Teaching Electronic Literature in EFL Classrooms: The Know-What, The Know-How, and The Know-Why.

Electronic literature has been broadly discussed for the last two decades along with the rapid development of new media. The ongoing debate has been concerned with its shifting form from printed text to digital text which brings along several changes in the way literature must be seen. However, studies on this subject are still limited to its L1 setting and most of the discussions focus on its cultural material discourses. To fill in the gap, this paper discusses the necessity of bringing up the practical application of electronic literature in EFL classrooms. The discourse revolves around addressing several key inquiries: the types of electronic literature viable as learning materials in ELT (the know-what), the teaching strategies through which electronic literature can be effectively taught in ELT (the know-how), and the fundamental rationale underscoring the importance of teaching electronic literature to EFL students (the know-why)

A Software-based Knowledge Management System Using Narrative Texts

Technical and professional communicators have in recent research been challenged to make significant contributions to the field of knowledge management, and to learn or create the new technologies allowing them to do so. The purpose of this dissertation is to make such a combined theoretical and applied contribution from the context of the emerging discipline of Texts and Technology. This dissertation explores the field of knowledge management (KM), particularly its relationship to the related study of artificial intelligence (AI), and then recommends a KM software application based on the principles of narratology and narrative information exchange. The focus of knowledge is shifted from the reductive approach of data and information to a holistic approach of meaning and the way people make sense of complex events as experiences expressed in stories. Such an analysis requires a discussion of the evolution of intelligent systems and narrative theory as well as an examination of existing computerized and non-computerized storytelling systems. After a thorough discussion of these issues, an original software program that is used to collect, analyze, and distribute thematic stories within any hierarchical organization is modeled, exemplified, and explained in detail

A software based mentor system

This thesis describes the architecture, implementation issues and evaluation of Mentor - an educational support system designed to mentor students in their university studies. Students can ask (by typing) natural language questions and Mentor will use several educational paradigms to present information from its Knowledge Base or from data-mined online Web sites to respond. Typically the questions focus on the student’s assignments or in their preparation for their examinations. Mentor is also pro-active in that it prompts the student with questions such as "Have you started your assignment yet?". If the student responds and enters into a dialogue with Mentor, then, based upon the student’s questions and answers, it guides them through a Directed Learning Path planned by the lecturer, specific to that assessment. The objectives of the research were to determine if such a system could be designed, developed and applied in a large-scale, real-world environment and to determine if the resulting system was beneficial to students using it. The study was significant in that it provided an analysis of the design and implementation of the system as well as a detailed evaluation of its use. This research integrated the Computer Science disciplines of network communication, natural language parsing, user interface design and software agents, together with pedagogies from the Computer Aided Instruction and Intelligent Tutoring System fields of Education. Collectively, these disciplines provide the foundation for the two main thesis research areas of Dialogue Management and Tutorial Dialogue Systems. The development and analysis of the Mentor System required the design and implementation of an easy to use text based interface as well as a hyper- and multi-media graphical user interface, a client-server system, and a dialogue management system based on an extensible kernel. The multi-user Java-based client-server system used Perl-5 Regular Expression pattern matching for Natural Language Parsing along with a state-based Dialogue Manager and a Knowledge Base marked up using the XML-based Virtual Human Markup Language. The kernel was also used in other Dialogue Management applications such as with computer generated Talking Heads. The system also enabled a user to easily program their own knowledge into the Knowledge Base as well as to program new information retrieval or management tasks so that the system could grow with the user. The overall framework to integrate and manage the above components into a usable system employed suitable educational pedagogies that helped in the student’s learning process. The thesis outlines the learning paradigms used in, and summarises the evaluation of, three course-based Case Studies of university students’ perception of the system to see how effective and useful it was, and whether students benefited from using it. This thesis will demonstrate that Mentor met its objectives and was very successful in helping students with their university studies. As one participant indicated: ‘I couldn’t have done without it.

Electronic Literature as Digital Humanities

This book is available as open access through the Bloomsbury Open programme and is available on www.bloomsburycollections.com. Electronic Literature as Digital Humanities: Contexts, Forms & Practices is a volume of essays that provides a detailed account of born-digital literature by artists and scholars who have contributed to its birth and evolution. Rather than offering a prescriptive definition of electronic literature, this book takes an ontological approach through descriptive exploration, treating electronic literature from the perspective of the digital humanities (DH)––that is, as an area of scholarship and practice that exists at the juncture between the literary and the algorithmic. The domain of DH is typically segmented into the two seemingly disparate strands of criticism and building, with scholars either studying the synthesis between cultural expression and screens or the use of technology to make artifacts in themselves. This book regards electronic literature as fundamentally DH in that it synthesizes these two constituents. Electronic Literature as Digital Humanities provides a context for the development of the field, informed by the forms and practices that have emerged throughout the DH moment, and finally, offers resources for others interested in learning more about electronic literature

