technology in teaching literature and culture:some reflections

Computers and the Humanities34: 311–324, 2000.© 2000Kluwer Academic Publishers. Printed in the Netherlands.

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Technology in Teaching Literature and Culture:Some Reflections∗

SARAH PORTERHumanities Computing Development Team, Humanities Computing Unit, University of Oxford(Email: [email protected])

1. Introduction

In March 1998 the UK Computers in Teaching Initiative’s Centre for TextualStudies hosted a one-day conference entitled ‘Teaching European Literature andCulture with Communication and Information Technology’. The lengthy titlewas justified by the specific purposes and focus of the conference: to considercurrent teaching of European Languages using C&IT, taking a broader view ofthe subject than language study alone and including the cultural, historical andliterary elements that complement and inform the learning of a language. There isa general perception in higher education that technology has little to contribute tothe study of literature and culture. The conference aimed to redress the balance bygiving practitioners the opportunity to share their experiences of using technologyto teach literary and cultural studies, and to provide a platform for discussion.

This paper first addresses some of the reasons for such lack of research into theuse of technology towards teaching literature and culture within modern languages,and then explores three basic questions: how can technology make a valuablecontribution to the teaching of literature and cultural studies? How does technologyaffect the relationships between subject matter and teaching methodology? And,are there implications here for traditional boundaries between subject areas?

2. CALL’s Poor Relation?

Computer-assisted Language Learning is highly successful, both as an area ofresearch and as a practical methodology for the enhancement of traditional teachingmethods. This great success has led to a situation where the use of technology forteaching aspects of language studies other than language acquisition has frequentlybeen overlooked. As a discipline, Modern Languages has constantly fought theperception that undergraduate study is little more than a vocational qualification inwhich a skill is taught and rehearsed, with limited emphasis upon critical thinking

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and understanding of issues relating to literature, philosophy, politics and culture.This perception is confirmed by the huge amount of literature available to guidestudents and teachers in the field of language acquisition, in which strategies forimparting and developing expertise in languages are discussed in depth.1 Simi-larly, this is an extremely active area of research in many universities, schools, andcolleges around the world; one has only to begin counting the number of languageresearch centres, national and international organisations, and language-learningconferences to become aware of the number of language practitioners who havean interest in this area. Language learning is one of the most productive areas ofpedagogic research at all levels of education.

The situation is not helped by the existence of different camps within languagestudies. Often, teaching and research staff specialise in one of language acquisition,linguistics, contemporary culture or literature, with relatively little exchange ofideas occurring between these fields. As computers have so clearly proved theirvalue for language teaching, fuel is added to the anti-technology stance common insome of the other areas of specialisation. Also, language teaching by nature has agreater tendency to reflect upon and describe pedagogic methodologies than is thecase within literary and cultural studies.

For some or all of these reasons, the non-language components of higher levellanguage teaching are barely visible in the pedagogic literature.2 This clearly doesnot reflect their status in many taught university courses, where the study of liter-ature and culture is of high academic status and has played a central role in modernlanguage departments for many years. Indeed, some of the more traditional highereducation institutions have in the past been accused of placing more emphasison study of the literature of a culture than on acquisition of spoken fluency in alanguage. However, Literature’s privileged place in language studies has now beenchallenged and other cultural forms, such as film and television, are frequentlytaking its place. This provides new challenges to teachers of languages, for existingpedagogic approaches and for the discipline as a whole. It is argued that thenew emphases we are seeing in the syllabi of language study, including inter-disciplinary components such as Area Studies, are leading to new developmentsin the discipline itself (Polezzi, 1996). New subject areas could profitably give riseto new and innovative teaching methodologies, and these changes provide us witha judicious point at which to give fresh consideration to teaching methods. Foralthough the media employed may be changing, the message is still the same: it isessential that language studies should include core components that require criticalthinking and depth of understanding. So, how can teaching of these areas best beachieved using C&IT?

