Hypermedia
This is a term that was coined by Ted Nelson, in 1965 in an article ‘Complex information processing: a file structure for the complex, the changing and the indeterminate’. Today it mainly relates to the wealth of information on the World Wide Web that uses hyperlinks between pages. Most modern hypermedia is delivered via electronic pages from a variety of systems. Audio hypermedia is now emerging, with voice command devices and voice browsing. As a means of personal learning it allows students to select words in an article that are hyperlinked to other pages elsewhere, which offer further explanation.
You find hypermedia or hyperlinks on a multitude of web pages, which allow the reader to drill through to underlying information. Hyperlinks in web pages are normally of a different colour from the surrounding text and sometimes underlined. By holding the cursor of your mouse over the link, you can see where the link will take you.
The usefulness of this is obvious when reading a complex piece of work which refers to other things that you do not entirely understand; by clicking on the relevant link you are presented with a new page with more in-depth explanations of the problematical area.
Hyperlinks, however, are notorious for failure to connect. If the link has been severed in anyway, for instance the address no longer exists, then they serve no purpose. They can also entice the reader off at a tangent, and away from what they are supposed to be-learning.