Composing Hypertext

"Critical thinking is the formation of logical inferences. "
Simon and Kapplan, 1989.

"Critical thinking is the development of cohesive and logical reasoning patterns. "
Stahl and Stahl, 1991.

"Critical thinking is "a process which stresses an attitude of suspended judgment, incorporates logical inquiry and problem solving, and leads to an evaluative decision or action." "
NCTE Committee on Critical Thinking and the Language Arts.

As you can see, the common thread through all these quotes is logic, or the idea of logical patterning. Since I come from a web design background, the creation of a hypertext essay was, for me, a directed and deliberate exercise. While I incorporated a number of external and inter-site links into the main body of my writing, I used external navigation to direct the user to what I thought were the most relevant sections for them to read next.

Though these ideas, and the above quotes, may be the best direction to go in when creating a user-friendly and controlled-flow website or analytical essay, the basic structure of a hypertext is very different. It is more like a web of information, where most of the pages reference each other and there may be no central navigation. It is a collection of information that the user navigates with no logical pattern or reasoning, simply following their own desires about what to read next.

My own experience of creating a hypertext was a very logical one, though perhaps it should not have been. I should have made the information more connected, much like everything else is on the internet, instead of trying to direct the reader the way I thought they should go. All the above quotes postulate that critical thinking is the development or creation of thinking patterns, and this is true. But what they failed to mention, and I failed to realize, is that everyone forms thinking patterns in different ways. Information is read and absorbed by different people in different ways and through very different paths, and a hypertext should reflect all the myriad of options available to a user.