A typology for educational interfaces

Interfaces intended to support learning should be considered with respect to a typology based on student audience, constructive functionality, navigation support, cognitive cost and added learning value. Analysed like this, the quality of interfaces used by students has noticeably improved over the past 10 years, in dramatic contrast to the much slower change in pedagogic value of educational software. The potential for the use of computers in support of interaction between learners, their peers and remote information sources has revealed important weaknesses inherent in current approaches to navigation support. Key problems include scaleability, accessing peer learners and the shape and size of information spaces.