Cousin’s article about the „Learning from cyberspace“ depicts a very interesting approach to virtual learning environments. As it has been published in 2005 it draws a picture heavily influenced from the cyberspace.

The hypertext is now more than 40 years old. Nevertheless, it has characteristics that still allow alternative access to information and texts than a traditional text can offer. Others have described the hypertext as a „new writing and reading technology“ (Storrer 2008) –  although in my opinion it is questionable  whether the hypertext as such can be described as technology. The hypertext as a new form of presenting content was introduced in the 1980s by a small circle of information scientists, but initially remained largely limited to use in the scientific community. It was not until the advent of the WWW in the mid-nineties that hypertext gained great popularity. Interestingly, we are still challenged when it comes to writing a text as hypertext, because the numerous links from partial contents towards the inside and towards the outside to other texts enable individual navigation through the text and beyond into foreign web texts. The reception of the text is therefore more difficult to plan than a traditional text. Therefore, when writing the text, navigation as well as the inclusion of foreign texts is always part of the design in addition to the actual content. The reception of the text as a whole is considered and shaped during its creation.

A hypertext is written as a modular text, with chunks or parts of the whole text liked together in many ways. The order of reception is not determined. Therefore the individual text components must be designed as independent modules. This means that a hypertext in its entirety must have redundancy in terms of content so that it can be used in a modular way and still be understood. Redundancy can also mean that the same text parts are referred to again and again by means of links or integration. The text modules are integrated several times in the hypertext in order to point out connections in a certain context and to include them in the text. In this way, complex structures are created which must be accessed several times: by the actual navigation, by tags or by categorising the content.

Thus, hypertext constitutes a ’new cultural norm of communication‘, as Cousin writes (p 119). By referring to Marshall Mc Luhan she proposes that this new way of offering content shapes the way we perceive it. McLuhan’s famous statement ‚The Medium is the Message‘ is also true for the hypertext. If we consider the statement that the Internet is one big hypertext to be true, then the hypertext per se changes our perception.

Even more: Media form a part in our identity formation, therefore the declining use of any traditional media is experienced as a loss (120). Media might even change our behaviour.

Comparing hypertext to a rhizome

With Deleuze and Guattari, Cousin argues that the structure is more like a rhizome which is able to connect any point to any other point. Broken endings can re-grow together and / or build new connections by changing directions. The rhizome is a counter-position to the tree. The tree is a structured and leading textbook, with a given path through an intended learning experience. The rhizome is a less structured, surprising and connected, dynamic, where individual journeys are normal and unforeseeable. As  a student you are asked to decide where to go. You have to decide where to enter and where to exit, you have to know your own motivation why you are doing that or that, and as a consequence, you have to ask your own questions, not answer someone else’s questions.

The six principles of rhizome are connectivity, heterogenity, multiplicity, cartopgraphy, decalomania, an art technique of an image behind glass, like a mirror.

The hypertext shaped as a rhizome offers new approaches to learning. Like depicted in the image above, there is a connection between the two manifestations of the plant on the surface. The rhizome is the connection in the ground, not visible at first sight. Rhizomes are growing in some direction and produces new branches to grow. As the sprouts are all connected they manifest at a certain spot on the ground, so that the plant begins spread in a mapped way. Every phenomenon (the new branch) has its place and builds its own shape. The plant is multiplying itself while keeping the connection between the branches. On the surface the branches seem equally important, there is no hierarchy even though the first branch might look bigger and older than the newer branches and could therefore be identified as some sort of mother branch. But nevertheless there is the idea that the plant manifests itself in the connection of the seemingly separated branches or sprouts.

Transferred to the idea of hypertext, one could now say with Cousin that there is not one clear entry point to the content, from which the other parts are then stored hierarchically in a tree structure, but many possible entry points. This is also interesting in the context of pedagogy, if we assume that many teachers want to instruct their students what to do and where to start. A rhizome would now turn this linear procedure, which we also know from the medium of books, upside down.

Cousin explaines:

‚Perhaps the hypertext function can overcome this difficulty [over-structuring textbooks til de-motivation of the learner; mf] by offering multiple exit and entrance points to a ‚didactic object‘ (Shulman 1999), find their own journeys, drawing and redrawing their maps, replacing static networks with mobile ones, surfing and landing wherever the mood or interest takes them.'(p. 127)

Maybe we should talk more about the journeys, the findings and the reflection in connection to the topics.

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Literature

Cousin, G. Learning from Cyberspace (2005). p 117– 129, Land, R. and Bayne, S. (ed.), Education in cyberspace, London: Routledge Falmer

Angelika Storrer (2008) Hypertext: Ideengeschichte und Begriffsbestimmung.