The Network and the Classroom: A History of Hypermedia Learning Environments

Abstract

Hypermedia tools for organizing knowledge have long been designed to benefit how people think, learn, collaborate, and generate ideas. Contemporary iterations of these types of “tools for thought” build upon both technology and pedagogy that has been developing since the early days of personal computers. However, despite a multi-decade history of the development of hypermedia knowledge organization tools both within and outside of educational contexts, we see little transformation of the classroom connected to these types of tools today. In this thesis, I argue that examining the history of hypermedia knowledge organization tools by looking at both successful and failed experiments in bringing them into classrooms, one can more deeply understand the conceptual origins of the recent generation of networked knowledge tools and how to avoid challenges that have plagued them in the past when considering where they might fit into today’s classrooms.

Looking across three distinctly different time periods, I examine technical, cultural, and pedagogical shifts that contributed to the changing designs and classroom applications of these tools. I develop a case study describing one application of contemporary hypermedia knowledge organization tools in a middle-school classroom during the Fall of 2020. This case study, a project called “Learning Dens,” builds upon lessons from the previously examined eras, and draws inspiration from contemporary uses of hypermedia knowledge organization tools outside of the classroom for sharing in-progress collections of ideas. Set against the backdrop of the COVID-19 pandemic, this case explores using hypermedia knowledge organization tools in the classroom to support social-emotional learning and reflection.