This guidance sheet does not deal with the
technicalities of composing webpages, e.g., the mechanics of inserting
hyperlinks, but with the intellectual issues of using web page technology for
constructing an academic argument.
Hypothetical example:
Consider the proposition that the
era of Cyberspace marks a cultural shift from the era of print culture, because
it heralds the end of ‘fixity’ in language.
If you were tackling this topic
as a regular, linear-style word processed essay, you would want to achieve a
desirable arrangement of your material, a ‘structure’ which is also,
eventually, a ‘sequence’, and planned from the beginning so that the sequence
expresses that structure. This
particular topic lends itself to at least two different plans:
DEFINITION OF ‘FIXITY’ ELABORATION AS
REQUIRED QUOTATION(S) FROM KEY
AUTHORS
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ARGUMENTS IN
SUPPORT OF THE PROPOSITION ARGUMENTS AGAINST
THE PROPOSITION
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CONCLUSIONS
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In one possible plan, these 4 components are each
separate in the final presentation: the ‘definition’ material is presented in
one block, then the ‘for’ material, then the ‘against’ material and finally the
‘conclusions’ material. In another
possible plan, the ‘definition’ material comes first and the ‘conclusions’
material last, but the ‘for’ and ‘against’ material is not presented in discrete
blocks: instead you might move between arguments ‘for’ and arguments ‘against’
until you have covered all the points you want to make.
In considering how far a ‘hypertext’ presentation
should move away from linearity, there are various options available to
you. Some of the more obvious ones are
listed here:
1
Your
presentation could take the form of one long document, in the order
‘definition’ – ‘for’ –‘against’ – ‘conclusions’ but with a table of hyperlinks
at the start so that readers can follow a different route if they want to,
e.g., read the conclusions first.
2
You could work
towards one long document, exactly like an essay, but with hyperlinks to your
footnotes and references: in a modification of this plan you could generate two
documents: one for the essay and one for the footnotes and references. In the second case, the reader can’t scroll
to the ‘references’ section but has to use the hyperlink function.
3
One main
document, along the lines of (1) or [2], but with one or more small, separate
documents for digressions, perhaps because the digressions are too long to be
footnotes. (This form of organisation
is not restricted to web pages and CD-Roms: some books now have ‘sidebars’ and
inset boxes for this purpose).
4
Two, three,
four or more separate documents of more or less equal size/structural
importance, along with hyperlinks which create the ‘ideal’ reading sequence as
determined by you.
5
As in four, but
with hyperlinks arranged so as to create no ideal reading sequence: every page
linked to every other page. (You may or
may not want to establish that one of these pages is ‘first’ – most websites
have a ‘home page’ and most CD-Roms have an introductory section. A set of pages of equal importance and no
preferred point of entry would be the most major departure from ‘linearity’)
As with regular essays, the
presentation or ‘look’ of the page is worth paying some attention to.
Minimally, this means using your software to produce headings, subheadings and
regular text (aka ‘body’ text) in fonts and/or font sizes which are distinct.
You can go beyond this of
course: feel free for example if it seems appropriate to use other
colours besides black and white. The
very adventurous may want to consider the use of ‘frames’, rather than strictly
linear full-page flow:, as in this example:
In this kind of design, each section of the screen
is independent of the others, so that, for example, you can scroll up and down
the lower left hand frame whilst the view available in the top and the right
hand frames remains constant. However,
this is difficult to achieve technologically for a beginner, so I advise
against attempting it unless you are confident you know what you are
doing. If you feel that a ‘frames’
approach would better suit your requirements, you can always make this point
(and explain it) in your commentary, whilst indicating what it is you have
sacrificed by not being able to use this approach.
There are various additional
elements you may wish to consider including.
Some are more technologically demanding than others, and this list is
just a reminder of what is possible, not what I expect you to manage.
For example:
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Consider adding
a ‘glossary’ document or section, which explains the technical terms you have
used.
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Consider adding
images, or links to images, which are relevant to your topic: facsimiles of newspaper
front pages might be relevant to a discussion of visual English for example. Remember you don’t have to create the
images, just find what you want by browsing/surfing around, capture what you
want on to disk, cut-and-paste it into your document as a gif file (i.e., it
must be in the ‘gif’ format which is how HTML recognises it, and have the .gif
extension, e.g. “newspaper.gif”). Or,
even easier, leave the image where it is on the Web and put a hyperlink to it
in your document. Don’t include images
just for the sake of it: remember it is the topic we’re interested in.
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Consider adding
other kinds of multimedia elements (or links to these, as above): animated
gifs, mouseover text, form elements, tables, maps, sound clips (you might want
to illustrate the sound of someone speaking London Jamaican if you are writing
about linguistic multiculturalism, for example), video clips. But only if they are relevant to the
topic. If it turns out that what
you’d like to do is beyond your technical competence, you can always
explain this in your comments. It shows
you are using your imagination.
