Moves in hypertext : the resource of negotiation as a means to describe the way students navigate a pathway through hypertext

With the increased use of hypertexts to locate information, students need to make informed decisions about their pathway so they build knowledge efficiently. The moves they make need to contribute to understanding the topic more than detracting them. This paper explores the use of Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL) to describe the construction of a text (pathway) by a group of students during a search session on a given topic. Student-created pathways from a Year 4-5-6 classroom in an Australian school were recorded using two CDROM programs: ENCARTA 96 and The Way Things Work v2. The research draws upon the concept of moves (Eggins & Slade, 1997) and negotiation (Martin, 1992) in casual conversation to develop a hypertext negotiation system. The system outlines the choices made by members of a user group at the point of interaction with each other and with the hypertext via the mouse or keyboard.