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Mason, Jefferey—Taking Theatre 101 to Broadway Page 5
Exchanges: The On-line Journal of Teaching and Learning in the CSU


Could I have assembled all of the information and instructions as a printed course packet? Yes, but the beauty of the website lies in the hyperlinks because they permit the student to act on the impulse to learn more about the topic of the moment. Any printed resource presents its contents in linear fashion—word by word, page by page, and so on, and most books and articles are written under the assumption that the reader will progress from the beginning to the end. Yet a website is not linear but three-dimensional, so the student may explore the material not in the order I think best but on an "as-needed" basis.

For example, someone reading the page on auditions can jump to actors and from there to resident theatres (complete with external links to a variety of professional companies) or to the site run by the professional actors' union, Actors Equity Association. A student producer can jump to a summary of New York audience demographics, to a description of advertising media, or to a page listing ticket prices for shows in New York, which also includes links to a couple of online ticket sales services. I don't decide when a student is ready to learn about something; the student responds to the assignments in the game and investigates material in response to necessity or inspiration. I doubt that every student reads every page in Broadway, but I hope that each encounter is timely and meaningful.

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