Learning Technologies Grants
Project Examples

Project Title EMMA - English Markup and Management Application Principal Investigator Nelson Hilton Relevant Links http://www.emma.uga.edu http://www.english.uga.edu/frescomp/Technology_Expo

Students recognize already that writing today differs far from the undertaking it was prior to the information technology revolution; they enter the University assuming that research is done on the Internet and text is processed on a computer; documents are "engineered" as much as "Englished." Emerging technologies that utilize markup languages enable a fundamental shift in the very nature of the production, examination, and distribution of text. The combination of databases and XML markup we are working to create will facilitate peer revision, enrich individual and longitudinal textual analysis, and enhance pedagogy generally throughout the program and the university. The core of EMMA is a Java-based editor (jEdit) that the student can download to facilitate creation of a marked-up composition. EMMA also uses Cocoon (part of the Apache XML open-source project) to produce server-side XSL transformations of the XML documents. The customized editing software provides for instructor-specified document type definitions (DTDs) or "tag sets" that are used for particular assignments. EMMA also provides a means of ensuring the correct identification and upload of marked-up compositions back into the system archive which manages peer-review, instructor comments, portfolio creation, assessment, and access permissions. In 2001-02, the EngComp Markup grant (Nelson Hilton, PI) was funded by the Committee for Applied Instructional Technologies, the Office of Instructional Support and Development, and the Franklin College of Arts & Sciences. In Spring 2002 a group from the English Department met all semester long to envision the direction that would be taken in the pedagogical program outlined by the grant. Members of the group learned XML and XSL and then debated the structure of the DTDs to be used for marking up student writing. Once several DTDs were constructed and tested, in Fall 2002 EMMA was piloted in ten classes and an ongoing ethnographic study of her use in the composition classroom began.