JUCS - Journal of Universal Computer Science 4(4): 382-403, doi: 10.3217/jucs-004-04-0382
Applying Metrics to the Evaluation of Educational Hypermedia Applications
Emilia Mendes‡, Wendy Hall‡, Rachel Harrison§‡ Multimedia Research Group, University of Southampton, United Kingdom§ Declarative Systems and Software Engineering Group, University of Southampton, United Kingdom
Corresponding author: Emilia Mendes ( mexm95r@ecs.soton.ac.uk ) © Emilia Mendes, Wendy Hall, Rachel Harrison. This article is freely available under the J.UCS Open Content License. Citation:
Mendes E, Hall W, Harrison R (1998) Applying Metrics to the Evaluation of Educational Hypermedia Applications. JUCS - Journal of Universal Computer Science 4(4): 382-403. https://doi.org/10.3217/jucs-004-04-0382 |  |
Abstract
This paper reports the results of applying metrics to hypermedia authoring under the SHAPE research project. The aim of SHAPE is to help authors develop high quality large hypermedia applications for education. The quality characteristics considered are the reusability of information, the maintainability of applications and the development effort. Although a number of metrics for hypertext systems have been proposed, we believe that many of the measures proposed in the past lack the necessary mathematical and/or empirical justification. The metrics proposed in this paper have been developed using the Goal-Question-Metric approach, and adhere to the representational theory of measurement. We describe the development of the metrics and the results of a quantitative empirical study which compares two different hypermedia authoring systems.
Keywords
hypermedia, reusability, maintainability, hypermedia authoring, metrics, evaluation