8. Similar Alternative Systems
a) MS Word's Document Revision Tools
MS Word 7 includes a range of tools for sharing, annotating and revising a document. These allow multiple readers to add their own distinct annotations and to highlight text in a range of colours. Where it is practical for a whole class to standardize on one word-processing package, using these tools (which are intended for the office environment) would seem to be a viable alternative, and would eliminate the need to use Rich Text Format as a document standard. This would also allow students to work together on writing projects.
b) Using HTML
Roy Bowers has been developing a procedure for marking student work submitted in the form of HTML files. This enables student errors to be automatically linked to relevant explanations in a grammar database; students view their marked essays in a web browser and click on the errors to see the relevant portion of a help file displayed in another frame of the browser window. HTML, like RTF, is independent of platform and application, and students can access very detailed help files using this procedure. One disadvantage is that students submit their work in the form of text files rather than word-processor files, so they lose some of the formatting flexibility provided by a word-processor.