POIESIS AND TECHNOLOGIES

e-Learning Material Development in Literature

Laura Borràs and Joan Elies Adell

Internet Interdisciplinary Institute, Universitat Oberta de Catalunya, Av. Tibidabo 39-43, Barcelona, Spain

Keywords: e-Learning, material development, literary studies, digital literature.

Abstract: We wanted our students to act as literary critics of works of digital literature so we designed a work of

digital literature with different surfing possibilities so that students could undertake an authentic and

complete exercise of literary criticism. This piece of Digital Literature (the Diary of an Absence) is an e-

learning tool to show them what a piece of digital narrative could be and to provide them the real and

complex experience of reading the new literature in its own medium and with its own rules. With different

technologies such as Director, Flash, Quick-time, HTML, etc. the Diary is an eminently textual product,

situated in a determinate visual and musical dimension, which also offers the reader a journey to be

undertaken. It presents six possible approaches to the text and therefore six different possible readings: 1-

An exploratory immersion in the house-scenario that offers words acting as passwords and points of access

to the text. 2- A nominal reading that comes from the universe of words that have been selected from the

text. 3- A numerical reading by looking at the ‘treasure map’ of the numbers allowing a chronological

reading of the diary pages. 4- A topological reading allows consulting the plan of the house and its

surroundings to see which objects or locations give us an access to the text and where it is situated. 5- A

reading through objects permits to reach the text from the different objects in which the words have been

assigned and 6- A musical reading since the map situates the different lyrics that constitute this particular

melody in space. In a word: an immersive experience to approach e-literature from e-learning.

1 MANAGING EDUCATION IN

THE DIGITAL AGE

The introduction of digital technologies in the

learning process has revealed to some extent that the

Internet revolution, that is to say the change of

mentality produced by the use of digital technologies

in the global contemporary world, also affects and is

going to affect even more in the future the way in

which education can be managed.

In fact, it is becoming increasingly clear to

everybody that educational technologies are being

implemented rather indiscriminately almost

everywhere. That’s why we firmly believe they

should fulfill the users’ needs, their educational

purposes, the curricula with which they work and,

specifically, the training for the people who use

them. Despite this, research has yet to show that

ICTs have a significant impact on learning and a

special effort has to be made to find out how

technology is being used in an educational context.

One thing is clear: technologies are tools capable of

building learning frames. We already know that, but

the question now should be are we making the most

of it or is it being used to reproduce the "same old"

in virtual format? To have a learning frame

technologically built or assisted is not necessarily to

have good learning results. On the contrary, it is

necessary to enhance imagination to be able to open

our minds and be able to think on new horizons for

the teaching and learning of literature in the Digital

Age.

2 e-LEARNING OF

e-LITERATURE

Talking about 'digital literature' can cause seeming

uneasiness, even hostility in many people. People

that feel that something is being taken away from

them because letters moves from the quietness of

printed paper to this uncertain and heterogeneous

549

Borràs L. and Elies Adell J. (2007).

POIESIS AND TECHNOLOGIES - e-Learning Material Development in Literature.

In Proceedings of the Third International Conference on Web Information Systems and Technologies - Society, e-Business and e-Government /

e-Learning, pages 549-553

DOI: 10.5220/0001287405490553

 SciTePress

medium that is the computer, the screen, the

Internet. We wanted to tell our students: “If you

happen to belong to that category: stay calm and

we’ll show how literature can exist in other

platforms”.

Besides this, we wanted to open the scope of literary

studies by integrating into the mainstream other

types of literary and aesthetic expressions so far

excluded from it: especially e-literature or digital

literature (natively digital texts). The gaze that

guided traditional teaching of literature has been de-

centered by the use of e-learning methodologies and

academia will have to explicitly assume their new

locus of enunciation. Its old fashion exclusivity has

to be increasingly replaced by an inclusive view that

will come to consider alternative forms of

expression and to recognize differences and this

could be a paradigmatic change promoted by the use

of technology. We intended to develop a forum of

debate for these questions from inside an academic

subject, an optional subject though. Its main goal is

to rethink the role of literary studies at the beginning

of the twenty-first century and with the use of e-

learning. We expected to investigate the conflicts the

discipline is facing and the paths it has been

following in its diverse forms.

3 LITERARY STUDIES &

DIGITAL TECHNOLOGIES

With this intention we created a piece of Digital

Literature in Catalan (the Diary of an Absence), to

show our students what a piece of digital narrative

could be and to provide them the real and complex

experience of reading the new literature in its own

medium and with its own rules. Since we wanted our

students to act as literary critics of works of digital

literature but the existing works worldwide would

have been a challenge to the linguistic competence

of most of the students, we have designed a work of

digital literature with different surfing possibilities

so that students can undertake an authentic and

complete exercise of literary criticism.

