Breadth of World Drama Illustrated through Rich Materials

Magda Romanska
Assistant Professor
Performing Arts

The course website for TH215 World Drama in Its Context is a class unto itself. Magda Romanska assembled a rich collection of theater information, videos, references and documentation -- and the organization of this material puts a powerful resource in the hands of theater students.

Students responded very positively to the site, describing it as "a great supplement to learning in the classroom," "it...made doing work for class so much easier," and described the slideshows as making "notetaking and studying SO much easier," and as "awesome, I got good grades because of it."

The course site is divided into 11 sections, each built around a specific geographic region such as "Greek Theater," "African Drama" and "French Neoclassicism." Clicking into a section brings up related imagery, classroom presentations, study guides, streaming video clips and extensive links to library references.

Emerson librarians played an important role in the development of this site. Working with Romanska and the Instructional Technology Group, librarians helped integrate a variety of eReserves and links to readings. Each reference contains a detailed citation.

The course site is also enhanced by significant use of streaming video. Romanska worked with instructional technologists to digitize and reformat the clips to ".swf" format, playing through a Flash viewer. This process reinforces copyright protection while also making it easy for students to access video material from any Web-connected computer.

For help integrating library material and multimedia into your course site, please contact the Instructional Technology Group at x8961.