Review: Elmar Stahl (2001). Hyper – Text – Schreiben [Writing Hypertext]

Abstract

Lately, the Internet has been discovered as a tool for studying at schools and universities. Studying by means of hypertext, though, is not always advantageous over studying through the use of paper books. The author examines if students can improve their learning results by writing in hypertext. He investigates whether different instructions by teachers can improve learning results. He shows in three experimental studies that hypertexts become more interlinked by means of the room metaphor, compared to the book metaphor, and by means of categorizing hyperlinks. The amount of knowledge, though, does not change. Together with the preparatory studies, the author presents an impressively detailed study. The scope of the results is, however, somewhat restricted: the subjects do not really write new texts. Instead, they transform the texts that are presented to them into hypertexts. The study is based on quantitative statistical research, but its great potential lies in the evaluation of the subjects' thoughts and commentaries. URN: urn:nbn:de:0114-fqs0401160