When I was at teaching at Southampton, we did use lectures, but kept it
very interactive, with students being given a lot of exercises to do. But
I'm not sure this saves any teaching time, since they still need the
intensive feedback of small-group workshops.
Best wishes
Matthew
> MessageIn reply to Matthew's message about teaching methods, we're in the
> process of developing a pair of level 1 companion modules - one on prose
> fiction and one on poetry - both of which will combine a weekly lecture
> series with smaller group weekly seminars/writing workshops. In theory, it
> ought to be possible to convey 'writerly' questions and dilemmas by this
> means, but it makes me quite nervous. It's so easy in a lecture-theatre
> just to let yourself slip into what lecturing does best...
>
> Thoughts, anyone?
>
> Susan Wicks.
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: Richard Kerridge
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Sent: Wednesday, July 20, 2005 9:17 AM
> Subject: Re: Teaching Methods
>
>
> Matthew, Phil, Graeme and everyone,
>
> As I understand it, having attended that Birkbeck event and the one at
> Portsmouth and convened one here at Bath, and also having looked at the
> recently released RAE criteria, the 'research question' concept remains
> essential, but, as Matthew suggests, there is no point in defining it in
> reductive, content-based terms. Unless the factual research for the
> novel produces genuinely new discoveries that would stand alone in
> academic terms, it will not meet the requirement as research defined in
> this way. But the other helpful concept here is 'contribution to
> knowledge'. A novel could be a new contribution to knowledge by being
> aesthetically and technically innovative, or by bringing an established
> technique to bear on new subject-matter. That is, by doing something
> that novelists have not done before. So the trick may be - like everyone
> else, I'm only trying to read the runes - to describe in advance the new
> thing that you think your novel will do, and then frame a question to
> which that would be an answer. The research question, in other words,
> may be one about the way novels work and what novels do: a question
> about the creative process itself that a novel could answer.
>
> Richard
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Creative Writing in Universities and Colleges
> [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Matthew Francis
> Sent: 19 July 2005 14:24
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: Teaching Methods
>
>
> Some of my colleagues have just brought up the perennial subject of
> the intensive teaching required by creative writing courses. Our basic
> method of delivery is a two-hour workshop per week for each tutor
> group, with the groups preferably no larger than 12 - though there are
> sometimes a few more. Has anyone found a more economical method? Does
> anyone use lectures? I just wanted to get a sense of how other
> universities are approaching this problem.
>
> Dr Matthew Francis
> Lecturer in Creative Writing
> Dept of English Literature
> University of Wales Aberystwyth
> Hugh Owen Building
> Penglais
> Aberystwyth
> SY23 3DY
> Wales, UK
>
> Phone: 01970 622469
|