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The informants in this study include writers whose orientations range from academic, to business, to creative. They all composed in a hypertextual writing space and published on the World Wide Web. One of my informants did publish a "stand-alone" internally linked CD-ROM, but she also composed for the Web regularly and did not seem to differentiate between the two modes. I note this distinction between strictly internal and online hypertext only as a point of reference. Little distinction of this sort has been made yet in hypertext research and, as my data shows, my informants made little or no distinction as they generally considered hypertext and the Internet as more or less synonymous.
I collected data from seven "major" individual writers, and approximately ninety "minor" writers spread over three courses in the group setting of a classroom. I also collected data from several email correspondents whom I never met. A quality common to my "major" sample profile is that participants had acquired a level of technical expertise that allowed them to exploit a reasonably full range of the multimedial capabilities of hypertext. The "minor" sample had varying degrees of technological expertise from almost none to "bleeding edge." Because the nature of my research is emergent and the activity under study is relatively specialized, contact with one respondent or setting often led to contact with another, as is typical of "snowball sampling." My criteria for terminating sampling was the presence of a fair degree of saturation among the data collected, and the amount of time the informants were willing to contribute. In the instance of as new a phenomenon as hypertext, there is always something new that
emerges; however, at some point one simply must decide to stop and analyze and interpret the data that has been collected.
Finally, having authored extensively in hypertext myself--and having assumed the posture of the "indwelling" inquirer (Maykut and Morehouse 25-36) in relation to this study--I also drew on my own experiences as a hyper-writer.
Following is a brief description of the seven major informants in my study. All respondents described below are represented by short pseudonyms. They all understood and agreed, however, that anonymity could not be guaranteed in this study as it contains hyperlinks to web sites that they authored which do contain identifying characteristics. They were quite comfortable with this as they felt that material on the Internet is "public record" and that nothing sensitive is involved.
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Mac is an experienced writer and educator with a Social Science Master's Degree. She has worked with computers for over twenty years. Mac became intensely interested in and involved with the Internet over ten years ago. For the past five years she has served as the technology coordinator at a large teacher's college. She is responsible for the design and coordination of an extensive web site for their teacher resource center, and regularly teaches courses in web authoring and other related skills to students of all ages and to both aspiring and professional teachers.
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Jay is an experienced writer and educator. He has a Master's Degree in Business Administration. Jay currently teaches in the Communication and Media Studies program at the junior college level, and teaches a course in Business Communication at the university level. Jay and I worked closely together in the early days of the Web to author a relatively complex website for a Business Communication course at the university level. Jay has a particular interest in educational technology which he intends to pursue academically and professionally, and has some background in computer science.
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Lee has undergraduate degrees in both Psychology and Education. She has worked as a web author on university hosted education sites related to her Education courses. One specific site devoted to special and inclusive education was a relatively complex one for which she had primary responsibility. This is the site she referred to most often in our discussions. Lee has done some teaching and has a special interest in the use of technology in education. At the time, she was contemplating graduate studies.
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Mary has a background in English, theatre, and design. She is the director of an educational effectiveness center--a resource center for teaching faculty--at the junior college level. Mary's mandate at the center is to support teachers in the design and delivery of effective curriculum. A major part of Mary's job is to encourage faculty to include hypertextual and multimedial elements in their pedagogy. As part of this mandate, Mary authored a hypertextual CD-ROM that is "an introduction to planning and storyboarding educational multimedia." She also authored a traditional hard copy companion text book. Mary was the only one of my informants to author a "stand alone" CD-ROM with only internal hyperlinks. However, Mary also authored much hypertextual material destined for the World Wide Web.
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Pat is an Internet service provider who also owns and operates a small web design company in conjunction with his brother. In general, they divide the responsibilities as follows: Pat's brother oversees the business part of the operation, while Pat is largely responsible for web site design. Both brothers seem to share equally in the technical aspects of server operation. In addition to his professional web design for clients in the commercial sector, Pat authored and maintains, along with his brother, an extensive informational web site on the subject of elephants in which he has special interest. Pat is also largely responsible for the design and maintenance of another web site devoted to wildlife preservation.
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Don is in his final year of university with a major in Computer Science and a minor in Writing. I supervised Don in an independent study course in which he created a website for a writing course in our program. Don also does some professional web design for a business clientele. He hopes to pursue a career in web site design.
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Rose is a professional creative writer who has published writing in both print and hypertext. Rose has written a number of short pieces in hypertext. Some of these works, including "Girl Birth Water Death" and "8 Minutes," have been included in the curricula of the newly emerging discipline of "hyper-literature" at various universities. Rose is the only informant whom I never interviewed personally. I was led to Rose through various online contacts who felt she would make a worthwhile contribution to my study. Because of a distance of 3000 miles between us, I conducted my discussions with Rose entirely online or by telephone.
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My seven major participants are the core of my study. They are the hyperwriters who "speak" in detail about their perceptions of the new writing space and their writing processes. Data from my other minor informants is included more as contextualizing information. My own hyper-writing experience as "indwelling" inquirer is interwoven throughout like a mediating consciousness
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