Hypermedia has long been considered to have great potential to support educational tasks and applications. Many success stories of hypermedia support in education have been reported. Much of this work has been done in the context of traditional closed hypermedia systems rather than more contemporary open hypermedia systems. Developing hypermedia programs has similarities to normal software development, but the issues are more complex. While program design is important, the design of the educational material and the graphic design of the user interface are probably more important. The impact of hypermedia, multimedia, and Internet communication in education is likely to be the most controversial of all the applications. In the other areas, the success of hypermedia is settled on pragmatic grounds: it depends on whether or not it solves practical problems or answers consumer desires. In education, on the other hand, there may be complications, since, as well as offering a promise of positive change that will improve the quality of education for all, hypermedia also represents a threat to the traditions, values, and practices that have grown up over the years. Developing educational hypermedia differs from corporate, product-oriented research and development. Educational hypermedia applications could offer our schools, colleges and universities a powerful means of enriching the educational experience of their students when (and if) its proper place in the formal educational process can be established. (Contains 1 figure.)