A Hypercard engine for future hypermedia applications

This paper will examine what we know so far about Interactive Multimedia (IMM) programs, their potential and use by utilising three perspectives. It will examine several analogies for pointers to the future. It will extract what is most interesting and promising about the most innovative IMM products that have been developed to date. And it will summarise the state of research into computer aided learning so that opinions and suggestions can be offered about the immediate future directions that IMM development could take.

Some of the directions discussed above have been incorporated in the design of a "Hypercard Engine" being developed at The University of Western Australia to power a suite of hypermedia programs, and they will be illustrated through reference to and demonstration of these programs.

Introduction

Analogies provide us with insight into the pitfalls of early technological development such as the crisis of expectations. Before Gutenberg's introduction of moveable type, books were expensive, scarce, limited in scope and subject matter and accessible to a privileged few. Learning to read and write was limited to a select few. After the introduction of moveable type, books eventually became cheap and commonplace, subject range expanded, and literacy became the norm. But it took a very long time to happen. For a long time, no one knew what a book should look like or how it should be produced or mass marketed. Books eventually developed chapters, tables of contents, indexes, footnotes, references, tables and illustrations, but the conventions were slow in arriving.

The slow pace of that development was clearly no pointer to an imminent disappearance of the technology! We can extend the analogy to the current development of IMM programs. We know nothing about the way in which IMM programs should and will develop. We have no knowledge yet of what will be effective, or what will be possible. We are like Gutenberg musing upon his invention, wondering where it will lead. We require patience.

The early development of the motor car is a good example of the approach we commonly adopt when we are faced with a new technology. The first motorised vehicle was conceived as a horseless carriage and it looked very much like a carriage without a horse. Its developers simply went from the known and steadily modified it. The body of the vehicle resembled a carriage, the wheels were like carriage wheels, and the driver sat in the same position as he would have done to guide a horse. The development following the invention of movable type and the introduction of the horseless carriage typifies the fixed thinking patterns we inevitably adopt when we grapple with the implications of technological change.

A second perspective that we can bring to bear upon the future development of IMM applications is through an examination of existing software and applications. Many of the exciting features of the best existing IMM programs incorporate important new pedagogical ideas, such as:

• maps and territories creating the relationship between the abstract and the specific;
• the use of linkage allowing learners to explore through association and by relationships;
• the integration of text images, motion video and sound to form a multi-sensory medium;
• the dissolution of the learner/instructor divide in favour of participatory learning; and
• the further development of user friendly graphical user interfaces.

• computer aided learning;
• user control (individual differences and structured learning);
• interactivity (active rather than passive learning);
• motivation and cognitive engagement;
• learning style, intuition and graphic user interfaces;
• classroom ecology, concentration and time on task; and
• the computer as a tool.

Like the printers who followed Gutenberg and the car designers of the early 20th century, the designers are constrained by the limits of their imaginations, by hardware weaknesses and by the difficulties of creating for a market that does not yet exist. Although there will no doubt be many keys to successful IMM designing, these are likely to include standardisation, the development of effective tools for navigation and manipulation, the sharing of ideas, continuity and familiarity. Standard software packages will begin to emerge. As books developed chapters, tables of contents and the other conventions with which we are so comfortable, so we must begin to develop familiar metaphors and techniques that will ensure the survival and successful exploitation of this promising new field.

Author: Roger Dickinson, Administrative Officer (Technical), Department of Human Movement and Recreation Studies, The University of Western Australia. Please cite as: Dickinson, R. (1992). A Hypercard engine for future hypermedia applications. In Promaco Conventions (Ed.), Proceedings of the International Interactive Multimedia Symposium, 331-333. Perth, Western Australia, 27-31 January. Promaco Conventions. http://www.aset.org.au/confs/iims/1992/dickinson.html