Reading and Writing in Hypertext

Reading in a Hypertext Environment

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Introduction

Advantages &
Disadvantages

Constructivist Learning

At-Risk Learners

Glossary

References

Reading and Learning in a Hypertext Environment

Similarities with reading printed text

Reading in a hypertext environment shares many characteristics with reading in a linear print environment. Digital text is still text, and not all linear text is always read in a linear fashion. Reference books, such as dictionaries and encyclopedias, are not generally read from beginning to end, and some readers read quite selectively in linear text. People have different styles and approaches to reading in linear text as well as hypertext. Some readers browse, scan, and scroll through text. Others read thoroughly, while still others reread and go back over sections of text, underlining, highlighting, or even making notes in the margin.

Differences with reading hypertext

Hypertext readers frequently read differently from readers in a linear printed environment. Troffer (2000) cites research showing that reading from the screen is about 30% slower than reading from paper. However, she notes that most online readers do not go online primarily to read. She says they often tend to scan a document rather than read word for word.

Slatin (1991) and Burbules and Callister (1996) describe three types of hypertext readers

Browsers
Users
Co-authors

A number of studies have been conducted to determine if reading in hypertext has advantages or disadvantages over reading in a linear printed text environment. The results of these tests are inconclusive. Frequently these studies have focused on tests used to evaluate reading ability in a linear environment and applied these tests to a hypertext environment. Research has shown that online reading can be quite different from linear print reading (Slatin, 1991; Burbules & Callister, 1996; Troffer, 2000). Puntambekar (n.d.) observed that many of these tests focus on

Reading speed
Comprehension
Retrieval of facts and
Recall of facts

However, Burbules and Callister (1996) state that we often learn nonsequentially, dynamically, and interactively. These measure of reading effectiveness do not take this into account. McHoul and Roe (1996) criticize any analytical attempts of reading cognition, and do not believe that anyone can predetermine the characteristics that will comprise reading.

We will always find characteristics that we should not want to associate with reading as such but are beneficial to the case. Reading is like soup or slime. We should not want to specify its essence according to any neat digital calculus (McHoul & Roe, 1996, Section 5 Just Reading ¶ 5).

They believe reading cognition was always "fluid, artful, nodal, and so on" (McHoul & Roe, 1996, Celebrating Hypertext section, ¶ 8) and hypertext reading is still reading. It is just a different mode of delivering reading that may facilitate some aspects of reading.

Challenges of reading hypertext

Nonetheless, online reading of non-fiction poses challenges that are not faced in linear printed text. Keep, McLaughlin and Parmar (1993 -2000), Toffer (2000) and Morrison (2001) describe the main concerns with reading in a hypertext environment:

The importance of design

"There are many ways that hypertext systems can be designed, and there is good reason to believe that a large number of those do not produce successful learning environments" (Spiro, Feltovich, Jacobson, & Coulson, 1991).

The design of a hypertext learning environment affects the ability to learn and the type of learning that occurs in that environment (Puntambekar, n.d.). Just as some types of printed texts are better for some types of learning tasks than others, Puntambekar (n.d.) has pointed out that some types of hypertext environments are better suited to some learning tasks than others. Many factors should be taken into consideration in order to design a hypertext environment that facilitates learning.

Learning styles
Intended audience
Type of learning activity intended
Context clues and
Navigation

If design is important in print documents, it is more so in a hypertext environment (Toffer, 2000).

Gleaves (1998) argued that the strategies and techniques that people use to learn from books can improve the effectiveness of learning with hypertext, and describes eight diffferent principles that are used in linear text that he believes can improve learning in an hypertext environment.

1. riffleability	This is the ability to leaf through a document.
2. comparability	Two pages of a book can be compared by placing them side by side.
3.bookmarkability	Books permit various ways to indicate your location in the book, for example, folding down pages, physical bookmarks, and post-it notes.
4. annotatability	Books allow annotation. Comments can be written in the margins, and these notes do not look like the original text.
5. highlightability	Books can be highlighted to support learning.
6. excerptability	Sections of books can be photocopied for reference, storage, and transport.
7. progress visibility	Readers can determine their progress in a book by looking at it edgewise.
8. closure	Books are bound, thus bounded and finishable. Learners want to know that a taks is achievable and can be completed.

Gleaves (1998) used these characteristics of printed linear text to develop the following principles of design for hypertext.

Principle 1:	Provide a visible index to the content.
Principle 2:	Provide multiple views of the content.
Principle 3:	Provide users with the ability to directly access or cross reference specific sections of the content
Principle 4:	Provide users with the ability to annotate the text.
Principle 5:	Provide users with the ability to highlight the text.
Principle 6:	Provide users with the ability to create excepts of the content.
Principle 7:	Provide users with feedback on their relative progress through the content.
Principle 8:	Provide bounded content to build user confidence and offer a sense of orientation.

Learning theory and hypertext

Designers of hypertext learning environments have used different learning theories to improve the effectiveness of these environemnts. The theory of situated cognition (Brown, Collins, & Duguid, 1989) can be helpful when applied to designing hypertext environments for successful learning experiences. Situated cognition theorists believe knowledge to be not just inside the person, but rather as a intertwining of the person and the environment in which the person works.

Cognitive apprenticeship methods, similar to those used in craft apprenticeship, can be used to support students learning in hypertext environments. Teachers and classmates support student learning with authentic tasks by modelling, by providing support with scaffolding, and gradually withdrawing support when learners have mastered skills

Spiro, Feltovich, Jacobson, and Coulson (1991) use the term cognitive flexibility to describe the types of learning that occurs in an ill-structured domains. They believe that a hypertext environment provides a flexible learning environment for advanced learning. The authors make the distinction between introductory learning, involving the understanding of basic concepts and facts and advanced learning, which requires mastery and the transfer of knowledge. Hypertext permits the same knowledge to be presented and learned in a variety of different ways for a variety of different purposes. Hypertext permits this cognitive flexibility.