In the literature of technology-assisted learning, there is little beyond thatwhich describes methodologies to harness technology for language acquisition: theacquisition of specific vocabulary, testing and improving grammar competency,aural and written comprehension of the second language. In general, literary orcultural resources and materials are used only towards the practice of particular

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language competencies. The papers given at the ‘Teaching Literature and Culturewith C&IT’ conference focussed instead upon examples of the teaching of liter-ature and culture coming together with technology to enrich the learning process.The collection also describes examples of practice drawn from the teaching ofliterature in its own language, primarily within English studies. This is becausethe teaching methodology of these subjects has many features in common withthe teaching of European literature and culture, for obvious, though frequentlyoverlooked, reasons. It is interesting to note that as the emphasis upon Literature islessened in some language courses, language studies components are increasinglyincluded within English studies courses in the UK. Initiatives such as the ‘Speak-Write’ project at the Anglia Polytechnic University (Bryan, 1997) are looking atthe way the study of literature is used as a basis for increasing general literacyskills, which is strikingly similar to the role of Literature in the traditional modelof second language teaching.

The conference collection does not attempt to present examples of teachingliterature and cultural studies with C&IT as exemplars, because we do not yetknow enough about what is required to make that judgement. However, they areinteresting projects that present varied perspectives and can thus be used as a basisfor discussion of some important issues.

3. Using C&IT to Teach Literary and Cultural Studies

This section of the paper provides an overview of some recent and current projectsfrom a common analytic perspective: examination of the teaching methodologyused and of how the technology influenced successful use of that methodology.

3.1. THE DIGITAL VARIANTS PROJECT

This project grew out of the development of a research archive, which has no doubthelped its application to teaching in an innovative and challenging way. Workingwith writers such as Antonio Millán, Roberto Vacca and Francesca Sanvitale, theproject’s web site makes available a number of drafts of each author’s work, withthe variants in the text highlighted and linked by hypertext, as well as sound record-ings of interviews with the authors; the text transcriptions can also be comparedto the manuscripts in digital format. The resources allow a user access to other-wise inaccessible materials, and, most importantly, to follow the decisions madeby the authors during the authoring process. Thus the resources potentially allowusers to learn on a number of different levels, as exploited by the University ofEdinburgh’s department of Italian where the Digital Variants archive has been usedto teach language learners skills of literary analysis, and in particular analysis of theauthorial process, with some refinement of language skills as a ‘by-product’. Animportant part of the teaching strategy was that use of the IT resources is extremelywell integrated into regular face-to-face sessions. Many implementations of tech-

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nology involve its use as a support tool or as an additional source of materials,but in this case the IT resources were an essential part of the course and weregiven substantial amounts of class time. The tutors’ attitudes towards the tech-nology were also influential; for example, IT training sessions on using the Weband word-processing packages for research activities were carried out in parallelwith introductions to new research skills, such as analysis of a critical edition. Itwas thus made clear to the students that tutors perceived IT research skills to be asimportant and relevant to their studies as the more traditional research skills theyare also taught.

The nature of the learning that was undertaken by the students encouraged themto be reflective about the technology and their own learning process throughoutthe whole seminar series. Students articulated their responses by completing aquestionnaire at the end of the final seminar; examples of these are given in thepaper by Fiormonte et al. (1999). Examples of the exercises the students completedalong with all the project materials are available from the Digital Variants web siteat http://www.ed.ac.uk/∼esit04/digitalv.htm.

3.2. THE PÉREZ GALDÓS EDITIONS PROJECT

Benito Pérez Galdós is one of Spain’s most celebrated realist authors and is thuswidely studied at undergraduate level. The Pérez Galdós Editions Project combinestwo complementary aims: to publish a new scholarly edition of Galdós’s worksin traditional format complete with apparatus; and to make available an elec-tronic collection of scholarly materials which complement the paper edition. Theelectronic collection, to be published on CD-ROM, will include full, searchableeditions of all the texts and also draw together otherwise inaccessible materialssuch as the manuscripts, galley proofs, serialised versions and first editions, withother research tools such as indexes and concordances. There will also be somemultimedia background material, such as maps and other relevant images. Theelectronic collection will thus contain more material in more varied formats thanthe scholarly print edition and is openly aimed at academic rather than popularuse, which is reflected in its selection of serious, scholarly content. It is hoped thatstudents may find the use of digital search tools and editions gives them an easierroute into the text, particularly where language may be something of a barrier tounderstanding (Davies, 1999). A web page for the Pérez Galdós Editions Project islocated at http://www.shef.ac.uk/uni/projects/gep/.

