Processing the choices

I have about a third of the module option forms in now. I’m looking at each one to see that students have made the right type of choices and that also these choices are sensible. So far, I’ve only seen one that is wrong and one that is unclear. No one has made unwise combinations, though one or two have gone for the darker themes: The Test of Evil, Utopias and Dystopias and Salvation to Damnation.  

We’re advising against too much similarity in the creative options, particularly in creative writing. So far, though, no one has opted for all three prose fiction choices.  Good thing too!    

So, not bad.

Option Modules and the Module Fair

It is that time of year again. We are getting students ready to select modules for next year. Per semester students must study on three modules and over two semesters students must study in  three modules for each of their disciplines. Thus, our Drama and Creative Writing study three drama and three creative writing, our English and Creating Writing, three English and three Creative Writing and our English and Drama three English and three Drama. Some of the courses are compulsory and some are options.

Some modules are multi-purpose and can be interpreted as either English or Creative Writing or Drama or may even involve all three. This can allow quite a bit of choice and can allow a little steer towards Creative Writing, Drama or English.

Hybrid modules

We offer a number of modules that are Creative Writing and English Literature at the same time. How would there be parity, they asked, as it went through the approval process, between the two different skills. That was actually quite easy to answer. We have sets of mark descriptors for Creative Writing and for English Literature. They complement each other quite well.

English Literature	Creative Writing
Task	Task
Knowledge	Expression
Analytical skills	Technical skills: [structure; beginning/middle/end; show don’t tell; etc]
Secondary reading and research	Writerly reading and research: [relates mainly to critical / reflective essays, bibliography]
Conceptual abilities	Style
Writing Skills	Writing Skills
Argument	Reflection: [relates mainly to critical/reflective essays, bibliography]
Presentation	Presentation

On these modules, there is usually a short analytical first essay and then a choice for the larger task between a critical essay and a creative piece. Notice that in our Mark Descriptors Analytical Skills in English Literature match Technical Skills in Creative Writing. These query the substance of the module, whilst Knowledge expects the student to know a genre and Expression demands that they write appropriately and creatively in that genre.

How this all works out in Intro to Children’s Literature

We look at the history of children’s literature, so that students have a context for the literature they are studying. Then we look at the various key stages and how literature needs to be designed for those children. We also, week by week, look at some general writing skills and how writers are using them.



The first task is a close reading of a text of their choice. It could be an historical text or one for a particular key stage. If they pick a particular key stage for this task they must pick another one for the main task. In this task and if they do the critical essay later they must show an element of some compare and contrast with other sub-genres for this key stage and this genre across other keys stages.



The main task is a 3000 word critical essay with a bibliography or a 2500 creative piece with drafts, a self-assessment and an annotated bibliography. Literature students may attempt the creative piece and Creative Writing students may attempt the critical essay, and anyway, some take it as their literature option. Naturally, I could not expect literature students to have all of the creative writing skills that the creative writers have. I focus only on those that we specifically discuss in the course. These are covered by Technical Skills. In any case, both tasks require the students to demonstrate that they understand the key stage in which they are working. This manifests in Knowledge and Expression. Style is also a creative writing consideration. It is often learnt through an osmosis-type strategy; students learn good style by reading a lot. English Literature students read a lot.

Why hybrid modules are useful

They allow us to provide modules that are viable and that recruit large numbers.  

They can provide a dual opportunity for our students.

They provide a solid option for those students who are ambivalent about the contrast between creative and critical writing.  

                      

That all important feedback

Whenever we survey students they will say something either good or bad about feedback. They’re rarely neutral. As in any educational setting, there are two sorts of feedback: formative and summative.

It’s the formative feedback I’m more concerned with here. This is the ongoing, week on week, feedback that helps to develop our writers. It’s particularly important as part of the creative writing workshop.However:

Workshopping with final year students

I met my new Final Portfolio group on Wednesday. There are only two students from last semester but I’ve met most of the rest on other courses. We had a great session. It probably helps that they have now been using this particular version of the workshop for a semester already.

How it works

I’ve created a group on our VLE, Blackboard, and included myself in the group. Our class meets on a Wednesday, so by Monday 2.00 p.m. the four people whose turn it is to submit that week email work to the whole group. This gives everyone the chance to have a good look at the work before the class.

The workshop operates through weeks 2-9. Week 1 is an orientation week and Week 11 students have one to one tutorials. Week 12 is submission week. So, the group is divided into three and between four and six students submit each week.

How academics work

Recently there has been a spate of strikes in the universities. Lecturers and support staff are demanding that their salaries keep pace with inflation. I’m not going to discuss the strikes here and if you know who I am you will probably know already my attitude to the current dispute. That conversation is for elsewhere and probably in private.

But I would like to discuss the nature of academics’ work which is not widely understood by those not in the academy.

Exam time!

Yes, weeks 13 and 14 are as ever exam weeks. And that means that we’re all involved in invigilation at some point.

I’ve had to be present in three -  in one large one where I acted as the “senior”, i.e. the person in charge, one slightly smaller one where I was just another invigilator and I also had to supervise one student who was allowed to sit his exams apart from others and who was allowed a little extra time.

That was about eight hours in total.

We’re not supposed to read or mark whilst we invigilate. So it’s actually taking quite a bit of our time. However, we can do some work when we’re just supervising an individual student. I actually managed to read a third of Primo Levi’s If This is a Man / The Truce. It’s a set text on a module in which I’m lecturing next semester. I’m not talking about that book but as it’s so fundamental to that course it seems important to read it.

The other exams, though, seem to rob us of time.

And yet. It’s actually quite a useful thinking space. You have to be there. No one can expect anything else of you at precisely that time. Everything stops. You can clear your head. It’s incredibly peaceful.

If you do have to take a student to the bathroom, the contrast as your walk out into the “real world” is startling. One moment old-fashioned library silence. The next the normal hustle and bustle of the campus.  

It’s all quite formal – put your bags at the front / back / turn off your mobile phones / no notes allowed in coats or pockets, no one to leave in the first hour or the last fifteen minutes. By being here you are saying you are fit to take the exam. Papers are stamped with a random number to prevent later substitution. Names are hidden. Each student has an allocated seat. Toilet breaks are recorded on the student’s paper and we have to search the toilets before the beginning of the exam.

Yet today the paper-setter who is also the senior invigilator puts them at ease with a joke before they start.  

There’s quite a bit to do, in fact. Give out the papers, read out the instructions, check IDs, take students to the bathroom, sign out those who finish early, answer questions, find spare pens and collect in the papers. And in between those activities you patrol, and sit, and think. You’re in a bubble, out of your normal world. The time passes surprisingly quickly.  

Then, when it’s all over comes the marking. I don’t have any exam marking but I’m in the middle of a heap of coursework. We have to get on: the external examiner and the exam board need them.

The bubble was nice while it lasted.