Abstract
Kolb (1984) defined learning styles as one’s preferred methods for perceiving and processing information. Learning styles have been a high-profiled factor in hypermedia research on how they affect learners’ performances of cognitive tasks in hypermedia environment, yet not much research has been done on how learning styles would affect developers’ preferences in designing and developing hypermedia projects. This qualitative research studied 19 students from a graduate level multimedia design course on their articulations and implementations of hypermedia features, and found that learning styles of the developers did influence their perceptions of the features’ importance and their efforts of implementation of hypermedia features in their projects.
Key Terms in this Chapter
Context-Based Structure: The structure of a hypermedia program, rather than someone’s use of the program and context-based linking made available.
Learner-Control: Context-based link refers to hypermedia users selecting information within the hypermedia program that provides additional information for the information they have already selected or that has automatically been presented to them.
Learner-Control: Learning style refers to features that lead users to choose them based on different learning styles.
Learner-Control: Media refers to users having the option to select certain media-forms knowingly; that is, they would know prior to selecting a part of the program that it was a visual or a sound or a text.
Multimedia: Providing information within a hypermedia program in different media-forms: text, visuals, and sound.
General Navigation: Providing features that allow the user to access information. This feature was kept separate from non-linear navigation because they did not specify non-linear movement within a hypermedia environment.
Easy Access to Information: Is self-explanatory. However, whether the access is made clear to a user, and whether it is direct (wording that explains what a feature does) or intuitive (either through consistent appearance and/or placement), was the basis for potentially varying assessment.
Concept-Based Structure: The structure of a hypermedia program, as explained when differentiating between learner-control: context-based link and context-based structure.
Knowledge Construction: Providing features within a program that allow the user to link information so that he or she can systematically construct a knowledge base.
Multimodal: Refers to the five senses: sound, touch, taste, smell, and sight.
Non-Linear Navigation: The feature that allows users to navigate non-sequentially.
Learner-Control: Concept-based link refers to information at initial levels since the learner-control: context-based links would reflect deeper levels of information access.
Interactive: Features that allow a level of user-choice (e.g., branching in a linear fashion or non-linear fashion) as well as providing textual input.
Depth of Information: The different levels of information and was represented by features that were linked to other features that were also linked to other features.