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The hyperText Project


This document was written and refers to work and subjects undertaken in 1995.

bought to you by the letter t...he Hypertext Project has been offered to third year students undertaking HM302 Advanced Seminar in the BA in Media Studies, within the Department of Communication Studies at RMIT during semester two of the 1995 academic year.

The Hypertext Project is an effort to remove the distinction between technologies of writing and the practice of writing. For students this is already the case with pen and paper. For some students it is already the case with a word processor. It is hoped to make this also the case for hypertext.

The aim is to allow student work to be submitted in three 'standard' formats, any of which they are free to choose. These are:

  • the traditional written essay
  • Storyspace webs
  • HTML and World Wide Web publication

The object is to incorporate these modes of submission into the everyday practice of specific subjects (currently only HC342 Modernism in the Cinema and HM302 Advanced Seminar) and not to treat the hypertext component as a separate subject, pedagogic technology, or something alongside (or outside) of the 'usual' assessment procedures and practices.

While HyperText Markup Language (HTML) is widely used for the distribution and publication of course material students are generally only encouraged to use this medium for the digitisation of their 'usual' written projects (if they choose to submit in this format).

This is because HTML , while a valuable publication technology, is a poor writing tool and students tend to lose sight of their work in the intricacies of designing web pages that they like, or do what they want to 'do'. For students to write their text, convert their graphics, write links that are appropriate, make the necessary changes to image and video files - then put in on a server - is to introduce a significant distance between the act of writing and the task of publishing.

This gap is removed in Storyspace as the use of all the elements are internal to the program. However, if students wish to use HTML, then they are strongly encouraged to take advantage of the hypertext nature of the medium, and so convert their 1500 word essay into, say, three 500 word web pages with multiple links between them.

While the project has only had a limited time and resource allocation, several issues have become clear:

These issues shall be integrated into an expanded project for 1996 where it is hoped that further applications of contemporary communications technologies will be introduced.

Definitions Outcomes Problems Storyspace



http://hypertext.rmit.edu.au