Knowledge Construction and Knowledge Representation in High School Students' Design of Hypermedia Documents

This study documented the processes of knowledge construction and knowledge representation in high school students' hypermedia design projects. Analysis of knowledge construction in linking and structural building yielded distinct types and subtypes of hypermedia documents, which were characterized by four features of knowledge representation: (a) typography, (b) associativity, (c) nonlinearity, and (d) abstraction. Students were found to have diverse knowledge construction processes and considerable variation in their ability to use hypermedia for knowledge representation. Their perceptions of the design experience suggested that difficulty in using hypermedia for conceptual building was related to their lack of experience in intentionally constructing a structural representation. Designing hypermedia documents for content area learning allowed students to be authors of knowledge and thus provided opportunities to develop effective cognitive and knowledge representational skills. This study provided initial evidence of the nature of complex learning in constructing hypermedia documents. Some processes involved in the transformation of knowledge were discussed. However, further research is needed to provide full understanding of the nature of this transformation. (Contains 2 tables, 7 figures and 3 notes.)