Abstract:

This study explores the importance of epistemic beliefs in hypertext reading and learning from the hypertext. The rapid developments in the field of Internet technologies, and the attempts to integrate the Internet and hypermedia into educational settings cause many concerns and create new issues for educators to explore. Since students as learners and readers are exposed to more and a greater variety of content from the computer screens, their approach to this medium creates a need to design better environments to promote knowledge acquisition and successful hypertext reading processes. A recent hypertext design theory makes an important contribution to our understanding of this very issue by incorporating the importance of learners' epistemic beliefs. Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to discuss these assumptions, mainly focusing on the role of epistemic beliefs in knowledge construction processes from the Cognitive Flexibility Theory (CFT) standpoint. The reviewed literature suggests that reading in hypertext is different from paper- reading and readers tend to transfer their traditional epistemic beliefs to hypertext environments. As far as learning from the hypertext is concerned, they tend to look for new models. Their epistemic beliefs are also observed to affect their learning processes. Overall, the implications of the current research suggest researchers reconsider readers' and learners' epistemic beliefs into the process of hypertext design.

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