1 Providing Feedback To Students In TANGOW Rosa María Carro, Estrella Pulido, Pilar Rodríguez Escuela Técnica Superior de Informática, Universidad Autónoma de Madrid Key words: Distance learning, Human-Computer Interaction, Multimedia and hypermedia in education Abstract: One of most important aspects in web-based learning environments is the need of providing feedback to students so that they know their situation with respect to the totality of the course. In static web-based courses, whose structure is similar to that of textbooks, this feedback information is not too difficult to provide. However, this is not the case for environments that take into account the student profile and her/his actions when following the course. One of these environments is TANGOW (Task-based Adaptive learNer Guidance On the Web), a system for adaptive Internet-based learning implemented by the authors. This paper discusses the importance of providing feedback in web- based learning environments. Afterwards, the feedback mechanisms provided in TANGOW along with their implementation are described. 1. THE IMPORTANCE OF PROVIDING FEEDBACK Internet makes it possible for a great number of users to access a vast amount of information. This is one of the main reasons why education has become one of its main areas of application. The information available is complex and heterogeneous, and existing navigation tools are not powerful enough to guide students in their information search process. Moreover, they are not able to identify specific learning itineraries for students, provided that their goals, previous knowledge and needs can be different. The expression “getting lost in hyperspace”, attributed to Conklin [5], is directly related to the navigational hypertext problems: sometimes Carro, R.M., Pulido, E. and Rodríguez, P. (2000): Providing Feedback To Students In TANGOW. Proceedings of the Segundo Simposio Internacional de Informática Educativa SIIE'2000 at Puertollano, Spain, November 2000. Published at "Informática y Educación para una sociedad interconectada". AIDE. CD available.