A proficiency-adapted framework for browsing and information filtering in Web-based educational systems. Methodological implications for language learning on the WWW

The increasing use of technology in education poses critical questions on its potential dangers and inherent possibilities for learning, and raises fundamental issues for any sound theory of learning. For example, does the mainly quantitative advancement fostered by the technology, i.e., the increase in the amount of information students can access, correspond as well to an improvement in the quality of its understanding and of the knowledge that results from it?; This work presents an inter-disciplinary research which, from a mainly epistemological perspective, tackles the problem of determining the impact educational technologies may have on learners in terms of the cognitive assumptions such technologies are based upon and of the learning objectives that can be expected from them. In particular, the possibility inherent in hypertext to access information in a self-motivated and self-directed way, i.e., according to cognitive frameworks that are coherent for the individual user, implies the necessity to find a balance between information accessibility, on the one hand, and information flexibility, on the other hand.; In order to foster one such balance, we propose a framework for self-modifying hyperdocuments which is based on the user's cognitive capabilities in terms of learning proficiency.