B5 – Information Architecture for graph-connected courses

Issue Definition

The Information Architecture influences users’ navigation and their consequent learning. Graph-connected courses allow users great freedom in navigating a course. The most critical issue related to this kind of courses is  however represented by users awareness of course structure and learning objectives. The risk of having users ‘lost in space’ is very high. A very special case of graph-connected courses is represented by full-connected courses. In the latter all nodes are connected in a network so that every one is reachable from all the others. Only very ‘small’ courses can be fully connected since the complexity of the course increases hugely for any additional node.

 

Guideline Text

  1. Limit the number of allowed connections between graph nodes
            1.a Build the course structure taking into account that it will affect users’ navigation behaviour and final learning
  1. Consider the possibility to map some predefined and ‘preferred’ learning paths over the graph course structure