Course Rationale: Work-in-Progess

Approaches to Reading Literature is a teaching site, and as such can be considered permanently under construction. Cognitive Flexibility Theory (CFT) suggests that in order for higher-education students to acquire knowledge in complex subject areas, we should present material in complex and multiple formats and should require students to practice applications in new contexts. Hypertext systems are useful for presenting material in the types of nonlinear formats that convey the complexity of material and its interpretations, and for encouraging discovery by allowing students to access information in random and self-directed patterns. This hypertext project asserts that literary study benefits from such a presentation of material.

Read a hypertext presentation of this project given in faculty workshops in September 2002: Cognitive Flexibility, Case Studies, and Hypertext: Creating a Teaching Web Site.
 




Welcome to Approaches to Reading Literature (formerly Excerpts), a work-in-progress site for Dr. Barbara Pittman's Western Classics course at Mercyhurst College. Collaborative student groups worked to construct the initial site in the spring 2002 term, adding their own research and learning from each other that literature supports multiple interpretations. The work of the 2002 classes has been archived and the site was again in-progress with the work of students in spring 2004.

The assignment for the 2004 class differed from the previous use of the site; for example, the 2004 groups did not collect and submit excerpts of related documents, nor annotate terminology in their essays. There was a stronger focus in 2004 on using critical approaches in interpretation.

This project was initially made possible by a grant from the LINKS to the Future Project of the Education Division of Mercyhurst College.
 
Disclaimer: This is an archived site not currently in use. Please notify me of broken links and I will repair them.