Orienting Tasks and Their Impact on Learning and Attitudes in the Use of Hypertext

The purpose of this study was to determine the effects of various external orienting tasks on learning, learner attitudes, and en route behaviors in the use of an educational hypertext system. Thirty-one sophomore students enrolled in three honors sections of an introductory military history course at the United States Air Force Academy served as subjects in this study. During three 50-minute class periods, the participants used a hypertext database containing approximately 200 articles on airpower in World War I. Each section was given one of three orienting tasks--one in which they were asked to browse the database to learn the content (browsing condition), a second in which they were required to answer factual questions about the material in the database (searching condition), or a third in which they were required to answer conceptual questions (connecting condition). Results indicated that the connecters performed the best on conceptual understanding of the material, followed by the searchers with the browsers performing the worst. Connecters also reported the highest levels of database utility for completing their task and the posttest. These findings indicate the powerful nature of an orienting task and the positive impact of conceptual questions on learning and attitudes. ********** One of the most compelling features of hypertext is the ability of readers to access materials in nonlinear, idiosyncratic ways. In contrast, print-based materials are essentially linear in nature and readers are expected to approach them from a similar perspective. The use of hypertext is not merely a change in how documents are read, but rather represents a fundamental change in how we define documents (Martin, 1990). The most common example is the World Wide Web (WWW or Web). Although composed of "pages," the form and content of existing websites varies dramatically. The flexibility of information access in hypertext is particularly important in educational applications (Shapiro & Niederhauser, 2004). For example, a hypertext designer can create alternative structures for novice and expert learners. However, as Jonassen, Peck, and Wilson (1999, p. 92) argued, it may be more important to "think of hypermedia primarily as an environment to construct personal knowledge and learn with, not a form of instruction to learn from." In other words, hypertext is less about the transfer of a message and more about the message constructed when a learner interacts with a variety of materials. Despite the relative novelty of hypertext, the existing research literature in education can certainly be referenced to guide its use. For example, there exists a large body of empirical research on learner control and metacognition that suggests that when learners are given control, they often make poor choices (Steinberg, 1989). Although this research was largely focused on didactic instruction, it does provide a cautionary tone for all forms of educational materials that rely heavily on student control. The challenge to hypertext researchers is how to take advantage of the flexible nature of the medium without the potential pitfalls suggested by previous research on learner control. The type of learner control found in hypertext is different from that found in more linear computer-based instruction. Gall and Hannafin (1994) suggested that there are four possible learner control structures in accessing hypertext: browsing, searching, connecting, and collecting. Browsing is a casual perusal of information motivated by interest. Searching, on the other hand, is a systematic scan for a particular piece of information. Connecting is the linking of related concepts. A learner may functionally create the link, or more commonly, a link is provided in the design and the learner's linking becomes a cognitive exercise. Finally, collecting is an essentially learner-centered activity in which a learner creates an artifact (which itself may be hypertextual in nature) to represent his or her understanding. …