Authoring Educational Hypermedia Using a Semantic Network

Authoring hypermedia is a difficult process and any deficiencies in the authoring process are likely to be reflected in the student’s educational experience. This paper is concerned with providing the author with a framework and process so as to reduce the possibility of producing a poorly structured domain. The discussion is centred on practical experiences with an educational hypermedia system produced at Leeds Metropolitan University that helps the author to structure the domain by the use of a semantic network which is used to represent the essential structure of the domain. Since it is an educational system tutorial nodes are used within the hypermedia to provide the student with tasks to reinforce their learning. The location and use of these tutorial nodes is discussed, in that they may be used as landmarks to help orientate a student.