A Method for Reducing Disorientation in Hypermedia Educational Systems

Learners in hypermedia educational systems (HES) often become disorientated and experience cognitive overhead. This study presents a method for reducing disorientation in HES. The study uses two usability methods, retrospective thinking aloud (RTA) and performance measure (PM), to find usability problems in HES that impact participant disorientation. The participants had field independent (FI) and field dependent (FD) cognitive styles. The results indicate that the participants' disorientation degree using the RTA method is significantly less than those using the PM method. For the effect of cognitive styles, only the average search steps index showed that FI learners are significantly less disorientated than FD learners. The results can help designers of hypermedia systems design tools to reduce user disorientation.