Strategies of teachers as users of interactive multimedia

THIS study reports the results of an evaluation study of a training process that provided teachers with information about how to use an interactive multimedia package for classroom instruction The ways in which the teachers accessed relevant printed text and hypertext information were mapped and analysed. Search patterns for each information source were tentatively classified into two cognitive strategies labelled as 'sequential search strategies' and 'goal-oriented search strategies'. It was found that the 'sequential search strategies' broke down in the non-sequential hypertext environment and users had to be supported by conceptual maps to ensure meaningful outcomes.