Whilst the project clearly has a strong research orientation, it also has inter-esting implications for teaching and learning at undergraduate level. By collectingtogether into a single source the type of resources that would normally only beaccessible to a determined researcher, the project developers are opening up schol-arly research to a far wider community. This raises a number of issues for a tutorwho is considering directing students towards these types of sophisticated researchresource, as undergraduates cannot be presumed to have the skills needed to work


with this kind of material. The use of complex research tools by undergradu-ates requires careful introduction and ongoing support.3 In addition, it is not yetclear whether the new information interrogation techniques afforded by automaticindexing and searching help or hinder the development of independent researchskills. We need to think carefully about the implications of this for the future ofscholarship and for the special relationship a scholar builds with resources that canbe accessed by only a select few.

3.3. THE COMMUNIQUÉ PROJECT

The resources at the Communiqué web site are centred on specific taught courses inliterature, language and culture, and the structure of the site reflects this focus. Thesite was developed through collaboration between an academic and an educationaltechnologist, and this has led to a reflective and thoughtful approach to the develop-ment of the resources. Among the more complex sections of the Communiqué siteis the ‘Introduction to Contemporary France II’, where frames and hyperlinks havebeen used to allow students guided access to poetry written inverlan, or slang; thepoems are re-produced in full and additional frames provide access to an onlineglossary of terms. Also included is ‘Les chemins du savoir’, a collection of over ahundred short texts or ‘textèmes’ which have been selected to relate to the themesof the course. Students can perform word or phrase searches and explore themesacross a number of different texts in a non-linear fashion. Communiqué can beaccessed at http://www.sunderland.ac.uk/∼us0cma/comm.html.

The teaching strategy for this application of technology was carefully thoughtout and implemented. In brief, the aims were ‘to improve the quality of studentparticipation in both lectures and seminars, to encourage wider reading ofsecondary sources, and to develop essay writing skills’ (McNeill, 1999). The tutorfelt that IT could help to meet these aims by offering more stimulating ways ofdelivering content and supporting learning. He explored several different methodsof delivering materials in different formats as he believed that web resources holdadvantages in terms of access, easy updating, easier administration, offering flex-ibility for the student and the opportunity to use multimedia. In the successfulcases, IT resources were well integrated into the teaching schedule of lectures andseminars or offered possibilities beyond the confines of the traditional teachingparadigm – for example, they offered better supporting materials and/or the possi-bility of communication among students and tutors between lectures and seminars,creating ‘more space’ beyond the few contact sessions scheduled per week. Inaddition, the use of web resources allowed the students to share more of the respon-sibility for their learning with the lecturer. An informal evaluation of the web-basedelement of the course was carried out through ‘observations of and discussionswith students’ and found that the students felt more confident and relaxed with thesubject matter of the course because of the added guidance and support offered bythe web element.

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3.4. VIRTUAL SEMINARS FOR TEACHING LITERATURE

This project has produced four online tutorials for teaching the poetry of the FirstWorld War. It was developed with a dual purpose: firstly, to provide high-qualityteaching materials for use by teachers all over the world and, secondly, to exploreissues of using technology in teaching by giving concrete examples of ways inwhich technology can enhance teaching methods. The latter aim is seen mostclearly in the third of the four tutorials, ‘An Introduction to Manuscript Study’which uses digital versions of Wilfred Owen’s manuscripts for ‘Dulce et Decorumest’ to introduce the student to the academic skills used in the close study of manu-scripts. Students study four different manuscripts for the poem, and then use thedecisions they make about the chronology of the manuscripts to create their ownedition of the poem. Using methods that are coincidentally similar to the DigitalVariants project, this tutorial gives step-by-step instructions for the developmentof skills, accompanied by practical exercises. Like a number of other projects, thetutorial gives students access to research resources which probably they would notbe aware of otherwise, and certainly would not have had the opportunity to study indepth. Access to these resources allows students to create their own digital copy andto compare it with other rare resources. The carefully structured introduction to thestudy of manuscript resources helps the student to overcome some of the problemsraised by the Pérez Galdós project; students are guided through the activity in aprecise and detailed manner, with new tasks carefully explained.

The project has particular teaching aims: to open access to the resourcesto students outside traditional University courses by offering flexible modes ofdelivery; to offer better learning opportunities for large seminar groups, withmore communication tools; to offer possibilities that are interesting to the teacherand not just the IT designer. In order to help the teacher take advantage of theresources in a teaching situation that may be unfamiliar, detailed teachers’ notesare provided which give advice about the best methods of using the resources andsome suggestions for specific classroom activities.

