Hyperlectures: Teaching Postmodern Culture on the Web

One of the major didactic difficulties, regardless of the kind of knowledge that must be learnt, seems to be that of ensuring a correct "transfer" of information from the teacher to the learner. This "transfer", as Plato already illustrated, may be problematic because of what happens in the "head" of the learner, something which ultimately influences what the learner herself can understand - see also (Ambroso 1999). In order to guarantee a successful information transfer, it is therefore necessary that the teacher adopts a series of strategies taking into account how information is processed by learners. Cognitive science may help in this respect to shed a new light on how information is received, processed, stored and ultimately retrieved when facing real-life situations - see, for instance, (Dix et al. 1993). From these characteristics, it is indeed possible to draw different learner profiles, different learning models.

Traditionally, according to van der Veer (1990), the individual characteristics that HCI (Human-Computer Interaction) takes into account while conceiving interfaces and user-friendly systems include:

learners' personality, mainly in terms of introvert or extrovert behaviour;
the cognitive styles that students follow while learning, either a verbal or a visual style;
the strategies they exploit for learning, namely a heuristic or systemic procedure;
finally, the structures they use to represent the knowledge they have acquired. These structures ultimately reflect the different long-term memory modalities employed to process information, i.e., semantic or episodic structures.
Once this assumption is accepted, the teacher must satisfy all these requirements in order to be able to support the learner in gaining the most efficient learning possible. IT (Information Technologies) take part in this dialogue by helping the teacher to assume perfectly her role of "learning facilitator according to the learner's pace and modalities" (Ambroso 1999).
It is with this intention in mind that we have started to develop a series of hyperlectures on postmodern culture and philosophy which are completely taught online. The term "hyperlectures" was originally coined by Frode Ulvund (1997) to indicate "a multimedia lecture transferred on the internet" and later rephrased by Rob van Craenenburg (forthcoming) in his series of online lectures on culture. In the context of this presentation, it will be used to indicate a courseware that has two characteristics: conceptually, it is adaptive, and structurally, it is layered (see below). These hyperlectures originate from the two separate courses on "Interactive Narrative" and on "Technology and Culture" which were taught last year within the MSc in Multimedia Systems at TCD. As such, they have a dual objective: on the one hand, they intend to show the development of hyperfiction, i.e., of electronic fiction, from its early attempts still in a paper-based medium to the current computer-based works. According to some scholars (see, for instance Landow 1997), there is indeed a strict relationship between the theory of literature and the theory of hypertext: the former theorises the open work, that the latter ultimately embodies and tests. In this respect, understanding hyperfiction implies a definition of both the medium hypertext and the more theoretical narrative principles implicit in any text: story formation, the notion of the plot, the role of both author and reader, the mutual actions they are required to play. On the other hand, since hyperfiction has emerged and imposed itself in recent years, it becomes important to understand the dominant way of representing and of thinking of reality, the present major philosophical discourse, what is referred to as postmodernism.

The hyperlectures on postmodern culture build on the expertise acquired through two previous experiences at developing Internet-based courseware: they include the development of an adaptive courseware to teach hypertext to MSc students in Computer Science, which is still in use and has been used by several universities in Europe, and an adaptive courseware to teach business Italian to MA students in Romance Philology, which has only been developed for experimental reasons. Whereas the former experience focused on the setting up of a methodology for knowledge acquisition on the Web that progressively keeps into account every student's learning proficiency within the field of a mainly technology-oriented education (Calvi and De Bra 1997), the other project examined the validity of this same framework in a more linguistic domain when combining the "situated" teaching of Italian with the acquisition of a domain-specific knowledge like the Italian present economic reality (Calvi in press). What these Web-based courses have in common is the approach that was used in designing and developing them, i.e., the need to adapt to users. User's adaptivity and customisation is a sort of number 0 rule to make an efficient use of the Web and to ensure that results will be significant in terms of learning. This also means being able to cope with the problems raised by knowledge globalisation and cultural differences. And still, preserving one's specific characteristics in the view of the safeguard of minority languages and cultural heritage that has become so prominent in EU policies. In the investigation of the educational possibilities of hypertext for learning, these issues have become relevant (see, for example, (Brusilovsky 1996):

