A Cognitive and Social Framework for Shared Understanding in Cooperative Hypermedia Authoring

Creating shared knowledge structures using cooperative hypermedia is a joint activity. The knowledge structures created should fit into the real world environment and reflect the common ground reached and evolved in the cooperation process of the knowledge workers. In order to facilitate the development of shared understanding among knowledge workers, Herbert Clark's theory on language use and Jean Piaget's cognitive theory are applied to the use of hypermedia language in cooperative work settings. To make the theories easier to apply, a conceptual framework is derived from them, which can inform the design and comparison of cooperative hypermedia systems and the use of hypermedia in cooperative settings.