The resources of the Virtual Seminars project were developed in order to beusable by teachers of WWI literature based at any institution. Evaluation of theproject thus drew together responses from teaching staff all over the world, andconcentrated upon the response of one group of students at an UK University. Userswere evaluated using a combination of custom-written questionnaires, observationssessions, and focus group discussions.4

Three simple rules for applying technology to teaching have been developedfollowing the project’s experiences, namely: ‘Technology should not be usedto replace teachers or teaching;. . . Technology should only be used where anoticeable gain to the teaching quality is evident;. . . Technology should only beapplied in appropriate stages’ (Lee, 1999). The project can be found at http://info.ox.ac.uk/jtap/.


4. How Can Technology Contribute to the Teaching of Literature andCulture in Language Studies?

On the basis of the experiences described in these projects, some conclusions aredrawn here about how technology might make a valuable contribution to teachingliterary and cultural studies. There is no doubt that technologycan make such acontribution, given investment of sufficient time and resources, but what is lessclear are the most appropriate ways in which it might be done. Before moving onto specific issues and examples, it will be helpful to consider some of the widerimplications of using technology to learn about literature and culture. The verb‘learn’ is used advisedly because it is in supporting the student through the learningprocess that the advantages of technology are most apparent.

Generally in the arts and humanities disciplines, there is little evidence of tech-nology applied to teaching and learning saving academics preparation and teachingtime, and in fact the adoption of new technology frequently makes additionaldemands on teaching staff (see, for example, Newlands and Ward, 1998). The moststriking advantage is in offering benefits to learners beyond the quantity and qualityof contact they are usually offered. In these respects, a number of claims can bemade.

• Technology can give students a greater degree of control over the delivery oftheir learning: by using technology, students can access information, learningspaces and other resources at times which suit their lifestyle and their othercommitments. Increasing numbers of students either follow part-time degreesor, where they study full-time, carry additional responsibilities such as thoseof part-time jobs and families. With so many pressures on them, they have tobe able to study at appropriate times. It should be noted that technology carriesfinancial costs in terms of obtaining equipment, paying on-going costs andreceiving training, and these will have a trade-off with the increased flexibility.

• Technology not only allows students to choose when to access resources,it supports methods that have a far greater potential than those of tradi-tional distance learning, particularly in the degree of interaction afforded.Technology-based resources can be integrated into a course of study and usedto complement classroom contact, library resources, and standard methods ofsharing insights.

• Technology can enable students to feel in control of their own learning: itallows students to shape their learning by encouraging the perception thata culture’s varied media are a collection of resources they can be guidedthrough, and that they have choices about the routes they take.

• Technology allows students to communicate and discuss ideas together, evenwhen they are not physically (or temporally) together. As student numbersgrow in relation to staff numbers, student-to-student and student-to-teachercontact time is put under increasing pressure. The use of technologies such

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as email, conferencing systems, and other computer-mediated communica-tion tools provides a rich environment in which communication can continueoutside the classroom.

• Technology can provide a gateway to better research methods and analyticapproaches. In several of the projects described above, technology hasprovided a means of sharing specialist materials and research techniqueswith undergraduates to an unprecedented degree. Technology offers advancedresearch tools, and it can also provide the interface that helps the teacher toguide the student through the implementation of new techniques.

• Technology can help to provide the motivation to learn and experiment; newteaching methods will often provide students with added interest in the courseand an impetus to develop their own learning.

The use of technology is only one approach to improving teaching and learninggenerally and is of course not guaranteed to be successful, but, with carefullythought out uses and proper integration into courses, it can bring significant benefitsfor both teachers and students. Also, there are certain specific ways and some keyareas in which the quantity of teaching and learning activity, and the quality ofteaching and learning, can be enhanced.

5. Implications for the Relationship Between Content and TeachingMethodology

A successful use of technology in teaching must imply some assessment ofteaching strategy. In order to achieve this, we need to try to take an objectiveview of the real relationship between the subject-based content of a taught courseand the methodology that is employed to teach it. It is interesting to note that themost successful uses of C&IT resources have clear parallels in traditional learningsituations and methods – the library, the coursebook and the seminar – and a briefassessment of these parallels provides a useful starting point.

The library parallel: Technology can open up access to rare resources such asmanuscripts, rare printed works, books which are out-of-print, works of art, andother media. Whilst the main resource for students of literature is usually a bookand a collection of critical works, students of cultural studies draw on a much widerrange of sources.

