Hypermedia Applications for Distance Education and Training

Almost all sectors of modern society have to cope with a rapidly growing amount of information. The knowledge required from persons living and working in such a society is continuously expanding and gets more complex everyday. Education is no longer the exclusive business of schools and universities but has also become a matter of concern for enterprises training their employees. In order to provide products and services of high quality, companies must ensure that their personnel is – and remains – highly qualified. This situation has not only caused a considerable increase of public and private investments in education within recent years (Zimmer, 1990), it has also transformed learning from a process delimited to an individual’s youth into a life-long activity that accompanies work and employment. It is this very feature of learning that serves as a catalyst increasing well known issues in education and training: ♦ The spatial distribution and time constraints of learners lead to difficulties in coordination and integration of training into everyday work. ♦ Innovation cycles of information are sometimes faster than education and training programs for conveying this information to a larger group, i.e., a course may be outdated even before each participant has accomplished it. ♦ The potentials of multimedia materials are not yet fully exploited for today’s teaching nor are they optimally integrated into facilities for education and training. ♦ Inadequate or missing tailoring of information to the background and knowledge of the individual learner reduce the efficiency of courses.