“This was exploited within the University of Edinburgh’s department of Italian, where the Digital Variants archive has been used to teach language learners skills in literary analysis, and in particular analysis of the authorial process, with the refinement of language skills as an educational ‘by-product’. An important part of the teaching strategy was that the IT resources were extremely well integrated into the regular face-to-face sessions. Many implementations of technology involve its use as a support tool or as an additional source of resources, but in this case the IT resources were an essential part of the course, and were given substantial amounts of class time. The tutors’ attitudes towards the technology were also influential; for example, IT training sessions on the use of the WWW and using word-processing packages for research activities were carried out in parallel with introductions to new research skills, such as the analysis of a critical edition. It was thus made clear to the students that the tutor perceived IT research skills to be as important and relevant to their studies as the more traditional research skills which they were also taught.”

“Introduction: Technology in Teaching Literature and Culture: Some Reflections.” Sarah Porter. Teaching European Literature and Culture with C & IT. The entire article is available at http://info.ox.ac.uk/ctitext/publish/occas/eurolit/porter.html; clicking on this link will open a new browser window, which you should close to return to the main page.