the necessity to adapt information to users, i.e., to provide information according to users' learning needs, level of competence achieved thus far, goals, and preferences, in order to facilitate learning (a user-tailored approach to information presentation);
the complementary requirement of fostering both textual and conceptual coherence in structuring information;
the subsequent need to limit, if not to avoid completely, cognitive overload while users process information by appropriately determining the sequences of nodes and links to be consequently shown to users.
It is a sort of "guided pulling" (Perrin 1998), where it is up to the learner to choose which further step to take in the acquisition process in an intimately autonomous way because the system does not hinder in any way his/her exploratory behaviour. The process of progressively unveiling links does not indeed correspond to the common notion of "guided tours", although it is always the teacher/designer who determines not only how the content material can be presented to students, but also how it can be structured and how its concepts can be interconnected to one another.
The postmodern course is now being followed by two sorts of students: students enrolled in a Master's programme in Multimedia Systems at TCD, who have a very heterogeneous academic background (from engineering to biology, from communication studies to sculpture and painting), although the master is taught within the Computer Science department; and students enrolled in a Master programme in Romance Philology at the University of Antwerp, who have therefore a mainly humanistic background. By the end of the course (in a couple of months, therefore well before the conference is scheduled) data about their interaction modalities with be systems will become available for analysis. This will allow us to verify if the design guidelines that have been chosen have matched onto actual use.

During the presentation we will describe in details the hyperlectures from the point of view of both its design rationale and objectives and will relate it to the previously acquired experiences mentioned above in order to outline the methodological and pedagogical implications behind the use of hypertext in education.

The course can be found at the URL <wwwis.win.tue.nl/~calvi/pmw>.

References

Ambroso, S. (1999). "Nuovi orientamenti nella didattica dell'italiano come L2". Proceedings of the conference "La didattica dell'italiano lingua straniera oggi. Realtà e prospettive", VUB Press.
Brusilovsky, P. (1996)."Methods and Techniques of Adaptive Hypermedia". User Modeling and User-Adapted Inetraction 6(2-3):87-129, 1996.
Calvi, L. (In press). "Business Italian via a Proficiency-Adapted CALL System", in D.P. O' Baoill (ed.), Special Issue of TEANGA 18, 1999.
Calvi, L. and De Bra, P. (1997). "A Proficiency-Adapted Framework for Information Browsing and Filtering in Educational Hypermedia Systems". International Journal of User Modelling and User-Adapted Interactions, 7:257-277.
Dix, A., Finlay, J., Abowd, G. and Beale, R. (1993). Human-Computer Interaction. Prentice Hall.
Landow, G. (1997). Hypertext 2.0. The Convergence of Contemporary Critical Theory and Technology. The Johns Hopkins University Press.
Perrin, M. (1998). "What Cognitive Science Tells us About the Use of New Technologies". Paper presented at the Conference "Languages for Specific Purposes and Academic Purposes--Integrating Theory into Practice", Dublin, 6-8 March 1998.
van Craenenburg, R. (forthcoming). Teaching Culture in a multi-linear Environment. Intellect Books.
van der Veer, G. C. (1990). Human-Computer Interaction. Learning, Individual Differences, and Design Recommendations. Offsetdrukkerij Haveka B.V., Alblasserdam.
Ulvund, F. (1997). "Hyperlectures - Teaching on Demand". Paper originally presented at Cincinnati Symposium on Computers and History, University of Cincinnati, Cincinnati, OH, May 2-3 1997 and at the XIIth International Conference of the AHC in Glasgow, UK, June 30 - July 3 1997, online reference.