Author-Centred Approach To Authoring: A Necessity
Olivier Burdet (Olivier.Burdet@epfl.ch), Aurelio Muttoni (Aurelio.Muttoni@epfl.ch),
Jean-François Perret (perretj@lu.unisi.ch)
IS-BETON, EPFL, GC B, CH-1015 Lausanne
Keywords : Authoring, editing, sustainability
The creation of content for an on-line course is a challenging task for all persons involved. Because of the technical nature of web-based learning, the role of authors often becomes less central in the preparation process. This is unfortunate, and should not be the case. The approach proposed in the paper shows how the entire preparation process can be reorganized to place the authors of the course material at the center of the preparation of an e-learning course.
Cet article a été publié en 2003 pour la conférence INCEE. A part l’ajout de ce paragraphe, un redimensionnement des figures, l’inclusion du protocole https et une nouvelle traduction en ASP au lieu de PHP, le texte n’a pas été modifié.
1. Authoring is an art
Authoring is an art that has been only been mastered by a few since the invention of writing, and probably even before. Telling a story or teaching a lesson are not gifts that everyone receives at birth, nor simple trades that all learn in school. It is not a sufficient to put some ideas together and to come up with a decent layout. We have all read some excellent work, and felt compelled by the class, the ingenuity and the style radiating from the author. We also all have read almost unbearable material that was possibly very well laid out, but completely lacked substance and style. While the appreciation of a given author is also a matter of personal taste, it is absolutely clear that only a good author can come up with truly interesting material.
This is not only true in the case of literature, but it also applies to the general field of academic authoring. While publication throughput has been decreed as a paramount criterion for the evaluation of performance of researchers, it remains clear that the most important factor is the quality of the publications, not the minimum quality required for publication, but the intrinsic quality of the work that lies underneath it.
The rules of good have slowly evolved over time. With the technical changes from stone engraving to writing on papyrus to writing on parchment to writing on paper with a pen, then with a typewriter, then with a computer, the form of the text produced has progressively changed over the years. But with the introduction of new media, such as newspapers, or more recently the web, the writing style undergone some radical changes. Some people talk about a semiotic revolution. More specifically, the classical relationship between text and illustrations has been deeply changed (Peraya, 1998). In the same manner that lines in a newspaper are much shorter than in a typical book, in order to be read more easily, text published on the Internet needs to be presented in a different fashion than in other media; a completely new approach to the layout of text is needed. In general, it needs to be much more concise, perhaps with underlying links leading the reader to further reading.
Most people, up to that day, have more difficulties concentrating on text presented vertically on a computer screen than on a sheet of paper. Therefore, the formulation of this type of material, while remaining precise, needs to be simplified and formulated in a more direct fashion.
It is also necessary to take into account the general evolution of reading practices. Reading of electronic material increasingly becomes a matter of consulting useful material, much more than a sequential reading (Perriault, 2002). This will influence the preparation of course material, which in some occasions will need to become a reference document instead of a textbook.
When writing a newspaper article, the author needs to compete with surrounding articles and with the small amount of time devoted to reading his article. When writing an article for the web, the author faces much stronger competition, not only within the medium itself –other, more interesting web pages– but also within the computer –other programs, most especially games. This difficulty is even greater for on-line learning, as it is a demanding task, from which we know that it is easy to become distracted.