Electronic Literature as Digital Humanities

This book is available as open access through the Bloomsbury Open programme and is available on www.bloomsburycollections.com. Electronic Literature as Digital Humanities: Contexts, Forms & Practices is a volume of essays that provides a detailed account of born-digital literature by artists and scholars who have contributed to its birth and evolution. Rather than offering a prescriptive definition of electronic literature, this book takes an ontological approach through descriptive exploration, treating electronic literature from the perspective of the digital humanities (DH)––that is, as an area of scholarship and practice that exists at the juncture between the literary and the algorithmic. The domain of DH is typically segmented into the two seemingly disparate strands of criticism and building, with scholars either studying the synthesis between cultural expression and screens or the use of technology to make artifacts in themselves. This book regards electronic literature as fundamentally DH in that it synthesizes these two constituents. Electronic Literature as Digital Humanities provides a context for the development of the field, informed by the forms and practices that have emerged throughout the DH moment, and finally, offers resources for others interested in learning more about electronic literature

Literary Dynamics in Nonlinear Narratives

A teoria da dinâmica literária defende que a ordem de um texto é fundamental na criação do seu significado. Quando lemos um texto estamos a criar previsões, antecipações e conexões, influenciados por convenções literárias ou sociais que nos são familiares. Em narrativas não lineares este processo dinâmico altera-se completamente devido à ausência de tais referências pré-estabelecidas. Torna-se então no processo em que a narrativa se molda de acordo com as escolhas do leitor de decidir por uma das direcções, de ouvir uma das vozes e de escolher um dos caminhos possíveis.Esta dissertação procura traçar uma linha que ligue a literatura tradicional à literatura digital com base no funcionamento das dinâmicas literárias em narrativas não lineares. A análise, através de uma perspectiva com base dialética, foca-se no ponto de vista do autor, do meio e do leitor.Irá ser também criado um caso de estudo na forma de um texto para um livro infantil e de um guião para um appBook, demonstrando assim na prática a forma como a narrativa se adapta a cada um destes meios.The theory of literary dynamics states that the order of a text has a fundamental role in creating its meaning. When reading a text we are making predictions, anticipations and connections, influenced by a set of frames given by literary or social conventions that we are familiar with. In nonlinear narratives, this dynamic process changes completely due to the absence of a stable frame of reference. It becomes the process through which the narrative shapes itself according to the reader's choice of taking one of the traced directions, of hearing one of the existing voices and of following one of the possible paths.This dissertation aims at tracing a line connecting traditional and digital literature on the basis of how literary dynamics works in nonlinear narratives. The analysis following a dialectic approach by taking, in turn, the perspective of the author, the medium and the reader. Moreover, we will produce a practical output with the creation of a case study in the form of a text for a children's book and the script for an appBook showing the way the narrative changes adapting to the characteristics and expressive potential of the two different media

Poetic Machines: an investigation into the impact of the characteristics of the digital apparatus on poetic expression

This thesis aims to investigate digital methods of signification in order to examine the impact of the apparatus on poetic expression. This is done through a critical analysis of the translation process from analogue to digital, in the sense that even as we read a page we are in fact translating sight into sound. The resulting effects of this change in form are explored in order to understand their impact on meaning-making in the digital realm. Through this interrogation the comprehension and definition of ePoetry (electronic poetry or digital poetry) is extended, by exposing the unique affordances and specificities of digital expression. Digital poetry theorists such as Loss Pequeño Glazier posit that the emerging field of electronic literature is composed of interweaving strands from the areas of computer science, sociology, and literary studies. This is reflected in the interdisciplinary nature of this thesis, which necessitates an engagement with the broad areas of translation, literature, and digital media studies. Currently the pervasiveness of digital technology and access to the Internet means that the creation and consumption of online content such as ePoetry is becoming seamless and apparently effortless. Whilst recent studies have explored electronic literature as a field, there is a noticeable deficit of research that specifically focuses on ePoetry, a deficit that this thesis seeks to rectify. Within this work cybernetic and technosocial theories of communication are drawn on which provide as much emphasis on the apparatus, as is afforded to the author and reader. Traditional poetry criticism is problematised with reference to its suitability for application to online works in order to develop a comprehensive ePoetry rhetoric that explores not only what is being said, but also crucially how it is being said. Theories of translation are also used as a context in which to analyse the transposition of poetry from analogue to digital. This framework then forms the basis for a study that explores the move from print to pixel by analysing qualitative ePoet interviews as well as their corresponding ePoems