Abstract
Explores the effect of interactive overviews on the development of conceptual structure in novices learning from hypermedia. Novices in biology were assigned to identical hypermedia systems equipped with 1 of 2 learning goals. Each subject's goal and overview were either consistent or inconsistent. Cued association and card sorting posttests were administered to provide measures of conceptual structure. Strong main effects of overview structure were found on both measures. The learners' goals had only a small effect on the shape of conceptual structure and there were no significant interactions between goal and overview structure on any measure. It is concluded that, when the learner has no prior knowledge, the influence of an overview is powerful enough not only to guide the structure of a novice's internal representations, but to overshadow the effect of the learning goal during that process. When learners do have some background information, the effect of the overview is significantly reduced. (Original abstract - amended)