There are several categories inside what we

consider digital literature from web texts to

programmed digital texts, cybertexts (Aarseth 1997),

texts that are not only in digital format, but they also

use the digital format in producing effects which are

not possible in print. These digital texts are based on

a hypertextual structure (text is divided into shorter

segments, which then are connected to each other

with user-controllable links), but their functionality

is not limited to hypertextuality. In a technical sense

these text documents are actually computer

programs, and as such they may include all the

functionality a computer program can offer.

Temporal manipulation and control especially gain

wholly new potential with cybertexts in what has

been called “cybertextual narrativity” (Eskelinen

1999), where it is possible to strictly control the

reading time. For example, a text page may change

every 30 seconds forcing the reader to this reading

rhythm if she wants to read at all, or, make the text

change of form, explode, rain, move, etc. With the

current software, it is relatively easy to produce

kinetic texts. Even though this, at a first glance, may

seem more as case of movement and spatiality, it

naturally requires the possibility to control the

appearance of the text during a certain time period.

Thus, the temporal dimension is certainly essential

for kinetics. But if kinetics seemed to be more

inviting for poets than to prose writers, we have used

'Flash” to create this kinetic effect inside the text.

Of course all the multimedia imaginable may be

used, that is, the text may include sound, moving

image etc. We can find a complete variation of the

limited reading time when texts can only be read

once: after the text disappears from the screen, it is

deleted from the memory and cannot be accessed

again until next reading. In the opposite strategy the

reading time can also be somehow extended when it

is not possible to proceed from one part of the work

to another before a certain period of time –in this

case of read text- has passed. If the reader completes

the whole reading, follow the different paths and can

finally read every piece of single text hidden on the

CD, then there is a kind of “bonus track” text that

ideally closes the reading exercise, closes the

reading process of the work.

4 ARCHITECTURE OF THE

DIARY OF AN ABSENCE

Arranged in the form of a diary, the study case we

have developed follows the paths of absence by

delving into the pain that is caused by desire, a

desire that is reflected in the particular mixture of

emotions that is faced in the separation from the

loved one. To the idea of introspection arising from

the exercise of spiritual reflection and the flood of

torn feelings that this brings, there appears the idea

of the house as a cloister, which is the scenario in

which the tale in our hypertext exercise has been set.

The apparently illogical ups and downs of the

WEBIST 2007 - International Conference on Web Information Systems and Technologies

550

narrator’s thoughts are metaphorically translated into

the maze in which the reader gets lost, this reader

who has come in search of words that will lead

towards the interior that tells a story of love, of the

loss of love, of passion and of impossibility.

The Diary of an Absence aims to be an

example of intimate personal writing through

something which has been put into words but which

perhaps should have remained unsaid. In an exercise

of visual structuration of hypertextual narrative

(Koskimaa 1997), the text has been disposed

spatially in a closed space, with rooms to walk

through, just as we travel different routes when we

go deeper into the intimate truth of the suffering

narrator. We have chosen to use technology for a

goal that is aesthetic, narrative, semiotic and

hermeneutic. In this regard we must point out that

here you will not find a range of the most advanced

media as a technological exhibition without any

other purpose than the mere display of resources, but

rather a group of computer-based media in the

service of an aesthetic digital product. Its

fundamentally hypertextual nature evokes the most

secret and intimate aspect of hypertext –something

that becomes still more relevant when you bear in

mind the element of confession, of self-confession-

that is implicit in a private journal. At the same time

we find a combination of the creative synergical

possibilities of artistic languages like image and

music which tell us of its hybrid nature as a

cybertext.

The Diary of an Absence presents six possible

approaches to the text and therefore six different

possible readings.

1- First, there is the exploratory immersion in the

house-scenario that offers, through the rooms, words

acting as passwords and points of access to the

different days of the text. This is a way in which

curiosity and the chance in our choices take us to

words that act as a call for the hidden text to appear,

the text to which they refer, to which in fact they

belong, because this is where they come from.

2- Second, there is a nominal reading that comes

from the universe of words that have been selected

from the text.

3- One can follow a numerical reading by looking at

the ‘treasure map’ of the numbers allowing a

chronological reading of the diary pages. Bearing in

mind that each diary page corresponds to one day in

a month, a third reading is also possible based on the

texts that have been discovered/revealed in the linear

order of the calendar. We must remember, however,

that the correspondence between the word selected

and the day of the month to which it refers will not

be visible until the content of the word has been

revealed.

