The Virtual Media Lab site provides course materials in the areas of Art History (5), Asian and Middle Eastern Studies (1), Classics (6), English (27), History and Sociology of Science (2), Religious Studies (10), Romance Languages (2), Slavic (1), and South Asia Regional Studies (2). [Numbers in parentheses indicate number of classes presented.] There are subject headings for German and History, but no course listings at the time of this review. Classes include Art History 101 & 102, Arabic, Classics 190, Latin 401: Selections from Ovid’s Metamorphoses, English 50: Romantic Poetry, English 009.301: From Epic to Hypertext, HSSC 003: Technology and Society, Religious Studies 225: Dead Sea Scrolls, and Introduction to Hindi. Besides course materials there are links to search engines for the Bible (4), an English translation of the Quran, a link to the French Institute for Culture and Technology, and the Gopher for the Center for Computer Analysis of Texts (CCAT). Links to departmental homepages are included if appropriate.
The course materials vary depending on the topic of discussion. All courses include a syllabus. Content may include pictures, music, Quicktime movies, audio lessons, maps, Gopher menus, quizzes and exams, and class note outlines. One of the sections under Religion which I looked at included a complete text document with hypertext links. Some courses also provided links to other Web sites. Not all material is available for viewing from off campus sites. However, special permission for access to restricted files may be possible in certain cases according to Ann Dixon, director of the project.
The photographs are of excellent quality. Most download in a reasonable amount of time. I downloaded an audio lesson from Introduction to Hindi which was very clear. The English and Religion departments include a number of full‐text works. In addition to the works mentioned in the course listing above, examples include the Canterbury Tales, Gulliver’s Travels, and an excerpt of a New York Times interview with Pete Seeger. There are also many poems related to the various periods of English Literature covered. Online versions of the Bryn Mawr Classical Review (1990‐1997) and Slavic Review (Fall 1994 ‐ Winter 1995) also appear. Earlier I mentioned the availability of search engines for various versions of the Bible. These provide simple keyword search interfaces.
Evaluation:
This site provides an excellent resource for anyone interested in learning how the Internet can be used to provide class materials in a variety of formats for either supplementing class work or providing distance education. The actual material may or may not be appropriate for use in another class depending on how close the two syllabi are to the topics presented.
This site is extremely easy to navigate. Uploads are all quite fast. I used Navigator Gold to review this site; and, for the sections I linked to, I only found one audio file which I could not run because my version of RealAudio was not the most recent. While this site is intended to provide access to individual courses and not necessarily specific materials within a course, it would be helpful if there was a way to search the site for information. It could take a while to find a particular poem unless one knew under which course listing it would likely appear. Of course, that assumes that the poem exists on the site to begin with. I highly recommend this site.
