The following paper aims to illustrate the ways in which flexible methods of delivery can be incorporated into a traditionally taught literature subject. A five or six week module, using CD-ROM, the Internet and an electronic class discussion group rather than lectures and tutorials, is set as the middle section of a subject. The focus of this module is a literary text-in this instance a Renaissance play; but because the module asks the students to research and analyse the text, the module could be adapted to any Arts or Humanities subject which involves analysis and critique of verbal texts.

The module was developed during second semester 1996, when I was seconded to the Tertiary Education Development Institute at UQ to examine the usefulness of multimedia and Internet resources on Shakespeare and English Renaissance literature for teaching. To illustrate the way that the module could be adapted to an existing subject, the current advanced subject on Renaissance Literature will be briefly described. The module's aims and objectives, delivery, development and evaluation will then be considered.

EN 201 Renaissance Literature
At present this subject is divided into three sections. The topics covered are religious ideas, society and politics, selfhood and sexuality, which are addressed through the analysis and discussion of a wide range of poetry, plays and other texts from the Renaissance period. These topics are introduced successively, with about 4-5 weeks on each; connections among the topics are also developed. The method of teaching is 1-hour lecture and 2-hour tutorial, with assessment based on two essays (1500 and 2500 words) and class participation.

In recent years, the teaching presentation, topics and texts have been well received by students. Present topics and most of the texts would thus be retained. Rather than raise topics progressively through the semester, however, it would be more effective to introduce all of them over the first section of the subject, setting them as up concepts and issues to be explored in the ensuing module. The lectures in the first section would thus provide historical and cultural details, examined in relation to specific readings in tutorials.

Internet Module
A review of relevant hypermedia resources led me to favour the Internet over multimedia products such as the BBC packages on Shakespeare's plays, Macbeth, Twelfth Night, and Romeo and Juliet (a new Norton Shakespeare Workshop CD-ROM is forthcoming.) The slick presentation and the variety of information of these products are eyecatching, but they also seem rather enclosed or limited. Students can consult and search them but not add or rework them; the packages are designed to provide what appear to be entirely authoritative viewpoints. They offer answers rather than raising critical questions and encouraging researched responses. As a resource, the Internet is structured quite differently; it doesn't provide answers to issues but connections to a range of information, images and details. Its vastness and diffuseness reflect the complexity and diversity of research material in the humanities.

The module was conceived as an adaptation to the Internet of George Landow's examples of hypertextual teaching in his 1992 work, Hypertext. Though Landow was not working with the Internet, his chief points regarding teaching and hypermedia are that projects should be based around notions and practices of connectivity, and so should "require students to comment upon the materials and links they find, to suggest new ones, and to add materials."¹. Since "all texts on a hypertext system potentially support, comment upon, and collaborate with one another" (143), student assignments using hypertext and Internet systems should involve collaborative writing and research; contextual and analytical discussion; critical and annotative link-making. Similar points have been made more recently by Ilana Snyder--the emphasis in student work should not be on facts and "data acquisition" but connections²; or, in Peter Scrimshaw's words, concepts are replaced, extended and modified in a "non-linear structure of the domain of knowledge."³. With these principles in mind the module would be structured as follows. A subject home-page would be set up with a hypertext version of a Renaissance play loaded. As explained below, the home-page and other materials would probably best be accessed later through a subject CD-ROM (bought by the students as a "textbook").

Working in groups of 2 or 3, students would be asked to provide a critical annotation to some part of the text. These notes would be researched over the five or six weeks of the module using library and Internet resources. An initial set of library references as well as relevant Internet site and discussion group addresses would be provided to students. It is important not to "discourage readers from seeking material not available in electronic form. . .mere information retrievable from a computer" (Snyder 111); hence the direction to use Internet and library materials.

The choice of topic for annotations would be relatively open, though groups would need to show awareness of the way religious, political and gender issues are involved, thus picking up ideas raised in the opening sequence of classes. The annotations would be presented as a coherent essay-like discussion, around 1000 words in length, citing related critical material (or presenting it as a further link) along with links to relevant Internet sites such as quotations from other Renaissance texts. To take advantage of the Internet as multimedia, a minimum of 2 links to visual sites (such as relevant Renaissance paintings) would have to be included. Also, each group would have to make links to the annotations of at least two other groups; that is, as well as students in each group, the groups themselves would be required to collaborate and compare their research.

