E-learning and stylistics: the language and Style web-based course investigation and what we can learn from it

Conferees who attended the relevant workshops at the Budapest, Birmingham or Istanbul PALA conferences will be aware that Mick Short has been developing a web-based version of the Lancaster University introductory Stylistics course ‘Language and Style’. This course was ‘completed’ last year (no course is ever complete, of course) and investigations of student reactions to it, and their performance in course work and examinations have been taking place at Lancaster, Münster, Mainz and elsewhere). Mick intends that the course will be available, free to all, on the worldwide web from September 2005 onwards, and so the Huddersfield PALA conference is a good (and final, honest!) opportunity to ‘showcase’ it.
This workshop is intended (a) to enable those who have accessed the course before to explore it (and hopefully use it in the future), (b) to enable those present at the conference who have been involved in the investigations to tell others what they have discovered and to compare their findings with one another) (we are working towards a special issue of Language and Literature devoted to the course and associated investigations in 2006) and (c) for all present to discuss how e-learning in its various forms can be used to enhance the teaching of stylistics. At this stage we are not sure how many people involved in the investigations worldwide will be coming to Huddersfield, but at least the three people named above will give short presentations, describing the course, how they have used it, and what advantages and disadvantages they have found in using it.