HyperText project
Solstrand seminar: something borrowed, something . . .
Storyspace is a standalone hypertext writing and reading tool available from Eastgate Systems. It can be used for writing content for export into HTML and the Web, but its primary use has been to write hypertext. It is a 'minor' program in the scheme of things but remains the most transparent tool for writing and teaching multilinear structure.
I teach a hypertext theory and practice subject that only uses Storyspace. This subject is a prerequisite for a Web writing subject. Over 80% of students, in retrospect, believe that Storyspace should remain a prerequisite for learning HTML as it was in Storyspace that they learnt about multilinear structure. Having such a subject as a prerequisite is probably no longer possible as many students have some HTML when they enter the University, which also means that most students will know about the Web as a publication medium, but not as a medium in its own right (in other words it is like using video to deliver lectures, versus knowing how to make narratives in video).
Students who write in Storyspace often produce different sorts of content to that produced for traditional essays. It seems that the ability to radically link from any word or phrase to any other location with their writing encourages students to make connections and to follow their ideas. This often leaves little time for the level of detail that would occur if they concentrated on one major theme, but it does encourage them to build webs of connected ideas, themes, and suggestions. It is this 'lateralness' that gives the impression that their work is theoretically 'flatter'. However it is contextually 'richer' - producing what has been defined elsewhere as "knowledge objects." (A knowledge object is the student's reconceptualisation of what they have learnt, largely in their own language, and demonstrates deep learning -which by definition is the ability to reconceptualise what they have learnt.)
As Storyspace on the Macintosh allows video to be included there is significant potential for the development of teaching of cinema studies around such tools, largely because cinema studies as an academic practice has been unable to include the object of study within its text. However, now that a film can be digitised and included as a clip within the space of a student's critical writing novel forms of academic study and assessment can be developed and explored.
Questions of closure are also foregrounded rather forcefully for students in this environment. In addition Storyspace defamiliarises students' assumptions about writing in ways which their existing uses of technology do not. A small group of students often find Storyspace liberating, and a similarly small group of students find it terrifying. The majority enjoy it and generally find its relevance as they become competent users. The defamiliarisation of writing that it encourages I define as significant collatoral learning outcomes. These are significant and valuable skills that result from the informed, creative academic use of electronic literacies - much as knowing how to write a traditional humanities essay encourages rational thinking and logical argument.
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