E-texts and Analysis: Teaching Guide

E-texts and Analysis: Teaching Guide

Note: This page is a teaching guide with advice for using Walkthrough 1: What is an electronic text and how can we study it? (Downloadable MS Word file).

Also: Our general teaching philosophy is available in the Introduction. Feel free to skip this Teaching Guide and just read and adapt the Walkthrough. It is shared under a Creative Commons By Attribution license so you can do what you want.

Aboout Walkthrough 1

The first walkthrough is designed to get students to the point where they can use Voyant to think through text analysis.

Objectives

The objectives of this Walkthrough 1 are for learners to get to the point where they can:

  • Use Voyant Tools to study a single text including
    • Upload a new etext
    • Use basic tools
    • Explore new tools on their own
  • Question tools and how they can be used in text analysis
  • Think about what an etext is

Discussion

The Walkthrough is built around workshops we give that take about 2 to 3 hours depending on how much time you give students to play. By the end of the workshop students should have sufficient understanding of Voyant to be able to do a simpler exercise.

Here are some thoughts on teaching with this Walkthrough:

  • Run your own version of Voyant If you are demonstrating Voyant online or in a class then you should make sure you have a local copy that you can switch to. As your students start trying Voyant the main server may slow down so you want to have an alternative for continuing the lesson. See Run your own Voyant Server for instructions on how to download and run your own.
  • Getting started We have a Getting Started section in the help that you can use to help students get started quickly if you find our Walkthrough too verbose.
  • Getting help Instructors can email us if you run into trouble. There is also lots of online Voyant Tools Help available.
  • Other languages If you are teaching in another language the Voyant interface has different language skins and can handle many languages. See the Voyant Help: Languages.

How to teach with this walkthrough

There are different ways to teach a module with this Walkthrough. We talk about our general approach to teaching with these walkthroughs in the Introduction. One model is to:

  1. Give a very short introductory lecture just to introduce students to what is expected and give them a peek at what Voyant should look like. This could be prerecorded or a set of slides.
    1. You could set them an excercise at the start to complete the unit.
  2. Have them work through the Walkthrough on their own.
    1. Think about how they can get technical support if they get stuck. Can you set up small groups that can provide peer support?
  3. Offer an online help session when you are available to help with technical questions.
  4. Close the unit with a summative lecture and discussion to reinforce the points important to your course.
    1. You can then assign an exercise to see what students learned and to reinforce the learning.
Dialogica Home Previous: Introduction Next: Studying a Text

© Stéfan Sinclair & Geoffrey Rockwell

All materials on this site shared under a Creative Commons By Attribution license.