To facilitate interaction among students and groups, a second part of the home-page would consist of a discussion group. Initially, the tutor would set a series of practical and content-related questions to trigger discussion. From that point on, however, students would be expected to make at least two contributions per week to the discussion. Contributions could be one of three kinds: a question, a reply, or an observation about questions and replies (contributions would need to address concepts or subject matter not merely technical issues). The tutor would monitor the discussion and also respond to certain inquiries.

Group research, writing and discussion would hopefully avoid students being restricted or inhibited by lack of technological confidence. The first section of the subject (along with studying various texts and the issues of religion, politics and sexuality) would also be designed to equip the students with basic but necessary research and computing skills. Students complete a sequence of weekly exercises (each worth a few per cent of the final grade, with total of exercises to be 20%).

First, students would open a computer centre account and send an email message to the tutor. The exercises would then include: OED word search; publication (or performance) history of a Renaissance text or play; author and subject search in the Short Title Catalogue; locating and consulting a facsimile or microfilm version of a Renaissance text in the campus library; using MLA database to locate, describe and summarise 2-3 critical articles; finding certain information on a CD-ROM version of one of Shakespeare's plays held by the Multimedia library. The point is to design exercises that cover the kinds of critical and historical research and hypertext use that will be employed in the Internet module.

Within the first two weeks of the module, each group would have to email the tutor details and rationale of their approach to the project--who will be doing what and why. The assessment criteria would include essay-related notions of coherence, structure, clarity; thoughtfulness and interest of hypertext links and critical research; clear and imaginative presentation. As the immediate researchers, designers and readers of the Internet material, students would be in the best position to help formulate the criteria for the projects and also to evaluate each other's work, emailing a mark and brief comments to the tutor, who will average the marks and relay comments to each group. Anonymity of student and group markers would be preserved.

The last part of the subject would build on the Internet module by focusing on specific texts and analysing religious, political and gender issues, assessment being by a conventional research essay. The subject thus has three different types of assessment: the initial exercises, the collaborative hypertext annotation, and an individually written essay.

Aims and Objectives
The aim of the module is threefold: to introduce students to electronic and Internet resources in literary studies generally and particularly on Renaissance literature; to vary the teaching methods in the subject by including a flexible, student-directed unit; to introduce a collaborative research and writing component. Students will gain an understanding of both the cultural complexity of Renaissance literature and the intellectual value of using contemporary critical approaches and technology in literary studies.

The various benefits to students of these aims are widely documented. Broadly they include experience in current information technology along with independent and group problem-solving. The module is research-oriented, and by using visual material enables literary study to canvas interdisciplinary sources and consider cultural and historical contexts. The general benefits from collaborative learning are well-documented in educational theory, where students engage "both with the task and with one another in the course of their learning."⁴

Multi- or hypermedia aspects of the Internet would seem to be attractive to students in terms of interactivity and vividness, as well as facilitating a widening of subject matter to be examined (eg. relating visual and verbal texts) and enabling students to direct their own research and learning. Research findings on the effectiveness of multimedia material are, however, equivocal.⁵ Students can create their own paths through WWW materials, thus having greater control and responsibility over their learning, which in turn may lead to increased motivation and improved attitudes towards the subject matter. A well-designed multimedia package can lead to effective learning, "if adequate and appropriate instructional design strategies are utilised" (Andrews and Isaacs iii). But often the key difference between multimedia and conventional teaching is that the former, as a new method, has been subject to recent, thoughtful design, whereas motives and design for the latter may not have been considered for a long time. Many researchers in the field thus conclude that a combination of well-designed teaching and learning modules and modes "is likely to be more effective than either multimedia or the other modes used in isolation" (iii).

