Understanding navigation and disorientation in hypermedia learning environments

• Autor(a) principal: Dias, Paulo
• Data de Publicação: 1997
• Outros Autores: Sousa, Ana Paula
• Tipo de documento: Artigo
• Idioma: eng
• Título da fonte: Repositório Científico de Acesso Aberto de Portugal (Repositórios Cientìficos)
• Texto Completo: http://hdl.handle.net/10400.2/16555
• topic: Ambientes hipermédia; Estilos de navegação; Interação; Multimedia; Navigation; ODS::04:Educação de Qualidade

Difficulties with orientation are common in hyperdocuments. This paper describes an exploratory study into the role of a navigation map, as a helping tool, during browsing processes. We tried to establish the influence of this navigational tool, provided by a hypermedia prototype, in retrieval tasks. Twenty-two students tested this prototype and some data were collected: scores obtained in a task-test and a record of the path followed by the subjects. With these data we defined a set of ratios as an attempt to understand the subjects' browsing processes. Findings suggest that the map was not effective in the ameliorative role. Perhaps it is not wise to assume that a map that helps performance in a spatial context also forms an aid in a hypermedia environment under a nonhierarchical model.