The seminar parallel: Literary and cultural studies are centred round the tutorialor seminar, where ideas are proposed and discussed, and communication amongstudents and between them and their teachers is essential. Tools such as emaildiscussion lists and conferencing systems are already being successfully usedto teach these subjects (see for example McBride and Dickstein, 1996). Thesetechnologies also offer an extra advantage to second language learners who needopportunities to communicate in the second language.


The lecture parallel: Directed learning is perhaps the most highly valued partof the traditional learning situation from the student’s point of view. Technologyallows tutors to use their expert knowledge to provide a path for the student throughdigital resources that they believe are the most interesting, important and relevant.

The coursebook parallel: It is increasingly common to furnish undergradu-ates with custom-written secondary materials in ‘coursebook’ format. In a similarfashion to the lecture, the tutor can use the coursebook to direct students throughcomplex materials. Technology allows easy inclusion of other media within asingle framework, as well as development of a guided ‘path’ through the materials(for example, adding film, links to works of art, and multimedia learning materials).

In addition to these obvious parallels to traditional learning modes and methods,technology offers possibilities for innovation in delivery, for example:The student-led seminar parallel: Digital presentation of information by the student; usingdigital tools students are now able to present their own materials in many media,thus lessening the emphasis upon oral presentation which is disadvantageous tothose who are less confident (Litvack and Dunlop, 1999).

The most useful way to address the question of relationships between subjectcontent and teaching method is to compare the methodologies that are enabled bythe use of technology with those which are traditionally used to teach literary andcultural studies. This shows how the four possibilities described above – the digitallibrary, lecture, coursebook, and seminar – map onto each of three traditionallearning paradigms. Taking each of the three teaching methods in turn, we mayexplore the difference that technology can make. Naturally, this difference will byno means be entirely positive; in each case, technology can clearly play a part andwill influence the student’s learning experience for good or ill.

5.1. LECTURING

The lecture paradigm can be mirrored in a technology-based situation, with varyingdegrees of complexity. At a simple level, the lecturer can present the transcrip-tion of the lecture he or she plans to give in advance of the event. Unlike in thelecturing situation, the student will have unlimited access to the digital version andthe lecturer has the option to incorporate additional, more complex text than heor she could explain during a fifty minute lecture. There is the further advantageoffered by technology of facilitating the use of additional resources in any mediathat may be referred to during the lecture, or used in addition to the lecture notes.For example, colour images of artworks that are held in virtual galleries around theworld can be referred and linked to directly. McNeill has used this method success-fully; by making his lecture notes available to students on the Web in advance ofeach lecture, he finds that students still attend the ‘real’ lecture but do so with priorunderstanding of the issues he plans to discuss and having had the opportunity todo further reading or prepare questions in advance (McNeill, 1999).

The possible danger with digital equivalents of the lecture is that the materialmay lack its own ‘voice’; students are better motivated to learn when lecturers

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impart their information enthusiastically and knowledgeably. This is clearly moredifficult to achieve when dealing with computer-based resources which will be usedindependently.

In this case, materials need to be carefully structured; they need to guide thestudent but also to invite them along the way. Lee (1999a) and Fiormonte etal. (1999) have provided good examples of this. They have developed coursesbuilt around the resources made available, and they direct students through theseresources in a structured way using a combination of online and traditional teachingmaterials and methods. The technology is enabling them to accomplish actionsthat would otherwise be difficult or impossible. For example, the four tutorialsLee (1999b) describes take resources that are rare and inaccessible and, insteadof simply exposing the student to them by listing the contents and saying ‘hereyou are’ (the equivalent of a traditional reading list), the tutorials use hyperlinking,clear labelling and careful presentation of information toguidethe student throughthe resources.

The importance of the content must be made sufficiently clear to students inorder for them to be motivated to navigate their way through a web of seeminglyidentical hyperlinks to the resources which lie beyond. It is therefore essential thatclear goals are given to the students as they move; what could be more over-awing(and thus discouraging) than to be confronted by a web page of sixty identicalhyperlinks to sixty different resources? The students need to be given a sensethat they are accomplishing something if their interest is to be held, and blindlychoosing from a collection of non-annotated links will not do this – just as theyare less likely to read a text in a recommended reading list if they have no idea ofthe purposes and content of that text. Free-standing hypertext is a fine model forthe creative sharing of information, but it is unlikely that many undergraduates willmake time to ‘explore a web’ without some indication of what they are followingand why.