A further aim that the module may help realise is to vary the teacher's role and to foster a dialogic atmosphere in classes. Duties of the teacher become oriented to monitoring, managing, and intervening-acting as a "co-worker or facilitator"⁶ with much of the effort for the five-week module going into pre-planning and setting-up. By taking on a less imposing or a "decentred" role,⁷ teachers may open space for the different sorts of knowledge and skills which students already possess to enter the learning situation, and also help "minimise their [own] role in inhibiting the interactive production of knowledge."⁸ It is generally agreed that a class which emphasises participation and interaction allows students to learn actively.⁹

Delivery
Using computers in teaching raises questions of delivery, access and equity. Potentially egalitarian effects of decentring the teacher may be undermined if some students can't afford to use computers. Since the module is CD-ROM based, it can be accessed by Mac or IBM computers, and most of the source material would not require computers fitted with soundcards. The project uses the Internet as the medium for delivery and communication with and between students. It will, however, avoid the difficulties (eg. problems in accessing the Internet) of running an application from within a Web browser by developing a "Web-aware" application that runs as a normal personal-computer program and allows full access to WWW resources. The proposed "Web-aware" approach affords both the instant information and interactivity characteristic of the Internet and the superior capabilities and implementation of a non-browser-embedded program.

Students could use campus- and home-based computers, as well as through the public library system. Groups would have access to each other's work once they were linked to the focal text. Group work would not require every student to have access to a computer but to share computer/Internet access and experience: the great advantage of group work is that students can pool their knowledge of computers and the Internet. Their collaborations around the project would entail a wide range of learning and communication activities-research, negotiation, problem-solving, delegation, and so on.

During the five or six weeks of the project there would be no regular classes. The module offers flexibility in terms of media being used and class attendance. In the module's first and fourth weeks seminars could be held to discuss the project's goals, criteria and progress. Further information could be conveyed through email. The final versions of the annotations would be due by the end of semester; this date, delayed till after the end of the module, would enable students to review each other's texts, make appropriate links, and finalise the assessment criteria (though it would also have to be emphasised that they would have other reading and research due during this period). Together, the class would have produced an interlinked archive of critical, historical and contextual material around the primary text. This archive could possibly be used as the starting-point for the module when the subject is next taught.

Evaluation
An important part of implementing new teaching modes or modules is to evaluate them carefully, offering students opportunity to comment. In this case, evaluation of the module and its relation to the rest of the subject would be necessary. A purpose-designed survey may be the best method to elicit student responses; also a feedback loop, allowing comments to be made as they occur to students, could be included in the program. Presumably contributions to the discussion group would also reveal attitudes to and levels of involvement, and interviews with some students might also be helpful.

Development and Instructional Design
Before it can be implemented the module obviously requires computer programming, graphic and instructional design. Some of the program's key features in terms of flexibility are as follows: 1) configurable for different textual genres--drama, poetry, prose; 2) text interface provides access to study text, subject information and links to relevant print and WWW resources; 3) interface allows text entry and hypertext links without using HTML; 4) students' contributions automatically combined to allow perusal of full annotated text; 5) discussion list facility to enable flexible discourse in and between student groups, and with lecturer; 6) multiple class, subject and text capability, including administration application for lecturers/tutors.

Conclusion
The module aims to take advantage of Internet technology, integrating it with conventional teaching modes, to produce a critically stimulating subject that uses current technologies to realise pedagogical goals of self-directed, collaborative and flexible learning.

Notes

1 George P. Landow, Hypertext: The Convergence of Contemporary Critical Theory and Technology (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins U P, 1992), 134.
2 Ilana Snyder, Hypertext: The Electronic Labyrinth (Melbourne: Melbourne U P, 1996), 106.
3 Peter Scrimshaw, "Reading, Writing and Hypertext," in Language, Classroom and Computers, ed. Peter Scrimshaw (London: Routledge, 1993), 180.
4 Paul Light, "Collaborative Learning with Computers," in Language, Classrooms and Computers, ed. Scrimshaw, 48.
5 The following summary of research is taken from Desley Andrew and Geoff Isaacs, The Effectiveness of Multimedia as an Instructional Tool within Higher Education (Brisbane: Tertiary Education Institute, University of Queensland, 1995).
6 Eunice Fisher, "The Teacher's Role," in Language, Classrooms and Computers, ed. Scrimshaw, 60.
7 Cf. Robert Carl Johnson, "Decentering the Instructor in Large Classes," in Teaching Shakespeare Today: Practical Approaches and Productive Strategies, ed. James E. Davis and Ronald E. Salomone (Urbana: NCTE, 1993), 190-96.
8 David Lusted, "Introduction--Why Pedagogy?" Screen 27.5 (1986): 6.
9 Cf. Edward L. Rocklin, "Shakespeare's Script as a Cue for Pedagogic Invention," Shakespeare Quarterly 46 (1995): 137.