Empirical navigational paths and general didactical patterns

Stefan Iske, Universität Duisburg-Essen,
EU-Projekt „Electronic Learning and Assistance Network“ (ELAN)

The proposed short paper focuses on a specific field of e-learning: the relation between
general didactical design patterns on the one hand and empirical navigational paths on the other hand.
The paper is based on empirical research on the usage of a hypertextual learningenvironment. The analyzed dataset consists of 1500 paths containing 4700 pages. These empirical navigational paths where analyzed in order to identify similar paths (patterns, structures and regularities), following an heuristic and inductive approach. This approach is based on the method of Optimal-Matching.
In this short paper the aggregation of similar paths into groups will be discussed as well as the identification of patterns within these aggregated groups. The inductively identified empirical patterns will be compared to deductive, theory-driven patterns.
Empirical results will be presented which show the variety and complexity of empirical
navigational paths and which show that the same paths may lead to different learning
outcomes and different paths may lead to the same learning outcome. These results will be located and discussed in a pedagogical context.

References:
• Iske, Stefan (2007): “Navigationsanalyse. Methodologie der Analyse von Prozessen
der Online-Navigation mittels Optimal-Matching”. Duepublico: Essen
• Iske, Stefan (2007): “E-Learning aus Prozessperspektive”. In: Eibl, C.; Magenheim,
J.; Schubert, S.; Wessner, M. (Hg.): DeLFI 2007: 5. Fachtagung Informatik, Lecture
Notes in Informatics (LNI) - Proceedings. Gesellschaft für Informatik (GI), Bonn.

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