Untitled - witz cultural

274HYPERTEXT 3.0 ing tools, but rather as learning tools" (139). As Terry Mayes, Mike Kibby,and Tony Anderson from the Edinburgh Centre for the Study of Human-Computer Interaction urge, systems of computer-assisted learning "basedon hypertext are rightly caIled leaming systerns, rather than teaching systems.Nevertheless, they do embody a theory of, at least an approach to, instruction.They provide an environment in which exploratory or discoveryleamingmayflourish. By requiring learners to move towards nonlineal thinking, they mayalso stimulate processes of integration and contextualization in a way notachievable by linear presentation techniques" (229). Mays and his collaboratorstherefore claim:At the heart of understanding interactive learning systems is the question of howdeliberate, explicit learning differs from implicit, incidental learning. Explicit learninginvolves the conscious evaluation of hypotheses and the application of rules. lmplicitlearning is more mysterious: it seems almost like a process of osmosis and becomesincreasingly important as tasks or material to be mastered becomes more complex.Much of the learning that occurs with computer systemseems implicit. (228)Rand f . Spiro, working with different teams of collaborators, has developedone of the most convincing paradigms yet offered for educational hlpertextand the kind of learning it attempts to support. Drawing on LudwigWittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations, Spiro and his collaborators proposethat the best way to approach complex educational problems-what heterms "ill-structured knowledge domains"-is to approach them as if theywere unknown landscapes: "The best way to [come to] understand a givenlandscape is to explore it from many directions, to traverse it first this wayand then that (preferably with a guide to highlight significant features). Ourinstructional system for presenting complexly ill-struchrred 'topical landscape'is analogous to physical landscape exploration, with different routes oftraversing study-sites (cases) that are each analyzed from a number of thematicperspectives" ("Knowledge Acquisition," 187). Concerned with developingefficient methods of nurturing the diagnostic skills of medical students,Spiro's team of researchers involve themselves in knowledge domainsthat present problems similar to those found in the humanistic disciplines.Like individual literary texts, patients offer the physician ambiguous complexesof signs whose interpretation demands the abilityto handle diachronicand synchronic approaches. Young medical doctors, who must learn how to"take a history," confront symptoms that often point to multiple possibilities.They must therefore learn how to relate particular sFnptoms to a variety ofdifferent conditions and diseases. Since patients may suffer from a combi-