External Navigation Control and Guidance for Learning with Spatial Hypermedia

The World Wide Web has become a widely available platform for learning with hypermedia. However, WWW hypermedia is often limited in both guidance and navigation support. To improve hypermedia in these aspects, we propose a spatial hypermedia browser for educational purposes. A prototype browser, named HyperMap, has been designed to integrate guided explorative browsing with external control over a learnerís navigation. The flexible control by authors over navigation allows the integration of traditional courseware elements into hypermedia. We explain how the direct manipulation authoring environment in HyperMap simplifies the construction of a curriculum in spatial hypermedia. Object libraries and scripting of adaptive hypermedia objects help a HyperMap author to be productive. We include recent follow-up field-tests at NTU that confirmed the effectiveness of learning with HyperMap spatial hypermedia. The theoretical prospects of further integration of hypermedia with rules for intelligent tutoring are outlined as well.