4- Another possible way of reading is the one which

allows us to consult the map or plan of the house and

its surroundings to see which objects or locations

give us an access to the text and where it is situated.

5- There is also a way to reach the text from the

objects in which the words have been assigned. So,

following this route, we could choose an object and

Figure 1: Reading paths.

Figure 2: The house-scenario.

Figure 3: The words’ constellation.

Figure 4: The numerical reading.

POIESIS AND TECHNOLOGIES - e-Learning Material Development in Literature

551

find out what page of the diary and in which room,

environment or location has been set and associated.

6- Finally, the map situates the different

lyrics that constitute this painful melody in space,

and one can allow oneself to be taken where the

music suggests, to go to the text that corresponds to

the music that is evoked. Words, numbers, objects,

lyrics and chance are the means for this particular

journey into the darkness of the soul.

In this context, we ask ourselves and our students: Is

reading something that can be shared? Will

everybody have read the same Diary if everybody’s

reading is necessarily different? Even one single

person can read it differently on different occasions.

To what extent will a linear reading of the Diary of

an Absence, the reading that is most literary and

least playful-exploratory, diverge from the reading

that one can carry out on paper with the fragmented

and random texts of the individual pages of a diary?

Will the choice of music, of the landscape

surroundings in which the words, objects and texts

are to be found, that is, will a digital reading

represent something more? Is this an aesthetic

experience different from the analogical,

conventional reading of the Diary as a diary? What

type of reading emerges in this changing context,

with so many senses involved, with so many options

for the reader? These and many other questions can

only be answered by our students after they have

engaged with the Diary.

Our first impression is very positive. We have

offered this subject only 2 semesters, but the

acceptance of the materials and the immersive

process of discovering e-literature from inside a

piece of it has been very encouraging. Despite the

fact that in a subject titled Universal Literary

Themes (Borràs 2005), we have had so many

problems when the materials were simply hypertext,

now that the task of exploration we are requiring is

much more complex, we have assumed more mature

–digitally alphabetized- students. The risk was there

and it is still there. We will have to wait and see.

5 CONCLUSIONS

We would have liked to explain other experiments

that we have carried out in e-learning of literature.

For example, we took a cabaret to the university and

studied it during a whole semester of the course on

Comparative Literature and then digitalized it in

order to create a bank of contents that can be reused

from then on. In fact, we combine electronic didactic

materials, on-line resources, digital libraries, web-

sites of reference, virtual exhibitions and a virtual

workshop with the different corrections of student’s

exercises that is very well much appreciated by the

students. This workshop is a web that allows them to

compare their exercises with those of their peers and

to benefit from their corrections too. Anyway, our

experience as lecturers developing e-learning

materials confirms us that it is necessary to seriously

consider that on-line teaching using these digital

resources implies becoming detached from acquired

habits and transforming the discourse of

communicative techniques. The opening up of the

temporal field for literary signification is a change,

which true magnitude we can only guess. In this

direction we have done our best and we should

expect new innovations to appear. A new approach

is now possible by the use of technology in e-

learning. Perhaps the question we would really need

to ask is what the nature of literature teaching has

been in order to salvage from old practices those

Figure 5: The treasure-map reading.

Figure 6: Reading through the objects.

Figure 7: A musical reading.

WEBIST 2007 - International Conference on Web Information Systems and Technologies

552

new ways of learning that will allow us to move

forward and so, to convert this critical juncture in

which we are (let’s think in the transformation that

Higher Education is undergoing throughout Europe

and the “Bolognese reform”) into an opportunity.

REFERENCES

Aarseth, Espen (1997) Cybertext. Perspectives on Ergodic

Literature. Baltimore & London: The Johns Hopkins

University Press.

Borràs, Laura (2005) «E-Learning and Literary Studies.

Towards a New Culture of Teaching?», “Dichtung

Digital”, Issue 1/2005 (http://www.dichtung-

digital.com/2005/1/Castanyer/ last consulted:

13/11/2006).

Eskelinen, Markku (1999) "Cybertext Narratology",

presentation in Digital Arts and Culture 99 -

Conference. Video Recording in:

http://www.lcc.gatech.edu/events/dac99/webcast.html

Koskimaa, Raine (1997) "Visual Structuring of Hypertext

Narratives", electronic book review 6a.

http://www.altx.com/ebr/ebr6

POIESIS AND TECHNOLOGIES - e-Learning Material Development in Literature

553