abstract

background

theory

praxis

models

course

a challenge
slow development
web authoring
lessons

references

I take two important lessons from my effort to develop and offer a course on the Theory and Practice of Academic Hypertext. The first lesson grows out of my students' presumption of linearity in academic writing. As Kolb (1994) indicates, our notions of an academic essay are deeply tied to the practice of linearity in writing. While students may not always be capable of producing effective linear arguments when they write, they generally see it as an important goal in their writing. This sense is manifested in outlining, their discussions of organization, and in some of my students' rejection of my efforts to get them to disrupt linearity in their hypertexts.

One explanation for this difficulty in my class might be the linkage to Research in the Disciplines. Students certainly struggled when they came to my class with a linear essay in hand and I asked them to rethink (and re-write) it as hypertext. But I do not think the linkage to Research in the Disciplines was solely responsible for this presumption of linearity. That said, I do think that there was a significant tension (or contradiction?) between the writing assignments for that course, and the composition goals in my course.

The second lesson I take from my experience teaching this course has to do with web development skills. Many of my students had no experience with HTML, HTML editors, or image-editing software before coming to my class. When students conceived of interesting designs for their academic hypertexts, their limited technical knowledge severely limited their ability to put their ideas into practice. This situation is partially a function of the Web Authoring class generally, and of the curricular constraints on Rutgers students. While a number of novice web developers produced fascinating examples of experimental academic hypertext, success here required a great deal of extra effort on their part. I suspect that the final projects for the course might have been more uniformly experimental as multilinear academic hypertext had students entered the class with a more balanced set of technological skills.

lessons, continued

abstract | background | theory | praxis | models | course