Benefit of the WWW-Based Presentations as a Complementary Part of Conventional Lectures in the Basics of Informatics

Hypertext and the WWW appear to have a positive effect on learning. However, the problems associated with the aforementioned may endanger the benefit to learning. Thus, the role and the forms of hypertext and the WWW must be discussed. Due to the common problems of "information overload" and being "lost-in hyperspace" we suggest guided tours in the form of a slideshow presentation as a solution to organizing a hypermedia presentation on the WWW for the basics of informatics. These slides include links to the supporting web sites. In addition to the idea of guided tour, we also suggest that the use of search engines and directories must be promoted. This paper describes the use of the WWW-based guided tours as a complementary addition to conventional lectures in the learning of the introduction to informatics. We analyze the benefit of our WWW-based coursework based on the above approach. The results emphasize three issues. First, the results show that the use of a slideshow with links on the WWW appears to be an effective way to teach the basic concepts of informatics. Second, the results show that links on the slides support a slide presentation and learning. Third, the use of search engines and directories is less significant in our context compared to the use of a slideshow supported by links.