offer different functions. Therefore, it is important to understand how the navigation tools are used by learners with different backgrounds, knowledge, and skills. This article presents two empirical studies in which data-mining approaches were used to analyze learners' navigation behavior. The results indicate that prior knowledge and subject content are two potential factors influencing the use of navigation tools. In addition, the lack of appropriate use of navigation tools may adversely influence learning performance. The results have been integrated into a model that can help designers develop Web-based learning programs and other Web-based applications that can be tailored to learners' needs