I’m sure that many other working phonologists out there have had the same experience I’ve had: you’re searching the web for some paper or reference — or maybe just surfing — when you stumble upon somebody’s course material on the web. An hour later, you’re bookmarking or downloading like mad, or you’re reading and thinking how you might incorporate this or that in your next course on a similar topic, or whatever.
I’ve been thinking lately about what phonoloblog should be, and one thing I think it should be — aside from the often random discussions of things phonological — is a kind of resource center for working phonologists. And what more useful resource is there than course material? So, here’s the deal: I’m going to start compiling a resource page of course websites. It may take a little while, since I feel compelled to ask permission from each individual, to check how permanent the links may be, etc. In the meantime, please comment on this post with links to your own online phonology course material, if you’re willing to share, and I’ll add them to the resource page. (If you’re at all concerned about the permanence of your course website location, let me know and we can talk about relocating it to this server, on which I have plenty of room.)
If anyone has comments about how the resource page should be organized, that would also be helpful.
Here’s mine: http://wso.williams.edu/~nsanders/LING211/index.html
I also have course websites for intro (LING101), phonetics (LING111), and historical linguistics (LING212), which might contain information of interest to phonologists. There’re are also websites for syntax (LING121) and semantics (LING131), which are probably of less interest.
Feel free to borrow anything from any of these sites.
Awesome — thanks, Nathan! (And thanks in advance to anyone else who follows up — just to save myself from constantly having to say thank you later …)
One possible problem with your proposal, which is otherwise an excellent one, is that many of us use course management systems like Blackboard, which do not ordinarily permit easy access from the outside. I know it’s possible to set up ‘guest’ access, but I don’t know for sure if that works off-campus. Otherwise sharing thoughts, syllabi, problem sets (if not copyrighted) is an excellent idea.
Right, Geoff — thanks for raising this point. I wouldn’t recommend setting up guest access for course material on Blackboard (or WebCT, or any equivalent course management system); in such cases, it would probably be best to share specific material by uploading it somewhere else (for example, on this server).
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