Faculty Spotlight
August - September 2001
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Deepening the Dialogue, |
The Beginning
Dr. David Patterson's fascination with technology began years ago when he stood in line at the University of Utah to buy one of the first Macintosh computers to emerge in the market place. His growing collection of Apple products includes a Macintosh IIci which is currently acting as a web server, another Macintosh which displays his original HyperCard program, and an original PowerBook 100.
His interest in the potential of multimedia to communicate complex
information emerged at the same time, when he chose Apple's innovative
HyperCard to develop his training program for mental health professionals
and graduate students. His multimedia program, HyperAxis II,
trains users to make a specific set of psychiatric diagnoses.
They can test their skills at information acquisition by working
through a variety of screens of material, and then test their
mastery by applying the information in scenarios created to evaluate
their diagnostic skills.
He conducted a study that compared student reactions to learning the material from a training manual and from the hypertext program. Interestingly, the results showed that while students preferred the HyperCard environment, they learned the material equally well in both formats. In addition to the motivation factor, the interactive HyperCard program proved to be very effective for these adult learners because they could make choices about the information that was relevant to them.
His dissertation, "Hypertext Computer Aided Instruction in Training Graduate Students in the Use of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual Axis II" drew upon the much earlier work of Ted Nelson who coined the term "hypertext" in 1974. Nelson articulated some of the foundational principles of heuristic, non-sequential information acquisition that would later be incorporated and transformed as the Web developed.
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