Critical success factors for hypermedia instruction in higher education

The research reported in this study involved the development of a survey instrument which was used to gather the perceptions of university faculty regarding the environment for multimedia/hypermedia instructional development at their respective universities. The surveyed faculty had been identified through a literature review as having successfully developed a multimedia/hypermedia instructional project within the past several years. The survey instrument sought to capture their perceptions of the current state of development and the desired future state of development for a variety of factors categorized as either technical, organizational, faculty, student learning, or change factors. These factors as well as the various states of development for each factor as expressed on the Likert-type scale used in the survey were also derived from the literature review and are regarded for the purposes of this study as "critical success factors" in multimedia/hypermedia instructional development. The results of this study indicate that surveyed faculty perceive the current university environment for multimedia/hypermedia instructional development to be one where their own attitudes toward student learning and change are relatively well developed but one where technology and policy regarding faculty empowerment, support and reward is lagging behind. Analysis of the results from this study led to the development of a preliminary model for guiding universities interested in integrating multimedia/hypermedia instruction into their teaching/learning process.