Teaching Electronic Creative Writing: A Report from the Creative Industries Frontline

This report traces the development of a course entitled Electronic Creative Writing at Queensland University of Technology. An initial concern in course development was that there is a danger in limiting the inherent possibilities of hypermedia writing through the very act of teaching it. In our view, the best way to avoid such stagnation is to combine practical, skills-based work with a theoretical and critical approach that looks at hypertext both as an industry and a creative genre. Students can be enabled to acquire the skills to locate, analyse and critique, as well as write and publish literary hypertexts. Those skills differ from but also build on students' prior skills with more traditional forms of writing.