This purpose of this study was to determine if a significant difference existed in the short-term knowledge retention of college freshmen reading informational stimulus materials presented through one of three different text display modes; 1) traditional printed text, 2) computer-displayed linear text, and 3) computer-displayed hypertext. The sample consisted of 267 college freshmen at a southern regional university. The 267 students were randomly selected from the entire population of entering freshmen during Fall 2002. These students were then randomly assigned to one of the three treatment groups. After reading the stimulus materials for a specified amount of time, students completed a multiple-choice knowledge-based test that was designed by the researcher. Analysis of variance (ANOVA) was used to compare scores on the knowledge test across the three different treatment groups. The analysis showed a significant difference in the scores of students in the computer-displayed hypertext and traditional printed text groups, with those reading traditional printed text scoring higher. There was also a main effect for gender, with females scoring higher on the knowledge test than males. There was no significant gender by text display method interaction These findings support the relative efficacy of presenting information to college students in a traditional printed text format under similar conditions.

This paper reports work in progress on an experimental text editor called CREF, the Cross Referenced Editing Facility. CREF deals with chunks of text, called segments, which may have associated features such as keywords or various kinds of links to other segments. Text in CREF is organized into linear collections for normal browsing. The use of summary and cross-reference links in CREF allows the imposition of an auxiliary network structure upon the text which can be useful for "zooming in and out" or "non-local transitions." Although it was designed as a tool for use in complex protocol analysis by a "knowledge Engineer's Assistant," CREF has many interesting features which should make it suitable for a wide variety of applications, including browsing, program editing, document preparation, and mail reading.