Hypertext Environment
Computers finds a unique selling point to
attract customers: their advertisement
shows a young man ecstatic after
getting the latest computer in the market.
However, on his way home, he
reads a billboard sign, which displays that a newer
version of the same
computer is launched. Apart from marketing Gateway
Computer's upgrading
strategy, the advertisement reflects the rate of change in
a
technology-oriented world; the dichotomy being that such rapid
change
undermines the possibility for users to cope with emerging, changing
technology.
The situation exemplifies a new and unstable era for pedagogy
in the age of
information technology where technical communicators must be
provided with a
conceptual framework for the comprehension of malleable
information and complex
discrete elements (Basseur 78-79). Rhetoric plays an
important role in
navigating a technical communicator. In a hypertext
project, it is the
rhetorical framework that aids the communicator to
translate multimedia into a
tool for persuading an audience. For example,
Power Point as software uses the
visual component as the dominant feature to
process information in a graphical
manner. The added components would be
movie files, sound files, animated
graphic, and embedded graphics. Thus,
hypertext environment incorporates
multiple variations of multimedia. For a
novice communicator, it is possible
that the tools may become the focal point
of the presentation, as a Web page
designer using an overabundance of
animated graphics for the sake of visual
stimulation. In the process, the
focus shifts from the gestalt principle of
figure-ground to the creation of
visual noise (Kostelnick-Roberts 59). In this
case, the designer overlooks
the role of the graphics. Instead, the graphics are
used as decorative images
in the broader framework. An instructor teaching
software applications may
run the same risk of concentrating on the utilities
and ignoring the contents
that are stored and manipulated through the functions
of the utilities. As
Basseur explicates in "Visual Literacy in The Computer
Age," "the ease or
efficiency of computer [applications] has the
potential to influence our
choices, often in ways that we not even aware
of." Thus, it is possible for
the designer or the user to lose track in a
"post-modern" landscape with the
lack of "structural design"
(Basseur 92). In "Multimedia and the Learner's
Experience of
Narrative," D. Laurillard emphasizes the importance of a
structural
framework: By contrast with traditional media, one of the key
benefits for
interactive media is seen as being the lack of imposed
structure, giving much
greater freedom of control to the user. However, in
the context of instruction,
this benefit runs counter to the learner's need
to discern structure if there is
a message to be understood. We have found,
from observation in previous research
studies, that learners working on
interactive media with no clear narrative
structure display learning
behaviour that is generally unfocussed and
inconclusive. Thus, one of the key
benefits of interactive media, the greater
learner control it offers, becomes
pedagogically disadvantageous of it results
in mere absence of structure. As
pedagogy faces shifting, ambivalent changes in
a technological world, it is
imperative to uphold the conceptual structure for
the user's navigational
purposes.