dimensional representations, determine what is important and what is not, segment information into nodes, link the information segments by semantic relationships, and decide how to represent ideas. This is a highly motivating process because authorship results in ownership of the ideas in the multimedia presentation.
Students in the Lehrer study were high and low ability eighth graders who worked at the multimedia construction tasks for one class period of 45 minutes each day over a period of several months. The students worked in the school media center where they had access to a color Macintosh computer, scanner, sound digitizer, HyperAuthor software, and numerous print and non-print resources about the American Civil War. An instructor was also available to coach students in the conceptualization, design, and production of the hypermedia programs. Students created programs reflecting their unique interests and individual differences. For example, they created programs about the role of women in the American Civil War, the perspectives of slaves toward the war, and " not-so-famous people " from that period.
According to Lehrer( 1993), " The most striking finding was the degree of student involvement and engagement "( p. 209). Both high and low ability students became very task-oriented, increasingly so as they gained more autonomy and confidence with the cognitive tools. At the end of the study, students in the hypermedia group and a control group of students who had studied the Civil War via traditional classroom methods during the same period of time were given an identical teacher-constructed test of knowledge. No significant test differences were found. Lehrer conjectured that " these measures were not valid indicators of the extent of learning in the hypermedia design groups, perhaps because much of what students developed in the design context was not anticipated by the classroom teacher "( p. 218).
However, a year later, when students in the design and control groups were interviewed by an independent interviewer unconnected with the previous year ' s work, important differences were found. Students in the control group could recall almost nothing about the historical content, whereas students in the design group displayed elaborate concepts and ideas that they had extended to other areas of history. Most importantly, although students in the control group defined history as“ the record of the facts of the past,” students in the design class defined history as“ a process of interpreting the past from different perspectives.” In short, the " design approach lead to knowledge that was richer, better connected, and more applicable to subsequent learning and events "( p. 221).
Lehrer, Erickson, and Connell( 1994) conducted another study with ninth grade students who were using HyperAuthor to develop hypermedia about topics such as World War I, lifestyles between 1870 and 1920, immigration, and imperialism. They found similar results to the aforementioned Civil War project: 1) students ' on-task behavior increased over time, 2) students perceived the benefits of planning and transforming stages of development, and
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