The acceptance and effectiveness of hypertext systems in legal education: An experimental evaluation

For years, AI/Expert Systems has been studied for its relevance to the legal field, and to the field of legal and business education. Hypertext is rooted in AI and cognitive science theory and has been proposed to be an advanced tool for learning.; This research seeks two objectives: to study the acceptance of hypertext-based systems for legal education by the students, and to evaluate the effectiveness of such systems. To accomplish the first objective, Davis' Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) was used to model the factors contributing to the acceptance of the system by the students. To evaluate the effectiveness of the system, a controlled laboratory experiment was conducted.; A hypertext system named "O&A" has been developed by the researcher. The system incorporates knowledge from the domain of the offer and acceptance area of commercial law. Senior business students participated in the study as experimental subjects. Each student was randomly assigned to the control group or the experimental group. In the latter case, the student would use O&A to learn the particular domain for a written exercise.; The results indicate the Technology Acceptance Model received general support, but that there is no significant difference in performance between the control and experimental group. Contrary to expectations, five of six hypotheses designed to test effectiveness showed no significant advantage of hypertext over traditional methods. These results were interpreted to have been a product of experimental design limitations, in that students had very restricted exposure to the system in the learning process.; Although the results on teaching effectiveness were not found to be significant, the path analysis for TAM yielded many interesting findings. It can be concluded, at least in the context of the current experiment, that TAM predicts behavioral intention well, that perceived usefulness is not a major determinant of behavioral intention, that behavioral intention is affected more by attitude than by perceived usefulness, and that attitude is more affected by perceived usefulness than by ease of use. Future studies may involve the replication of the current experiment by increasing the intensity of hypertext usage throughout the learning process.