There appears to be a fair amount of interest in producing parallel paper based and html based versions of 'lecture' notes.
The usual arguements in favour appear to be:- 1) An unusual interface which may be more appealing to the students, 2) Digital search facilities, 3) Links to related areas, 4) Students can print out notes as required.
My personal feeling is that this is to simplistic and that this sort of material should not be 'published' unless it contains some 'value added content'. Unless it is as an interim measure.
I would appreciate other peoples feelings on this as we have been experimenting with an HTTP server for NOVELL (for both WAN and LAN delivery as you can restrict IP number access).
I am now onto my 3rd lecture course using this approach. I start the lecture with some Web based materials, perhaps with a few molecules thrown in. But despite all this technology, I still use chalk for the major part of the lecture. I also print the web pages off and deposit them in the library for students to copy. The most interesting bits contain the chemical MIMEed molecules. Yesterday for example, in the course on pericyclic reactions, I was able to show them chorismate mutase, with the inhibitor docked, and a link to Paul Bartlett's page for further explanation. Further on, I expect to show "rotatable" molecular orbitals marked up in VRML, etc etc. Dr Henry Rzepa, Department of Chemistry, Imperial College, LONDON SW7 2AY; rzepa@ic.ac.uk via Eudora Pro 2.1.3; Tel (44) 171 594 5774; Fax: (44) 171 594 5804. World-Wide Web URL: http://www.ch.ic.ac.uk/rzepa/ ----- chemweb: A list for Chemical Applications of the Internet. To unsubscribe, send to listserver@ic.ac.uk the following message; unsubscribe chemweb List coordinator, Henry Rzepa (rzepa@ic.ac.uk)