The effects of navigation tools on student performance and recall in a hypermedia information search task

Measures of performance were collected from a sample of 169 students during an information search task through a hypermedia document. Comparisons were made between four groups given navigation tools that contained different spatial cues for conveying conceptual information. All groups were required to revisit the navigation tool for all navigation choices to ensure equal exposure to the tool across groups. Results indicated no differences between the groups in speed, accuracy or economy. However, the addition of explicit spatial cues to hierarchical information did enhance the students’ recall of page titles. It has been suggested that providing spatial frameworks of document material can enhance aspects of hypermedia use but empirical evidence to date is inconsistent. Previous research indicates that spatial tools modeled after realworld navigational tools (maps or diagrams) appear to enhance performance on some measures (McDonald & Stevenson, 1998) but not on others (Stanton, Taylor & Tweedie, 1992). In order to better understand the influence of different spatial elements on hypermedia use, four different navigation tools were tested, each containing different visual devices for mapping spatial characteristics onto the conceptual characteristics of the document material. Performance in a hyperdocument as it relates to spatial information has been studied fairly extensively across several disciplines (for review see Boechler, 2001). Results of earlier studies on the influence of navigation tools on performance measures may have been clouded by the users’ preference for accessing a particular type of tool over another type of tool. The current study forced users to make all navigation decisions from the navigation tool only, thus the impact of each type of spatial cue on performance and memory should be more salient as all users experienced similar exposure to the navigation tool. The performance measures collected in this study included two efficiency measures (task time and number of pages accessed) and two effectiveness measures (accuracy of locating target information and recall of page titles).