Towards a sociosemiotic WebAnalytics: Higher Education TEL tools handling access and information extraction in textually complex websites

The paper reports the first stages in the authors’ plans to build WebAnalytics a sociosemiotically-oriented websearch-and-webshare platform for Higher Education students. It incorporates a model of textuality based on mini-genre theory in which linguistic structures are related to text structures in explicit ways. End-user perceptions of textual and linguistic tie-ups are explored in relation to the functions of search engines and annotations. As space precludes detailed re-porting of our field investigations, the experimental tools used are described in relation to the theoretical foundations and the potential for improving their interoperability. In so doing, the paper puts forward an approach to software development that posits a step-by-step integration of existing tools as a way of enacting the planned platform.