In the eyes of many educators, Interactive Multimedia software that is purported to be educational has failed to deliver its promised potential. The consensus about this apparent failure is the use of an inappropriate instructional design model for Computer Aided Learning or Hypermedia. Earlier models of instructional design developed from the precepts and assumptions that underlie the behavioural/objectivist pedagogy of teaching and learning.
This paper reports a component of a study of instructional design of Hypermedia from a pragmatic constructivist pedagogy of teaching and learning. This interpretative study explicated students' pre-instructional knowledge of aspects of chemistry by means of concept mapping and interviews with purposefully selected students. The emergent hypotheses in the data reconstruction resulted in three major assertions that address students' prior knowledge constructions, students' non-formal language and students' shared life world constructions.
The study argues that students' pre-instructional knowledge constructions can be used to enhance meaningful learning. The implications support: (1) the incorporation of students' lifeworld knowledge constructions; (2) the use of non-formal knowledge; (3) valuing students' lifeworld experiences; (4) developing propositional linkages between students' more common alternative frameworks and formal concepts; and (5) developing propositional linkages between the macroscopic and molecular view of science. The paper discusses the implication arising from the assertions that development of Hypermedia is enhanced if students' lifeworld constructions are incorporated into the instructional design. It argues for a student centred, contextual approach to the design process.
