Modalità della presenza universitaria nel Web: Usabilità e interattività nei siti universitari italiani e americani

In the last years, the Internet and the World Wide Web have grown very quickly, and they have become widespread means of communication. In fact, more and more people use the Internet, and more and more services and contents can be found on it.
Recently, the attention is no more focused on the quantity of information, but on the quality; it means that, while some years ago it was important to be on the Internet, now it is important the way information is presented on the Internet.
In this thesis, I analyse the ways universities present themselves on the Internet, considering Jakob Nielsen’s theory about usability, which takes into great consideration the element that can make a Web site more easily readable and usable.
Furthermore, I analyse the level of interactivity of these sites, that is their ability of reacting to external actions producing changes which can be perceived by the user. In particular I have examined the contents of these sites (information and services), in order to check whether they take advantage of the potentialities offered by the new medium.
The first chapter deals with the history and the evolution of the Internet and the World Wide Web, describing the passage from the Arpanet to the Internet.
The second chapter deals with the hypertext, on which the Web is based. The hypertext can be defined as a way of organizing information, and it is constituted by parts of text which are linked reticularly through links. Besides some hints at the history of the hypertext, I have written about some works of literature which were written before the coinage of the term “hypertext” and which can be considered prefigurations of it.
The third chapter deals with the present situation of the Web, its spreading and its contents. Then there are some hints at the portalization, which is the current trend of the Web, characterized by the transformation of sites into portals through the increase of their services and contents. Particularly, I have examined the university Web sites and tried to verify whether they are interested by this trend.
In the forth and fifth chapters there is the analysis of university Web sites from the point of view of usability and interactivity. In particular, in the forth chapter I have analysed all the Italian university Web sites (seventy-eight), considering some relevant elements; in the fifth chapter I have analysed eleven American university Web sites, in order to compare them with the Italian situation.