Comunicar 39-ingles - Revista Comunicar

140Comunicar, 39, XX, 20121. Introduction. The hypermedia interface as thenew paradigm of communicationThe start of the 21 st century has seen a huge in -crease in the number of hours the youth spend onusing new technologies, which has led to numerousstudies into why video games are so attractive. Themodel presented in Epigraph 3.3 can be used andredirected for the transmission of cultural and educationalcontent through new media. Gee (2003: 200-212) underlines the importance of studies from theperspective of learning about the new media elementsthat young adults find most attractive.To study the hypermedia interface was the mainpurpose of this research since it is the main technologicaland expressive channel that gives access to inter -active and multidirectional media communications.New media integrate the qualities of interactivity andmultimedia within the digital interfaces. The hypermediainterface is changing the human communicationsystem due to its interactive ability as well as the multisensoryqualities of the hypermedia. Each hypermediaelement that forms part of the interface is locatedexactly between the information flow generated byseveral communicative actors, the original author ofthe interactive media product and its users, players,students or receptors. According to Osorio & Duart(2010) «interaction can be defined as the cognitiveand social actions between the actors of the educativeprocess (student-professor, student-student) in thedevelopment of the learning activities». The term interactivityused in this research is also similar to the definitiongiven to it by Meadows (2003: 37-39) «to denotethe relationship between the human/s through anobject, the computer [...] The interactivity requires thefulfillment of a series of guidelines to have flow».This approach can also be used to answer importantcontemporary questions in the area of educommunicationand alphabetization with new media.Questions that are important to find answers to, suchas: how can we develop immersive interfaces for educationalcontent?, or González-Faraco and Gramig -na’s (2009) statement that «by studying both the logicof video games and how players understand them, wecan develop interesting ideas for re-thinking theorieson knowledge and education».The interface is defined by the «RAE dictionary»,«Diccionario de la Real Academia de la LenguaEspañola», as «the physical and functional connectionbetween two devices or independent systems». «TheNew Oxford American Dictionary» describes the inter -f ace as «a point where two systems, subjects, organizations,etc, meet and interact». In this sense, the interfaceis the physical and functional connection betweenthe interactive communicative system, its interactiveaesthetic and narrative expressions and the human systemof perception and communication. It is Moreno-Muñoz´s (2000: 114) definition that fits best with thisresearch: «the mixture of hardware and software thatthe reader-author uses to communicate with thehypermedia program». The interface synthesizes theconjunction of interactive expressions and educationalcontent organized within the multi-sensorial representationspermitted by informatics. The author-sender ofthe didactic communication manages the technologicalpossibilities in order to transmit educational representationsand narratives. Thus, he will try to create originalexpressions organized in an attractive multimediaform that can stimulate a new interaction in the student.Then, he becomes a reader-author, receptorsender,even student-professor committed to the learningprocess. The main goals and motivation behindthis research were to find those principles that addquality and depth to interactions with the hypermediainterface and the edutainment content.2. Material and methodsThe material and methods used in this researchintegrate an interdisciplinary approach that resultsfrom the complexity of the hypermedia interface. Itincludes areas of interactive communication andnarrative with perception, education and psychology,among others. The following materials observe anddescribe how the original form of that fusion betweencommunicative expressions and narrative representationsoccurs thanks to the hypermedia interface. Thisresearch was initially conducted by the application ofnew models of communication and analysis of thehypermedia elements, tested on several educationalinterfaces over a period of 8 years using discussiongroups, surveys, questionnaires, multi-camera observations,content analysis, etc. The models presentedhave been applied to different educational and culturalinteractive media projects, and this paper includes theimproved versions of these models. The conclusionsof previous research were applied to several projects,like the creation of an online interactive museum(www.multiculturalvideos.org) presented at theCommunicability Workshop, ACM Multimedia Con -fe rence (Mora, 2008), or the prototype which wonawards for a massive cultural multiplayer online gamecalled Exchanging Cultures EC Game. These conclusionswere also applied to the design and softwareselection of the international cooperation educationalintervention for hypermedia alphabetization in Peru© ISSN: 1134-3478 • e-ISSN: 1988-3293• Pages 139-149