5.2. SMALL -GROUP TEACHING

The equivalents of small-group teaching sessions in the digital environment areprovided by email discussion lists and conferencing systems. These resourceshave been widely implemented in a variety of teaching and research situations,to the extent that their use has been given the specific title of ‘Computer-MediatedCommunication’ (CMC). Much of the research into CMC has centred upon aspectsof the social interaction which is seen within groups of CMC users; for example,research into concepts of identity which a user experiences, and may manipulate,within a CMC (see for example Marvin, 1996). This research has been popularsince the early 1990s with technologies such as Internet Relay Chat and Multi-User Dimensions. Beyond these more theoretical areas, the same tools have alsoseen use in teaching. Language learning is one area in which these tools have beenparticularly popular due to their potential for communication across distances, thus


bringing together speakers of different languages, and their adaptation of stand-ardised technology.5 Projects such as ‘ReLaTe’ are now looking at building moresophisticated multimedia tools to further explore the potential for teaching andlearning languages ‘live’ and at a distance (Matthews, 1998).

5.3. BACKGROUND READING AND INDEPENDENT RESEARCH

Technology has already made a marked impact in this area, with widespread estab-lishment of computerised library catalogues that can be searched by users who haverelatively little experience of IT or of using their own keywords, thus immediatelybroadening their awareness of library resources beyond those recommended bytheir tutor in a reading list or bibliography. Added to this is the fast growingnumber of important resources that are now being published in digital format,some of the most obvious being fully searchable CD-ROM versions of many inter-national newspapers, encyclopaedias and other reference tools, and even journalsand research papers. At a simple level, technology is working to provide far betteraccess to resources. At a more complex level, the type of access that is providedwill allow students to make more complex and thoughtful use of resources than waspreviously possible. For example, whereas a student would previously have locateda copy of a daily newspaper in the native language in order to keep up to date withevents, he/she can now use complex tools to perform keyword or phrase searchesacross an entire year’s issues of the paper and thus look for changes in reportingpatterns across time or build up a corpus of articles on a particular theme. In thepast, this level of research would have been the provenance of the postgraduateresearcher or specialist, far beyond the time restraints and difficulties of accessexperienced by most undergraduates. This state of affairs has dramatically changedin the digital world.

Such increase in possibilities for independent research raises one essential ques-tion: are students equipped to use resources in this way, and to interpret the resultsof their investigations? More resources do not necessarily bring a greater depthof understanding or better analytic skills. Use of the new technologies requiresequally thoughtful direction by teachers and other teaching support staff, such aslibrary and IT staff, if they are to inform rather than confuse.

6. Implications for Teaching Style

All of the projects described in the conference collection have come to the sameconclusion: that the latest technology, in itself, is not sufficient to create a ‘learningenvironment’. Content is crucial to the successful uptake and use of digitalresources, just as with traditional resources such as journals and other publications.Clearly, lack of access to resources is a distinct barrier to their usage. While itwould be foolish to argue that making texts, images, and video accessible by theWeb will not lead to greater use of these resources by students, it is not enough

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simply to make resources available to them; the role of the teacher is crucial inensuring that real learning happens when students interrogate web resources.

The influences of technology upon teaching and learning radiate beyond therole of the teacher and draw upon the expertise of others, such as library and ITstaff. These staff have a growing importance in supporting and delivering learningresources, and have fast developing roles in additional areas such as teachingstudents the techniques needed to make use of the resources. Thus support andteaching roles are increasingly blurred, and interdependencies and co-operativeworking practices are becoming more crucial.

These changes can together give the student a more enjoyable learning experi-ence. However, they are not without some cost to teachers in terms of developmentof their own IT skills, of the need to research teaching methodologies that use ITand to think about how best to apply them to their area. Teachers also need to investtime in the development of new IT resources, either directly or in partnership, or toinvest in adapting existing resources to fit their own needs.

7. Changing Subject Boundaries

It is fascinating to note the blurring of subject boundaries which occurs whendigital methods are applied to teaching and research. The papers delivered in theconference derived from a range of language areas and backgrounds, includingcommercial publishing, but the emphasis throughout was upon resources which,whilst retaining a strong subject focus, nevertheless had resonance for many othersubject areas.

