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technical
The content for this site is written in Storyspace (v 1.5 for Macintosh) and each week is exported into HTML for republication. This means material is linked on an ongoing basis, not only as new lectures are written but as new connections are made to earlier material.
In addition the content is indexed so that it can be searched by individual users, allowing extremely flexible pathways to be built through the material.
While the system has appeared to work quite well it does cause some significant problems.
The first is that you tend to have to write content each week for republication, which means it isn't enough to make some notes on a sheet of paper to serve as a mnemonic for the week's lecture.
I had also anticipated that the material would form an ongoing resource for the subject, so that in each iteration material could be edited, amended, or appended. However it is clear that the subject will change more substantially than this and so a great deal of the material written will need to belong elsewhere (in the introductory hypertext subject). On the other hand both sets of course materials could be combined to form one much larger resource, but it is unclear what use students would (or would be able) to make of it.
Finally the time required to produce written lab notes and guides, in addition to the writing and linking of lectures, simply has meant that a great deal of the technical notes have not been done. Of course these can be added over time, particuarly outside of semester, but realistically this probably will not occur.
As an exercise in ongoing 'live' web publishing in an academic context I think this site has been successful. However the way in which it can be a productive exercise pedagogically for teaching and learning (for both the teacher and the learners) needs further development.
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