Untitled - witz cultural

319RECONFIGURINGLITERARYEDUCATIONdocuments by members of that department, nor does it list relevant coursesavailable at the university.What could one do differently with such a resource if one understandsthat a website can be more than a booklike static introduction to a museumcollectionl Since links cross borders and reconfigure our senses ofthe relationships,why not use them to reconfigure the relations of museum and university) The site could include relevant departmental research, all or parts ofpreviously published papers, bibliographies, research guides, exemplary workby undergraduate and graduate students, even material from other universities'collections, and so on. Once one conceives a website from the vantagepoint of innovation-asking what's different about this new informationtechnology and what we can do with such differences-one can conceptualizeit as a network within other networks, and not simply (and misleadingly)as a book. At the same time, we must not exaggerate the differences betweenelectronic hypertext and print text, for the many continuities between themrequire that we not only pay close attention to the relative strengths of eachbut that we also take from the printed page as much can help us in the newmedia. Hypertext is still text.The same approaches to incorporating websites into institutional practicethat we saw in museums occur in many colleges and universities. Increasingly,educational institutions around the world have turned to WebCT, Singapore'sInteractive Vir[talLearning Environment (IVLE), and similar software packages,which provide many valuable features for administering and teachinga course. These include not only electronic class lists and spread sheets forgrades joined to a central database but also other features more directly relatedto teaching than to administration, such as collections of texts and images,discussion lists, multiple-choice tests, and course websites. What's wrong witha course-based websitel Those that move beyond serving as mere replacementsfor paper syllabi often show intelligent planning and valuable resources,but most that I've seen have three major shortcomings. In the first place, theydo not always include student work, and when they do they almost never keepthese materials online past the end of the class, thereby sacrificing anyopporhrnity for developing a critical mass of student-created materials thatIater students could use and that could convince students that they activelycontribute to the educational process. Erasing these materials at semester'send also destroys the possibility of creating a valuable course memory.Second, course websites are almost always closed to the public, therebylosing opportunities to obtain contributions of usefirl materials and to show