Dr. David Ciccoricco
English Programme
University of Canterbury

Dr. Billy O'Steen
University Centre for Teaching and Learning
University of Canterbury

ABSTRACT

This webtext considers one application of digital tools for English pedagogy. A joint study undertaken between the English department and the university's center for teaching and learning, it focuses on a web site built collaboratively by the students of an English course on digital narratives. The second-year English course convened at the University of Canterbury in Christchurch, New Zealand, and is called "Digital Narratives in Digital Culture." It requires two conventional essays and a final project, which are the student web projects discussed here.

The study is intended to explore the learning outcomes of an English course in which digital texts become both the object of study and the means of assessment. The authors suggest the web project serves as a possible example of a transitional pedagogy where two ways of organizing and presenting information — of writing — are used simultaneously and toward mutually enhancing ends.

Instructions for Use

The nodes of the webtext are self-contained so readers can move through them in any order, but they are roughly organized in terms of (1) a theoretical and historical context of digital technology in English pedagogy; (2) details on the Digital Narratives course and the Final Web Project; and (3) examples and post-analysis of student work.

There is one navigational convention that has been added to this webtext, which, in a journal with a hyper-self-awareness of its own structural evolution and innovation, should be thought of as integral rather than peripheral to its form.

Roll-over links to student work are embedded in the graphical banner of each node. This banner image is a slice of the same image that serves as the navigational index at the start of each student web project. In every live web, "selecting a zero or one" pulls up a name of one of the students followed by the year they were in, offering multiple entry points in the absence of any privileged one. In this regard, the webtext itself functions as a meta-index, a digital text linking digital texts assembled by students across the years.

Readers can also go directly to the 2005 Final Web Project, which serves as the primary reference for this study.

Mel - class of 06 Joe - class of 05 Todd - class of 07 Llew - class of 06

I.

You Can Start Here
On the Digital
Threat / Salvation
On English Pedagogy & Contemporary Contexts
On the Course:
Motivation & Inception
Nothing Too New

II.

On the Literary
Annotations
Arguments
Reflections
On the Technical

III.

Students as DesignWriters
Examples and Analysis
Implications

IV.

References