Technology encourages and facilitates a multidisciplinary perspective onlearning and on research. Hyperlinks in multimedia documents or authoring toolsmake it easy (and attractive) to hop between different subject areas at whim, andthus arrive in areas into which one would not usually stray. The internet, bringingincreased levels of dissemination and sharing of information and knowledge, alsohas an important role to play. A web search on a particular writer’s name, suchas Louis Aragon, will return the predictable ‘hits’ on theClub des Poètessitebut will also highlight sites based in Finland, in Canada, in Germany and so on,each with a different perspective on the study of his work. A student can usedcomputer-based software such as quantitative text analysis tools to manipulate anddissect a digital text, regardless of its source languages; as with the Pérez Galdósproject, this provides the opportunity to control and manipulate a resource in anunknown language. Finally, the interface between technology and learning impactsdirectly upon the way in which teachers of different languages communicate andco-operate. Software such as TransIT-Tiger is used by teachers of many differentlanguages but who have common pedagogic and technical practices, and thesemethodologies are frequently shared by teachers who can appreciate each other’sefforts.


The use of specialist resources thus encourages the crossing of subject bound-aries within and between languages. Cross-discipline collaboration is one of theinteresting issues raised by many digital projects. In areas such as translationstudies and comparative literature, where the use of resources across standarddiscipline boundaries is essential to research, its benefits are immediately obvious.Perhaps the new possibilities that technology offers to the teaching of literaryand cultural studies will have a doubly beneficial effect by providing the impetusfor further educational research to take place in this fascinating, but relativelyunexplored, area.

8. Conclusion: Towards a Model for Teaching Literary and Cultural Studieswith C&IT

As we have seen, something that is frequently overlooked is the interface betweenhighlighting content and theappropriate use of technology, which leads tosuccessful implementations of digital learning resources. The projects that weredemonstrated at the conference are not successful because they are technicallycomplex, graphically stunning, or pedagogically different in their approach. Theyhave succeeded, however, by focusing upon interesting and relevant contentand applying technology to it using methods that are appropriate to certainteaching-learning aims.

Furthermore, we need to look beyond the immediate focus of content that isspecific to a single subject area to consider, at a higher level, the methodologiesthat are being used towards successful teaching, and thus be able to make informeddecisions about whether an application of technology will enhance or dilute theteaching-learning situation.

Notes∗ An earlier version of this article was published in ‘Teaching European Literature and Culture withCommunication and Information Technologies’ (1999). Oxford: CTI Center for Textual Studies.1 A detailed list of the range of language learning publications that are available is too substantial toinclude here; readers are directed instead towards the annotated bibliography of publications relatedto second language acquisition produced by the International Language Learning Department for theLinguaLinksprogram.2 The gap in the literature for teaching language, literature, and culture together has been noted bythe Modern Language Association of America; a publications series entitled ‘Teaching Languages,Literatures, and Cultures’ has been established because ‘the three terms defining the series name faultlines within the MLA that are frequently ignored or consciously concealed.’3 See, for example, the article by Neil Rhodes, St. Andrews University (1999), in which he describesthe issues involved in teaching undergraduates how to make use of a substantial research-orientedtextbase.4 Readers will note that the projects described above (with the exception of the Pérez GaldósEditions Project) have each developed their own evaluation methodology based upon a combina-tion of their standard course evaluation procedures, or the requirements of external agencies. Thisillustrates the lack of standardisation for the evaluation of educational technology, something which

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threatens the consistency of results across projects and thus our ability to draw firm conclusions aboutthe overall impact of technology on the teaching situation.5 See the excellent annotated bibliography by Coski and Kinginger (1999) for references toliterature describing the use of CMC tools for language teaching.

References

Bryan, C. “Are Standards of English (Spoken and Written) Declining? Is There a Conflict BetweenSkills and Scholarship?”HAN Conference 1997: Skills versus Scholarship. Milton Keynes:Institute of Educational Technology, Open University, 1997.

Coski, C. and C. Kinginger.Computer-Mediated Communication in Foreign Language Education:An Annotated Bibliography(NetWork #3). Honolulu: University of Hawaii, Second LanguageTeaching and Curriculum Center, 1996.<http://www.lll.hawaii.edu/nflrc/NetWorks/NW3/>.

Davies, R. “The Pérez Galdós Editions Project: Creating Electronic Scholarly Editions”.TeachingEuropean Literature and Culture with Communication and Information Technologies. Oxford:CTI Centre for Textual Studies, 1999.

Fiormonte, D. et al. “The Digital Variants Archive Project: A New Environment for Teaching SecondLanguage Writing Skills”.Teaching European Literature and Culture with Communication andInformation TechnologiesOxford: CTI Centre for Textual Studies, 1999.

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