Before you read the revised definition below (written by Jess Brewer in June 2000) you may want to peek at his short polemic on Education and Information and/or his sweeping generalizations about Education and the Web.

So how would we define this particular HyperTextBook today?

Well, for one thing, it is not really a textbook in the usual sense of the word. In retrospect, perhaps that was a poor choice of names, since it conjures up an image of a massive tome with lots and lots of authoritative details presented elegantly in a rigidly linear pedagogical sequence. There is a good deal of locally written pedagogy in the HyperTextBook (although "in" is not quite the right word) but it also "contains" (for lack of a better word) links to a growing number of "external" Web pages.

The HyperTextBook is initially a combination of a "custom database" (see above) with versatile tools for organizing and presenting the content. The database contains [descriptions of] Web pages with content relevant to First Year Science education (in particular to Science 1 at UBC) and the tools include means for students to customize the content and presentation style to their personal tastes and needs.

This is not particularly new. What we are working on now are methods for the students to provide not only feedback ("ratings" etc.) but their own content.

Actually, the best way to define the HyperTextBook is by using it. If it's not fairly self-explanatory, we need to fix it so it is. Please give us lots of critical feedback!