EVALUATING HYPERMEDIA AND LEARNING - METHODS AND RESULTS FROM THE PERSEUS PROJECT

The Perseus Project has developed a hypermedia corpus of materials rel ated to the ancient Greek world. The materials include a variety of te xts and images, and tools for using these materials and navigating the system. Results from a three-year evaluation of Perseus use in a vari ety of college settings are described. The evaluation assessed both th is particular system and the application of the technological genre to information management and to learning. The evaluation used a variety of methods to address questions about learning and teaching with hype rmedia and to guide the development of early versions of the system. R esults illustrate that such environments offer potential for accelerat ing learning and for supporting new types of learning and teaching; th at students and instructors must develop new strategies for learning a nd teaching with such technology; and that institutions must develop i nfrastructural support for such technology. The results also illustrat e the importance of well-designed interfaces and different types of as signments on user performance.