November 2001 — Features
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Simplifying the Learning Process Over the Internet
Information and communication technologies, on which new training and learning media are based, have improved the transmission and access of data. But they have not facilitated enough interaction between the user and the information. This interaction is very important for someone trying to learn. Until now, new Internet technologies were taught to improve the speed of access and the quantity of information accessed. There is a need to develop tools to help the user interact with the large amount of information available on the Internet. In this context, we propose a set of computer-aided tools to ease the process of interaction and understanding of the user who is absorbed by the Web.
Navigating Difficulties
The Web is an open, evolving, heterogeneous and nonmoderated space of information with problems related to any large hypermedia system. It contains problems specific to choices and routing through heterogeneous information (Barker 1993). These problems can be characterized as disorientation and cognitive overload (Souza and Dias 1996). Users become disoriented because the link between the subject being searched for and the information shown on-screen is lost (Rhéaume 1997).
With only a screen to work with, users experience cognitive overload because they do not know with what the information shown on-screen is associated. Many decisions must be made in a hypermedia environment, such as which link to follow and how to retrieve important links from those visited or to be visited. The user should be able to find the information they seek by following links to different pages. But getting to important information quickly requires accessing information in a smart way. This entails having the ability to go from one place to another, identify the document reached, evaluate it, save it or memorize its address, and relate it to other documents and information.
Solutions to Browsing Difficulties
The difficulties with browsing would make any user unhappy, especially with the amount of time they spend. In our research, we have found users are aware that there is limited knowledge of the local use of computers. For this development to succeed, those learning to browse the Internet must have a way to keep in touch with experts, even after the research team has left. This point is very important because it shows that the development of a local Internet culture depends on the capacity of the user to move from a situation where the experts are present, to one where help is available when needed.
This last point seems to be one of the most important lessons learned from this research because the use of NTIC (new technologies for information and communication) will depend on it. The availability of a staff to help from a distance, which is a particular form of groupware, is a necessary condition for the development of NTIC. This is not limited to the use of a file or a Web site from a distance, because the notion of distance is transparent to the user. Instead, it is extended to those cases where users are alone and need in-house help. A few years ago, researchers in the area of distance learning studied this problem and determined two main issues: the anxiety of being alone and the inability to organize the work (Moore 1990). Since then, more issues have emerged (Perriault 1996). These mainly concern individual abilities such as:
