ESC Newsletter - Issue 11 by English Subject Centre

English Subject Centre

Newsletter Issue 11 November 2006

Interview with Elaine Showalter

New Media, New Practices

Module Handbooks and Audit Culture

Nicole King

Gail Ashton

Cris Yelland

Employability and Creative Writing

E-learning Touches Base in English Studies

The Arts and Humanities Data Service

Mimi Thebo

Brett Lucas

James Cummings

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This newsletter is published by the English Subject Centre, part of the Subject Network of the Higher Education Academy (previously the Learning and Teaching Support Network (LTSN)). The Subject Centre provides many different kinds of help to English lecturers – more details are available in this newsletter and on our website (http://www.english. heacademy.ac.uk/). At the heart of all our work is the view that the HE teaching of English is best supported from within the discipline itself. As well as updates on the Centre’s activities and on important developments (both within the discipline and across HE), you will find articles here on a wide range of English-related topics. The next issue of the newsletter will appear in Spring 2007. If you would like to submit an article (of between 300 and 3,000 words), propose a book or software review (perhaps a textbook review by one of your students) or respond in a letter to someone else’s article, please contact the editor of the Spring issue, Nicole King (nicole.king@rhul.ac.uk). In the meantime, you can keep in touch with our activities by subscribing to our email list at http://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/lists/english–heacademy.html. The newsletter is distributed to English departments throughout the UK and is available online at http://www.english.heacademy.ac.uk/explore/ publications/index.php along with previous issues. If you would like extra copies, please email us at esc@rhul.ac.uk.

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Contents Director’s foreword – Ben Knights

Events Calendar

Interview Nicole King – ‘To think of yourself as the teacher’: An interview with Elaine Showalter

Articles Mimi Thebo – Employability and Creative Writing

Gail Ashton – New Media, New Practices: Collaboration and team-building in e-learning

Brett Lucas – E-Learning Touches Base in English Studies

Cris Yelland – Module Handbooks and Audit Culture

James Cummings – The Arts and Humanities Data Service: Keeping the digital past for the future

The Student Experience Rachel Davies – U210 The English Language: Past, Present and Future

Michael Aiken – Tackling Coleridge

Book Reviews Andrew Maunder – In the Classroom: perspectives on women writers and teaching practice

Emily Horton – Debating Creativity: literature, language, theory and practice

News and Reports The Sound of English

Teaching Medieval Romance

2006-2007 Mini Projects

Grants to Enhance Career Services for English Students

IT Works!

The English Subject Centre Report Series

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Director’s Foreword Ben Knights, Director, English Subject Centre, Royal Holloway, University of London Across the Subject Network, Subject Centres perform a balancing act. In the nature of the new ‘arms length’ state apparatus, they are required to achieve demonstrable results. Like every other agency, we have targets to meet and funders to impress. Inevitably this means that a large part of our visible output is in the form of practical advice and consumable resources: in the broadest sense, technologies for learning. But there is a larger and at the same time less visible aspect to our work. Subject Centres are staffed by people committed to their subjects, to the knowledges that have been lovingly built, the people who build and maintain them, the students who study them. Beneath the toils of instrumental rationality, we are concerned with the human environment composed by the communities who practice our subjects. It is this orientation towards the hinterlands of classroom practice that has led us to run regular events for departmental and school administrators, humanities librarians, and careers staff as well as front-line teachers. In the English Subject Centre, we find some of this thinking sharply concentrated as we prepare for next year’s ‘Renewals’ Conference http://www.english. heacademy.ac.uk/renewals/

We find ourselves, in fact, unpacking and enquiring into the connotations of ‘renewals’. If we as a Centre bear some responsibility for promoting the health of the subject, we must ask where professional renewal comes from. The subject of the Conference is of course primarily the renewal of subject matter and teaching. But that renewal in turn has to be based upon those nurturing conditions that make professional creativity possible.The conventional understanding is that – at the individual level – renewal comes from scholarly immersion in your subject. Typically, that is taken to mean reading, researching, doing your ‘own’ writing, talking to colleagues or taking part in conferences or comparable professional activities. The acme of that sort of ‘renewal’ would be an AHRC study leave, or a scholarship to work in one of the great research libraries. But what about teaching? How do people derive a sense of renewal in working with students? Again, the traditional answer used to be from having the time and mental space to work with energetic and questioning students. Yet it

seems that all too often colleagues are experiencing the opposite of renewal in their day to day teaching tasks. We hear on all sides about what depletes our colleagues: we hear about the effects of increasing SSRs, about the passive aggression of an influential minority of dependent students, the bombardment of e-mails, about obsessive audit procedures, about the unsatisfactory performance of a job you care about but no longer have the time to do with conviction. We hear less about the sources of new energy, and must wonder whether institutions are actually making the best use of the commitment and expertise at their disposal. This failure (if failure it is) impacts at two levels: upon the existing staff of departments and subject groups, and thus, in turn, upon the bringing on of recruits to the profession. Anxious and stressed colleagues, hanging on in the hopes of their next sabbatical, are not a good advertisement for the joys of teaching English. At the Subject Centre we are very conscious – from departmental visits, from the Head of Department Conferences – how much the work of so many senior colleagues involves caring for the disciplinary environment. We see our larger task as concerning the ways in which departmental communities nurture and support each other; mentor and encourage new faculty, support those who are struggling with fraying of the spirit, or reward those in later career. These cannot be hived off as a separate set of issues. All bear very directly on a group of disciplines that has – in its various forms – treasured linguistic innovation, creativity, the theatre of argument. Which is to say that the question of nurture in our subjects is indeed academic, but not in the pejorative sense.The subject’s very public quarrel with enchantment may have made it all the harder to talk about the teaching self or give nurturing attention to deeper meanings of the academic career. A healthy departmental culture matters if for no other reason than that it enables the recruitment of the next generation of the profession. So one meaning of ‘renewal’ points towards the regeneration of the social body of scholar teachers. Yet we might further suppose that in order to be able to give to our students we have also to be able to give to ourselves. For some colleagues that gift will be the opportunity to re-read and talk with

‘Anxious and stressed colleagues, hanging on in the hopes of their next sabbatical, are not a good advertisement for the joys of teaching English.’

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Director’s Foreword sympathetic others about texts whose meanings are deeply threaded into their own lives. For others it will be the excitement of collaboration on a joint project. At still other times it will be the opportunity to cultivate stillness and the inner space in intense focus on a writing task. Equally, the gift might be one of encouragement to take on greater responsibilities. All require the respect and active support of subject colleagues. This understanding of departments as working environments informs the Subject Centre’s orientation towards events. As departments seek to help individuals answer for themselves the question ‘what am I in it

for?’ we will support them in every way we can. We are simultaneously heartened and depressed when we hear from colleagues at events statements like ‘it reminds me what I’m in it for’, or ‘it succeeded in restoring my faith in both the job and the discipline’. To be oriented towards developing the social-intellectual matrix is not purely an investment in professional narcissism or the nostalgic comfort zone of a residual clerisy. Academic communities in which colleagues look out for each other are a prerequisite if that ubiquitous phrase ‘the student experience’ is to have any real meaning.

Renewals: Refiguring University English in the 21st Century Royal Holloway, University of London

5-7 July 2007 This second English Subject Centre international conference will address the matter of English as a discipline through performance, writing, rehearsal, technologies, pedagogy – all the ways in which students and scholars ‘do’ their subject. Strands include:

• •

Pedagogy • Performance • Creative – critical crossover Reading and making: publishing and the history of the book

• New writing / e-writing • Postgraduate training

To find out more, submit a proposal or to register, visit the conference website: www.english.heacademy.ac.uk/renewals Plenary speakers include: Alan Liu

Andrew Motion

Elaine Showalter

Why ‘Renewals’? English (Literature, Language, and Creative Writing) is a self-renewing and ever-changing subject. One axis of change derives from interaction with adjacent subjects – drama, philosophy, history, media studies, and so on. Another comes from the shifting relations between teacher scholars and their students. In few subjects do the cultures of teaching and of scholarship have such a potentially transformative reciprocal influence. The object of this Conference is to understand, through the lens of teaching, how English is being, and might be, refigured in higher education.

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Events Calendar 2006 Brief details of each of the English Subject Centre’s forthcoming events are given below. If you would like to attend any of these events please register on our website at http://www.english.heacademy. ac.uk/explore/events or email esc@rhul.ac.uk. All events, with the exception of the New Lecturers’ conference, are free of charge. Teaching Religion in Early Modern Studies

Masculinities in Text and Teaching

10 November 2006: University of Manchester

9 March 2007: University of Hertfordshire

This event, a collaboration between three Subject Centres (English, History, Classics & Archaeology and Philosophy and Religious Studies) will explore interdisciplinary perspectives in the teaching of early modern religion. Charting the spectrum of student commitments, the workshop will feature discussion on such topics as ‘Secularism, fundamentalism and the teaching of early modern religion’, ‘Teaching the reformation’, ‘Teaching religious literature’, ‘Teaching theology and religious ideas’ and ‘Teaching religious institutions and communities’. Participants will include Michael Brown, Alan Ford, Jeremy Gregory, Crawford Gribben, Graeme Murdock, Gerald Hammond, Sandra Hynes, Peter Marshall and Lucy Wooding.

The object of this one-day workshop will be to explore the representation and contestation of versions of masculinity in the interaction between literary text and the process of the seminar.While there will be two or three short presentations, the format of the day will be participative, and based on short texts which participants will be requested to read beforehand.

School – University Transition – the 1st Year Experience 17 November 2006: University of Stirling

An event on the transition between studying English at school and at university in a Scottish context, this colloquium will draw on a number of recent studies and reports that identify the first year as a matter of growing and widespread concern in English departments throughout the UK, and will address such issues as self-managed learning, literacy, and designing the first year curriculum around multiple constituencies.The event will involve a particular focus on issues specific to the Scottish context, such as the younger student intake and more flexible guidelines for secondary curriculum.

Training Conference for New Lecturers in English 1 – 3 December 2006: University of Birmingham

The aims of this conference are to share and debate practical teaching ideas and activities as they relate to English as a subject; equip new lecturers with a ‘survival kit’ of ideas; and establish a mutual support network.The conference will combine short contextual and orientation talks by leading members of the profession with practical work in groups, each facilitated by a member of the Subject Centre staff.The conference is intended for lecturers in the English disciplines (literature, language, creative writing) who are in their first or second year of fulltime teaching. It supplements local PgCHE courses which are inevitably of a generic nature by offering the opportunity to reflect on the demands of subject teaching.

Situated and Work-related Learning in the Humanities 16 March 2007: Harris Park Conference Centre, University of Central Lancashire

This one day event will look at the ways in which practical, real/realistic work exercises are increasingly being brought into the undergraduate curriculum. The day will begin with a series of case studies looking at how this work has been assessed and integrated into specific programmes in a range of institutions.The work of the Centre for Employability in the Humanities (CETH) at the University of Central Lancashire, the host for this event, will form one case study but the day has been developed to highlight the variety of work going on in this area across the country. Participants will be encouraged to discuss ways in which their own work might incorporate the approaches detailed as well as the practical hurdles that might stand in the way of developing such work.The real advantages of this kind of work within the university will be debated. The aims of the day, then, are to interrogate the underlying assumptions of practically based work of this kind and to develop an understanding of how this kind of work can usefully be carried out across a number of disciplines. For further information or to propose a case study for inclusion please contact CETH (ceth@uclan.ac.uk).

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Interview ‘To think of yourself as the teacher: not as the bringer of information, but as the facilitator of thinking’ An Interview with Elaine Showalter Nicole King (English Subject Centre) interviewed Elaine Showalter, Emeritus Professor of English at Princeton University, on 6 September 2006, by telephone. Their discussion focused on Professor Showalter’s forty years as a teacher of British and American literature. Professor Showalter is a past president of the Modern LanguageAssociation and was formerly on theAdvisory Board of the English Subject Centre; she retired from Princeton in 2003. She now divides her time between London andWashington D.C. while continuing her work as a freelance journalist and media commentator. Her most recent books include Teaching Literature (2003) and Faculty Towers (2005).

NK: Are there specific things— career milestones, events,

people—you can remember now that helped you to become a good teacher, by which I mean a reflective one? ES: I had very good luck during my career to have a lot of friends and a lot of colleagues who were really interested in teaching. The first teaching job I ever had was in a Quaker private school in Philadelphia—between my masters degree and my Ph.D.—and it was a great experience because Quaker education is extremely self-reflective. I was just a year out of college and I was teaching high school kids close to my own age. The most important thing for me was realizing how much I love teaching. It was good to have had that year before I actually started on the Ph.D., because I always had a sense of why I was in graduate school. Then my first regular academic job was at Douglass College, as a part-time adjunct.At Douglass I had colleagues who encouraged me to finish my Ph.D., at a time when it seemed almost pointless: there were so few jobs for women and many universities didn’t hire women. Also, I had one remarkable colleague named Barrett Mandel who was very interested in the teaching process and he started a voluntary group for those of us who wanted to discuss teaching. He was brilliant and imaginative and very experimental, and emphasized the importance of teaching as an interactive process. That was a revelation to me. He

shared his own techniques and methods—some of them as simple as having everybody sit in a circle, which at the time was quite a radical notion. I’ll never forget that he suggested ‘if classroom discussion really dies turn off all the lights’— NK: What was that meant to do? ES: Well, I guess to give everybody anonymity and security. You know, turn off the lights for a few minutes and you talk in the dark [laughter] which was not a device that I carried with me in my professional repertoire, [more laughter] but it was very liberating to consider it, because it was so focused on what makes students feel free to express themselves. And to think of yourself —as the teacher— not as the ‘bringer of information’ but as the facilitator of thinking and learning. NK : So you carried that (facilitator) technique through your career? ES: Yes, the group discussions were very inspiring, and made a huge difference to me… What happened at the same time was the explosion of the conference as a medium of professional exchange—the Small World phenomenon where you spent your time presenting papers and listening to other people’s papers. Although in terms of content I always thought that was an incredibly inefficient way of 5

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Interview with Elaine Showalter exchanging ideas, I realized very quickly that it was a kind of teaching, and an opportunity to watch other people teach.You can learn as much from the bad ones as the good ones. I would go with academic friends to hear famous literary scholars speak at conferences and we would always afterwards have a post-mortem about how it was done. Some very well-known critics were dreary speakers; others were brilliant and memorable orators and performers. I heard Houston Baker speak often enough to be able to observe what he did and learn from how he did it. I will never have his dramatic skills but I could at least aspire to them. More technically, Hazel Carby was the first academic I ever saw use video clips in a public lecture, and that gave me ideas for improving my undergraduate teaching. I also taught in the summer at the School for Criticism and Theory. Stanley Fish was there as well, and he always asked questions after a public lecture that people really wanted the answer to. I decided to aim for a classroom atmosphere in which people ask the questions they really want answers to, not what they think are the smartest questions or the proper questions. I was emboldened by his example to be more direct and honest myself. NK :

One of the things that we talk about a lot here at the Subject Centre and one thing that is so important to the work that we do is the connection of research and teaching. Very early in Teaching Literature you state that you believe that the teaching versus research divide that characterizes English certainly, and I am sure the other humanities subjects as well, might be bridged by re-conceiving ‘our pedagogy to make it as intellectually challenging as our research.’ So one part of my question is what exactly did you have in mind in terms of making it more intellectually challenging and then the other part of my question is, prior to sitting down to write Teaching Literature were you conscious of connecting your teaching with your research?

and English department faculty. I was wondering if you can envision a time when that might shift, do you see that as a long way off or perhaps round the corner? ES: I think it’s a way off, but it does seem to me that your teaching can become intellectually engaging and theoretically self-critical, something worth discussing and writing about. Many aspects of a professional identity formation besides research and publication need to be taken into account at a very early stage in postgraduate education, and make the difference between being an undergraduate reading literature and being a graduate student being trained to teach it. Pedagogy is one aspect that can be the subject of research as well as practice. NK: And did you come to that quite late in your career or...? ES: Yes. I had certainly thought about teaching a lot, but it

was not until I was at Princeton that I really started to think about it urgently and concretely. NK : What made it urgent? ES: The teaching structure of Princeton is a very luxurious one where a professor has teaching assistants who lead small discussion groups for a large lecture course. Although the professor designs the course, chooses the reading, and delivers the lectures, the TAs work directly with the students and do much of the grading. When I moved to Princeton in 1984, I had a few teaching assistants who were really very inexperienced, and student evaluations at the end of the term would say that they liked the lectures but got very little from the discussions. I thought it was part of my job to monitor and oversee the entire course for students. For several years I met regularly with my TAs about what it was we wanted to accomplish in each course, and how we would work together in lecture and discussion to achieve our goals.

‘we have nothing to lose by sharing teaching skills with each other; we are not in competition.’

ES: I always taught writers and ideas that I was working

on and that’s the traditional sense in which people see the connection between teaching and research— you try out new ideas, you develop material. But when I wrote Teaching Literature, I was thinking of something else — that the teaching process itself is intellectually demanding and something you want to analyze and share with others. NK : I don’t think the status has really shifted in terms of

where pedagogic research exists in the minds of Literature

NK : Well, this leads me to your course, the graduate seminar you did on literary pedagogy. How did that course happen and I assume this was the first time such a course was given? ES: Oh, absolutely. I was thinking about developing a new graduate seminar in the mid-1990s, and I realized it would be more useful to create a seminar on teaching. Princeton had given me an award called the Cotsen Teaching Fellowship, funded by an alumnus to encourage and support innovation in teaching, which provides an annual summer

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Interview with Elaine Showalter stipend, money to hire a graduate research assistant, and a fund to purchase books on your specialized topic for the library. I used it to research, plan, and set up a seminar on pedagogy, and to buy books about pedagogy for both the university and the department library. My colleagues in the English department were very sceptical at first about the intellectual content of such a seminar. So students took it as a non-credit course. At the end of each seminar, instead of a grade or a credit, I wrote quite detailed, lengthy letters about the students’ teaching for their dossiers. Perhaps getting that letter was an incentive for some students to take the seminar initially, but actually they were eager to learn more about how to teach. Once the seminar became established and successful, I announced that I wasn’t going to teach it anymore, in order to have other English department faculty take over. I had thought all along that it was important that the seminar be taught in rotation by all faculty members because planning and leading such a course would require all professors to reflect critically on what they did in the classroom, and to investigate what was being written about the teaching of literature. As with any other subject, you learn a lot about pedagogy when you have to design a way to teach it.

ES: Exactly. NK : That says we should go back and rethink…maybe we’ll update some readings in a course syllabus, but to really think through the structure and the apparatus of a course, we are not ever encouraged to do that. ES: Change is risky for us all. Yet doctors and lawyers have to update their skills on a regular basis; they attend seminars and watch others demonstrate new techniques. I think more renewal should be available for faculty, not just in terms of new technology but also new modes and styles of communication. Moreover, we have nothing to lose by sharing teaching skills with each other; we are not in competition. NK :Yes, I was reading that in your text—it’s different from research in that there’s no problem if we all do exactly what everyone else does, we don’t necessarily have to be original in our teaching. ES: Oh, I shamelessly stole techniques from the best—to the advantage of my students. NK : Another thing you wrote about in Teaching Literature

NK : And is it still being taught? ES: It is, yes. And I think it’s gone

‘I shamelessly stole techniques from the best— to the advantage of my students.’

really well. I suspect though that as it has become more institutionalized within the department, advanced graduate students have been more and more called in to organize it. I’m not sure it has changed the department culture as much as it might have done, because “pedagogy” became another specialisation assigned to particular faculty members, so that most English department professors still don’t have to think about it. Similarly, Princeton also opened a Centre for Teaching and Learning at the end of the 1990s, but in 2003, when I retired, it had became more a service to graduate students than a network and resource for faculty. NK : For students as opposed to faculty?

was using new technology. You talk about it as one of the ways of breaking down how teaching (and learning) is a private, often isolated enterprise. Would you talk about which technologies put to what uses have or do you anticipate will improve the teaching of English? And which ones did you use?

ES: I thought the most exciting technology was using a computerised forum where the class could interact. I started using Blackboard at Princeton. Every tutorial class of 10-12 students had its own posting space, and I required each student in the precept to post a comment on the reading once a week. The postings were not graded, but they had to write at least once a week, before our tutorial meeting. Their writing and critical abilities improved enormously, and that was the point of the assignment.

ES: Yes. Obviously, educating graduate students is an

important way to change the future. But I think that the real challenge is also to reach faculty, because academic culture makes it embarrassing for professors to look for help or to change their teaching practices. NK : Yes,

and I am just thinking about our Renewals Conference (July 2007) coming up—there’s no real, just using that word— no real aspect of the profession that suggests we should renew ourselves as teachers.

NK : Did they improve because they were writing for their peers? ES: Yes. They had to write often, and they were writing for their peers. Every week before the precept I read all of their postings. Sometimes I would print them out, but I always took some notes for myself, and when I went into the tutorial I would often begin by reading a little bit from one of their postings or commenting on them overall to kick

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Interview with Elaine Showalter off discussion. Over the semester I was able to focus on each one of them, and reinforce their writing by giving them some public attention and praise. NK : I see what you’re saying, they’re actually learning about

writing from each other. ES:Yes, they’re learning from each other and they’re writing

for each other, not for you as the teacher. NK : So did you find that their writing then became less

laboured and…? ES: Less stilted; and week by week their comments would

get longer. When it came to writing their formal papers, I was often able to suggest to them, ‘why don’t you take that interesting idea that you mentioned in your post and see if you can develop that further?’ Or I would say to them ‘what you’re writing on Blackboard is hilarious, but this paper is so stiff.’ … Of course the students tend to be very cynical about professors’ enthusiasms. ‘Oh you know Showalter loved these posts, but it was just another task…’ But they couldn’t see what I could see.

akespeareLevel in Higher Education Teaching ShUn dergraduate A Survey of the

Neill Thew

Report Series Number 13 September 2006

NK : Earlier you were talking about the first part of your career at Douglass where you had people who were very willing to and engaged you in talking about teaching— did you have colleagues at Princeton with whom you shared ideas about teaching? ES: Not in the English Department, although there are many superb and dedicated teachers there. When I was working on Teaching Literature, I interviewed several of them, but those discussions never continued. I was more frustrated by the management of the Cotsen fellowship, which was a generous and enabling award. But the faculty who received it were not required or even invited to give a talk or share the results of their three-year fellowship with colleagues. Teaching awards can be a wonderful gift to individuals, but they should also be used for maximum impact on the community. NK : Still, it’s very rare for somebody, like you, to speak as frankly about what you’ve done. ES: My teaching was very much a work in progress, and I know that even by the time I retired I had a lot to learn.

Just Published! Teaching Shakespeare: a survey of the undergraduate level in higher education

We are pleased to announce the publication of a report by Neill Thew on undergraduate teaching of Shakespeare. Based on a survey of English Departments conducted earlier this year (in which Oxford Brookes were the lucky winners of a case of wine in the prize draw!) the report gives a snapshot of curricula and teaching methods across a range of institutions in 2005/2006. It provided the backdrop to discussion at a two-day conference we organised with the Warwick CAPITAL Centre in Stratford in mid-September. The report shows that each one of Shakespeare’s plays was being taught somewhere in the UK during 2005/2006. But if you want to find out which are the most popular, or which editions are most frequently recommended, then you will have to read the report! Copies are being mailed to each department in the UK, but if you would like another one please email esc@rhul.ac.uk. Alternatively, it is available in PDF on our website from http://www.english.heacademy.ac.uk/explore/ publications/reports.hp

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Articles Employability and Creative Writing There is good news about employability and creative writing but why doesn’t anyone know about it? asks Mimi Thebo, Artswork Senior Teaching Fellow, (1) at Bath Spa University. Employability is often equated with graduate ability to become employed at graduate level. This is measured rather crudely by HESA, who ask graduates to complete a form a few months after their graduation, asking what they will be doing six months after graduation and if they would have been able to do this job without their course of study. These statistics are used to form a league table, which will become increasingly important for HE funding (and so will become increasingly important for your Vice Chancellor). Creative Writing (like most Arts subjects) does not perform well on this measurement. Entry level employment in the Creative Industries is often unpaid or low paid placements, freelance work, or extremely short term project-based work. To complicate matters, many of our graduates’ employers will probably be small or micro enterprises, and these often also work on a short-term project basis, and are unlikely to offer anything but the smallest of wages and little or no training. It’s no wonder that many of our graduates write ‘Pizza Hut’ (or the equivalent) as their answer to ‘what will you be doing’ and ‘No’ as their answer to ‘did you need your degree to do it?’ Whilst a different measurement might show a different story (2) (the English Subject Centre’s investigation into English graduates shows that after a period of three years, English graduates are employed at or above a comparatorsubject average (3)), what our subject might need is a different definition. Consider Sheffield Hallam’s definition of employability. They decided that their institutional definition of employability was ‘enabling students to acquire the knowledge, personal and professional skills and encouraging the attitudes that will support their future development and employment.’ (4)

In a paper given at last year’s Enhancing Graduate Employability conference, (5) members of their ‘Employability Working Party’ said that they only added the final two words at the last moment. (6) If we were to use this definition in our subject, working to ‘enable students’ to ‘acquire skills’ and ‘attitudes’ to ‘support their future development’ is something I suspect Creative Writing faculty might consider not only uncontroversially desirable but also quite attainable. In fact, we might feel we are doing this work already, without dragging in uncomfortable notions of graduate employment. Other institutions include ‘enterprise’ as well as ‘employment’ in their own definitions. ‘Enterprises’ might include writing fiction or poetry. It might be running a magazine or a webzine, holding writing workshops, or helping a band with press releases and public relations. Enterprises might well be unwaged positions held by graduates which might or might not have the capacity to become waged at a later date, but which constitute their ‘graduate level employment’. This is where graduate employment begins to feel less uncomfortable to our subject, and the word ‘employability’ shows possibilities of shrugging off its Thatcherite connotations. To achieve this, all we have to do is divorce our thinking about employability from rather crude notions of employment that no longer accurately reflect the working world. If it is unlikely that a Creative Writing graduate will go directly into a life-long career in a subject-related industry, it is also unlikely that many other graduates will do the same. ‘Graduate jobs’, or entry-level positions with training and development, are quickly disappearing, and our notions of what is meant by ‘permanent employment’

1. Artswork is the CETL at Bath Spa University, investigating Creativity, Technology and Employability. The Broadcast Lab is a state of the art editing suite in a fourteenth century castle gatehouse. For the School of English and Creative Studies at Bath Spa University, it functions as a portal to the wider world, allowing our students to put their work into the context of contemporary film and broadcast media. 2. HESA is piloting a measurement which takes place three years after graduation. 3. John Brennan and Ruth Williams with Zsuzso Blaskó, The English Degree and Graduate Careers, English Subject Centre Report, Series 2, 2003 (http://www.english.heacademy.ac.uk/archive/publications/reports/gradcareers.pdf) 4. Sheffield Hallam, 2002. 5. ‘Developing an Employability Framework: an institutional approach,’ Simon Brown and Sue Drew, Sheffield Hallam University (http://www.qualityresearchinternational.com/ese/papers/drewfv.doc). 6. Simon Brown and Sue Drew. 9

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Employability and Creative Writing are shifting. Jobs-for-life are neither expected nor desired by most new graduates, and typically companies who hire graduates in high numbers to fill lower level positions will not retain and promote the majority of these graduates (but will cap the salary range at a junior level and recruit more graduates to replace maturing employees with greater salary demands). (7) The concept of ‘enterprise’ might cover a cocktail of graduate experience, in which even graduates employed in subject-related industries might feel themselves to be freelancing agents in a shifting world of opportunities and exploitation. This might be particularly true of arts graduates, who will typically have two (or more) occupations, the subject-related ‘enterprise’ (or enterprises), and paid employment (perhaps consisting of several part time jobs) that provides immediate income. (8) The key to Creative Writing’s contribution to institutional performance in the league tables is the recognition of ‘enterprise’ as employment. This is a process of legitimising and acknowledging student (and practitioner) experience. If students were able to feel that their enterprises were valid and valued aspects of their lives, equal and interchangeable with employment, their answers on the HESA form might reflect this, and the subject would perform better statistically.

their writing for specific readerships. They have habits of evaluating their own work in written reports, are able to read text closely and interrogatively and are also largely self-motivating with high awareness of their own processes. To cap it all, they can also plan their own work and respond creatively to challenges. These are abilities highly prized in the creative industries and, indeed, in any other form of business. You might expect, given such skills and attributes, that subject graduates would be much sought-after recruits and successful in any kind of private or public enterprise. It’s not that there isn’t work out there. The creative industries make up the fastest growing sector of the UK economy and 7.9% of the UK GDP. (9) Indeed, Daniel Pink, the author of A Whole New Mind: How to Thrive in the new Conceptual Age (10), says that we are leaving the age of knowledge and entering the age of creativity. He lists ‘story’ as one of the ‘six essential aptitudes’. So where does it all go wrong? Well, the problem with transferable skills, is that they don’t. Transfer, that is. People tend to associate a skill with the context in which it was learned. Take the Creative Writing workshop as an example. Many of the skills and abilities mentioned above are learned in workshop. But this is a very restricted setting, and students may feel these skills are uniquely valuable in this setting. Indeed, they may not be aware of the skills and attributes they have acquired. Some students interviewed in Steve May’s 2003 English Subject Centre Report felt that workshops were ‘fun’ but they didn’t ‘learn anything’ in them. (11) Again, to quote Sheffield Hallam’s team, ‘The critical concepts underpinning employability in HE are transformation, the enhancing and empowering of students through knowledge and attribute acquisition, and the transfer of this to other contexts.’(12)

‘The School of English and Creative Studies has introduced modules at every level encouraging students to begin putting their own writing into the context of the wider world.’

Legitimising Student Experience When discussing issues of employability in Creative Writing, the notion of ‘transferable skills’ is often quite promptly raised. Our subject has an enviable transferable skills list. Creative Writing students are able to work to deadlines, both on their own and in collaborative groups. They can represent themselves and give and take criticism constructively in that group situation. They are able to write a wide variety of styles and genres and can tailor

7. Tamsin Bowers-Brown, with Lee Harvey, 2004, ‘Are there too many graduates in the UK? A literature review and an analysis of graduate employability.’ Industry and Higher Education, August, pp. 243-54. 8. One of the respondents to my Employability Survey of third year students at Bath Spa University wrote that their future employment would be ‘baking and writing’. 9. Developing Entrepreneurship for the Creative Industries; The Role of Higher and Further Education, Department for Culture Media and Sport, Creative Industries Division, 2006. 10. A Whole New Mind: How to Thrive in the New Conceptual Age, Daniel H Pink, Riverhead Books (in association with Penguin, New York) 2005. 11. Teaching Creative Writing at Undergraduate Level: Why, How and Does it Work?, English Subject Centre Mini Project, Steve May for the English Subject Centre and Higher Education Academy, 2003 (http://www.english.heacademy.ac.uk/archive/projects/reports/under_creatwrit_bath.doc). 12. Brown and Drew, as above. 10

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Employability and Creative Writing Elements that can effect this transformation include; (1) a sense of meta-cognition in their learning (learning what and how they have learned), (2) varied assessment strategies which make the students more aware of the learning process by asking them to perform different tasks with their skills and (3) practical support in transferring their skills from the classroom to other settings/contexts. Many institutions have relied on a ‘bolt-on’ provision for student transformation, in which the whole of the process is meant to take place in a single module during a work placement. If the student is fortunate in securing a placement in the creative industries, the third element of transformation may occur, but if the first and the second are not present, it’s rather unlikely. To reliably aid in student transformation, the three elements need to be thoroughly embedded in the curriculum.

Embedding Transformation in the Curriculum Let’s work backwards on the list, taking the third (practical support in transferring their skills from the classroom to other settings/contexts) first. This is probably the easiest of the three to address and it is also the most visible of what is needed to successfully legitimise student enterprise. Many of Bath Spa University’s new initiatives in its BA curriculum are motivated and shaped by this need to support student transformation, and Artswork, the CETL at Bath Spa University, is engaged in studying the relationships between technology, creativity and employability. The School of English and Creative Studies has introduced modules at every level encouraging students to begin putting their own writing into the context of the wider world. The first year module ‘Writing: The Process’ deals with practical aspects of writing (including file storage and work habits). This works to expand the setting of the skills from the classroom to the writing environment. We hope this will aid student recognition of skills and legitimise the process of skill acquisition and recognition by linking it to an assessment point. Second year modules ‘Towards Publication’ and ‘Into Print’, are geared to enable students to begin habits of submission to appropriate publications (including researching the publication and finding the right contact person), appropriate to their current level of writing expertise. (There is a particular emphasis on learning to write feature articles.) Again, the aim is to legitimise student experience, this time by demonstrating that student have already attained skills that result in publishable writing. Other Artswork modules, ‘Planning a Film’ and ‘Making a Film’, require a pitch to an industry commissioner to

progress from one module to the other, again asking students to think about their work in context. This emphasises their role as a beginning practitioner in an established industry. Our third year has been reshaped to allow students much more variety in the kinds of projects they undertake and students concentrate on their own projects in their final semester. An Artswork module called ‘Creative Enterprise’ assists students who feel ready to initiate a project in the wider world. Successful projects have included making films for the local council, starting a surf wear company, investigating commissioning routes for situation comedy and coordinating part of the recent celebrations for John Betjeman’s centenary. It is here that the legitimising of student experience is perhaps most noticeable and effective, as when we began opening up the assignments permissible for project modules we found that many of these students were already working on these projects in their spare time, without any faculty support and without being assessed for their work. It’s too early to give hard data as to how successful these initiatives have been. However, case studies and anecdotal evidence are causing us to feel optimistic about the changes. Nearly 60% of the second year students on last year’s pilot of the ‘Towards Publication’ and ‘Into Print’ modules achieved publication. Publications included teen magazine Sugar, local newspapers, and specialist consumer magazines such as Origami Times, Kerrang and Cat World. Now, it might be said this kind of thing is lowering the bar, that we weaken subject attainment in our students by encouraging achievements of such mediocrity. Interaction with the wider world of the creative industries can be seen as undesirable, as too much reliance on industry notions of excellence (rather than literary notions of excellence) could weaken the subject. It is here that number two on our list is useful (varied assessment). These initiatives are not designed to replace current curriculum, but to add variety to the way we assess student skills. Few students may be ready to write a novel, a collection of poetry or a feature length script whilst studying at undergraduate level, but all of our students should be able to write a short feature for an undemanding journal or contribute a story or poem to a start-up webzine. Many assessments are consistently linked to tasks with practical outcomes generally unattainable at the level of students’ skills (i.e. writing and marketing a novel), and assessment tasks of writing and writing-about-writing tended to be intensely context-linked. However useful and important these assessment tasks might be on a subject level, consistent concentration on unattainable outcomes does not work to legitimise student 11

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Employability and Creative Writing experience. A variety of assessment tasks, which links some to attainable outcomes and some to aspirational outcomes, will better serve Creative Writing students.This way we can continue to provide the excellent education our subject delivers, whilst also helping students to make their transitions from the institution to the wider world. Variety itself is also important. Each time we ask students to think about their skills in another way, with a different mode of expression or emphasis (whether in a process journal, director’s notes, or an essay comparing their writing to a canonical writer), we are making them more aware of the learning process and helping them divide their skills from the context in which the skills were acquired. This brings us to number one (a sense of meta-cognition in their learning). When students question the assessment strategy for any given module, it is an ideal time for faculty to spend a few moments talking to students about the reasoning behind assessments.This learning-about-learning need not take up a significant portion of class time, but may be quite valuable for students, helping them to understand the process of education they are undergoing. For example: • ‘We want you to submit stories in two genres so that you can apply the things you’ve learned in more than one way. This should help you understand that what you’ve done well in one story, you can do in others.’

Faculty Awareness and Attitudes

• ‘We think the process journal will help you examine and remember how you achieved results in your project.’

B: You could make a good case that advertising is inherently unethical. I’m not sure we want to be training our students to write it.

• ‘The critical commentary asks you to think about the strengths and weaknesses in your writing.We think this helps your ability to edit your own work.’ There may be other opportunities, in workshop for example, where it would also be easy to talk about the learning process the students are undergoing. Many of us will already be doing this, but may not recognise how it helps students engage actively with the curriculum or be aware of the need to do it consistently in order to assist student transformation. In all three of these strategies to enable student transformation, faculty awareness is the key to success, but it is perhaps most noticeable in issues of meta-cognition, where classroom practice is essential for delivery. Successful delivery of such concepts, and indeed embedding help towards transformation into Creative Writing curriculum and increasing student employability in general, is dependent on faculty awareness and attitudes.

Staff in Creative Writing arrive in the academy on many varied routes, but from two main career directions. Many lecturers studied to Ph.D. standard in English Literature, but also had interest and ability in Creative Writing. As Creative Writing became a subject in its own right, some of these lecturers moved wholly over to Creative Writing, whilst others continued to lecture both in English and Creative Writing. Faculty in Creative Writing can also be practitioners of Creative Writing, with a less academic background or with an academic background in an unrelated subject, who have discovered in themselves (sometimes through placements and workshops in schools or community education) an aptitude for teaching. (13) The play between these two career directions greatly enriches the teaching delivery in the subject, as students are provided with many different approaches to the task of writing. It also provokes interesting debates amongst faculty on issues of employability, especially amongst colleagues who come in at the edges of the AcademicPractitioner continuum. For example, a recent conversation at my own institution went like this: A: ...and there might be opportunity for our students to get involved in writing advertising or marketing copy. B: I’m not so sure that’s a good thing. A: Why?

A: Well, um, surely that’s up to them to decide. If they want it, we should be providing it. B: Should we? If they want to write child pornography, should we provide a module in it? Now, this is an amusing conversation. Both of the lecturers were amused even whilst having it. And though we don’t want to reduce the varied career paths into the subject to a crude binary, any Creative Writing faculty member reading this document, though amused, will probably also find themselves drawn to one side or another of the argument (or, more confusingly, to both). But more, it brings up an important issue regarding faculty awareness and the delivery of curriculum with elements of employability. At an employability conference, I once sat through a plenary address by the chairman of a large financial software development company. He assumed all the

13. Anyone interested in Creative Writing and its relationship with English Literature in the academy would enjoy reading Paul Dawson’s Creative Writing and the New Humanities, Routledge, New York, 2005. 12

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Employability and Creative Writing delegates would want their students to find (extremely well paid jobs) with his company and told us exactly what we needed to teach them so that they could. In the following discussion group, the other delegates concentrated on ways for faculty to better understand the needs of their associated industries. The universal idea (Humanities representation is notoriously low at such events) was that curriculum and HE in general existed mainly to service the needs of industry. But, as a Danish business lecturer pointed out in informal discussion at the break, this is like ‘peeing in your pants to keep warm’, a shortsighted strategy for graduate employability (not to speak of the catastrophic effect it could have on subject development). Even if Creative Writing were to scrap all notions of literary excellence that were not directly validated by, say, the publishing industry, trying to develop curriculum for the needs of the creative industries is an impossible task. These industries are volatile and driven by fashions and trends: curriculum change is slow. With the best will in the world to sell out, a year to develop curriculum and three years to deliver it to students would mean a four year gap between understanding industry agenda and the delivery of agenda-ready graduates. By this time, the industry would think it wanted something different. How many witchcraft-school fantasies for 9-12s do you think you could sell a commissioning editor now? Yet four years ago, every children’s’ press was crying out for them. Given all this, it was with great relief that I found Neil Moreland. (14) Moreland (whose subject is Sociology) suggests “ways in which the employability agenda and actions can be colonised for critical pedagogic activities”. And it is here I’d like to return to the conversation between A and B, and suggest ways in which we may support our students’ future development. Instead of either embracing market values or attempting to protect our students from them, we can utilise the wide ability and experience of our varied faculty to both (a) inform our students about and help to instil skills valuable to the creative industries (which may include the ability to write advertising copy) and (b) critically interrogate such industries (which may include asking if advertising is inherently unethical). It is this combination of approaches which will enable our students to make intelligent and informed choices

about their future development, to be as Moreland said in his talk, ‘streetwise and canny freelancers’. And it is this variety of approaches our subject is well equipped to deliver. Creative Writing staff have both pragmatic, market-led information about the creative industries and the ability to think critically about these same industries. Again, faculty members on the edges of the Practice/Academic continuum might find one much easier than the other, but the important thing is that the students are exposed to both ways of thinking about the wider world of writing and publishing/broadcasting et al during their degree.The more knowledgeable our students are, and the more critically they can think about these industries, the better prepared they will be to get what they want/can from them and to protect themselves from economic exploitation. Again, this is work we are already doing in the classroom. Whenever we explain why a book received a big marketing budget or talk about why a good manuscript did not find a publisher, we are doing this kind of teaching. It is only a matter of recognising what this discourse is doing in terms of our students’ future development and perhaps putting a slightly greater emphasis on conveying such information consistently that may be necessary. It’s not an impossible task to integrate into teaching, especially if staff are aware that such topics can assist student transformation. In this, as in much of Creative Writing, many elements which have been shown to support student employability are already common in subject delivery. Our main task is in this work of recognition. If we increase our awareness of issues of student transformation, we will ensure our students are well prepared - no matter what they may decide to do or how that may be measured. We can also make a good case (at institution level and beyond) that we have the issue of employability in hand, and ask for support for our own methods of subject development and delivery in relation to these issues. As a subject, Creative Writing is well placed to ‘colonise’ the issues and agendas associated with employability. Staff can use the employability agenda to further strengthen the excellence of our teaching and the development of our discipline.

‘As a subject, Creative Writing is well placed to ‘colonise’ the issues and agendas associated with employability.’

14. ‘A Political and Moral Economy of Employability’, Neil Moreland, Research Fellow, ESECT, The Open University (http://www.qualityresearchinternational.com/ese/papers/morelandfv.doc) 13

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New Media, New Practices: Collaboration and Team-Building in E-Learning Gail Ashton, Lecturer in English Literature at the University of Manchester, evaluates the changing role and identity of the academic as more and more of our work becomes integrated with new technologies. She argues for a greater focus on the theory and praxis of new media.

Introduction In a recent English Subject Centre Newsletter, Sue Thomas remarks that VLEs are now widely used in academia and that ‘many colleagues have mastered the art’ of their technical design (Thomas: 2005: 26). Whilst I don’t share her optimism, I acknowledge a genuine surge of interest in many aspects of e-learning. At the same time, one of the most frequent concerns I hear expressed at conferences and meetings devoted to this area is lack of expertise and knowledge about its practicalities. No-one would deny that this is an important issue, and, indeed, there is much being done in the way of training to address it. Yet lack of expertise and knowledge is also a distraction from what is really at stake in academics’ use of e-learning. I would like to begin my discussion by taking issue with Thomas’s choice of ‘mastered.’ This implies that in the first instance there are skills we all need to grasp - presumably that of hypertext and HTLM code or Javascript, plus the finer points of web resource construction. Second, mastery suggests the existence of an explicit body of knowledges that we might seek, control and own in order to become expert individuals in the field of new media and its technologies. True, some academics are able to design and up-load their own sites, blogs and VLEs. Those with open access rights then circulate out into the public domain and so contribute to the free flow of information on the web. Yet these single-authored or privately created social softwares offer only a belated attempt to seize intellectual rights and status whilst also proving anathema to a technology designed to deconstruct individual ‘property’

rights as we know them. Similarly, the idea of ‘mastering an art’ neglects the ways in which new media alter the nature of traditional communications. Not least of these is the almost automatic decentring of the role of the academic teacher as the owner of pedagogy or an authority upon it; instead, audiences open up just as the architectures of the web open up space, and, so, those who read or use such sites affect their reception. (1)

Reading and Writing Practices The implications of this idea are enormous. If we view the web as a metaphor that, in the words of Donna Haraway, helps us to ‘inflect our ways’ of thinking and writing, (2) then one of the first steps is for us to reconsider ‘our textcentric’ focus and what we understand as ‘literacy’. (3) A competent hyper-reader reacts to visual cues, searches for links, reads edits and annotations, and filters a wealth of material. But, as Sue Thomas points out, it is more than a simple matter of searching or browsing. Rather, it involves learning to read on ‘fluid and varied platforms - blog, email, hyptertext’, (4) web pages, wikis and all new media still to come. It is not so much that electronic or digital media is unlike print because it is anti-linear, but that it is simply not text. (5) As a result, we need to reconsider the practices and praxis of the new media we create and use, to consider the provenance of its ‘texts’, its audiences, its structures and its design. We need too to ‘”read” behind the screen’ and search for the apparently invisible keys to its agenda. (6) In other words, faced with non-authentic texts, some without clear attribution and all without individual

‘In this virtual world too, authors or writers do not exist as such.’

1. See also Bryan Alexander, ‘A Threat to Professional Identity? The Resistance to Computer-Mediated Teaching’ in Michael Hanrahan and Deborah L. Madsen eds. Teaching, Technology, and Textuality: Approaches To New Media (Basingstoke: Palgrave 2006): 33. 2. D. J. Haraway, , modest-witness@second-millenium-femalemanC.-meets-oncomouseTM2: feminism and technoscience (Routledge 1997), 125. 3. Michelle Kendrick ‘The Web and New Media Literacy: Hypertext is Dead and There Is Nothing New About New Media Anymore’ The Journal of New Media and Culture (Fall 2003, Volume 2, Issue 2), 4. Http://ibiblio.org/nmediac/fall2003/kendrick.htm. Accessed 29/03/06 4. Sue Thomas ‘Transliteracy – Reading in the Digital Age’ in English Subject Centre Newsletter, Issue 9, November 2005, 26. 5. Kendrick, 1. 6. Kendrick, 2. 14

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New Media, New Practices: Collaboration and Team-Building in E-Learning property rights, the problem is not the practicalities of how to read and write online content (‘mastering its art’); as Thomas herself notes, ‘the real challenge is what you do with it’ (26). In this virtual world too, authors or writers do not exist as such. Rather, there are ‘Web developers’. (7) Kendrick likens the creation of any electronic site to the advent of the printing press in its capacity to shift ‘our notions of how to define a creative or intellectual act’ (3), an analogy that points to an urgent reconsideration of the role of the academic in the development and integration of such technology in higher education curricula. In simple terms, then, I suggest that more important than ‘mastering the craft’ of new media’s basic functions and features - that knowledge about the practicalities of its use perhaps better accomplished by technicians we need instead to get to grips with its theories and praxis. We ought to evaluate its resources, and interrogate and critique digital technologies by exploring the discursive web within which it is held and circulated, to make that ‘a significant subject of study itself’. (8) Those of us without expertise, or even interest, in the practical skills of design are then no longer excluded from the select band of those who have, leaving us free to engage digital media in our teaching and learning strategies without fear of failure. Even those who can design effectively may still need assistance ‘in terms of thinking of creative new ways of working’. (9) One of the ways in which this might be accomplished is by establishing collaboration as a central principle of its workings.

group projects. For many individuals, a significant factor in the take up of new technologies may be its demands upon academic time, at least in the initial stages of any design. Equally, such activity sometimes lacks prestige and so becomes a poor investment, especially for those working in research-dominated institutions. Excellence in teaching and learning is not always properly related to promotion or even tenure, despite its recognition as legitimate, R.A.E research. Other places lack sufficient resources and structures to support training and innovation. There is also a danger that such work becomes a costcutting exercise (if we author our own material, then fewer technicians might be required), or that technological skills become the province of only junior staff or nonacademic support posts (See Lisa Botshon: 2006: 97; Alan Liu: 2006: 6; Sue Thomas: 30). (12) Such practical constraints mean we need to make judicious use of what is available. In each of the instances I’ve cited, collaboration ought to encourage dissemination of best practice and ameliorate any disinhibiting factors. Team projects ensure that people are used effectively according to their skills and interests in situations where everyone has an equitable investment and, consequently, shares in any reward. In the same way, the ‘destructive anomaly that leads to “apartheid”’ between e-learning technicians and academic researchers, (13) even staff and students, is broken down, and certain individuals no longer bear the brunt of becoming ‘expert’ in an ever-expanding field. Instead, teams might consist of pedagogical practitioners and theorists, academic researchers with vital subject knowledge, the information retrieval and resource skills of librarians and archivists, the technical skills and ongoing support of learning technologists and even input by students. As experts and practitioners, all share

‘more important than ‘mastering the craft’ of new media’s basic functions and features ... we need instead to get to grips with its theories and praxis’

Collaboration If we accept that current pedagogy involves ‘interactive, decentred, collaborative learning’ (10) and that its best practice is ‘collaborative, exploratory and practice-based’, (11) then it seems strange that more of us are not engaged in

7. Kendrick, 4. 8. Christie Carson, ‘Digital Resources For Teaching and Discussion: three approaches to C&IT in English’ in English Subject Centre Newsletter, Issue 6, February 2004, 19. 9. Carson, 19. 10. Michael Hanrahan and Deborah L. Madsen ‘Introduction: From Literacy to e-Literacy’ in Teaching, Technology, and Textuality: Approaches To New Media (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2006), 8. 11. Carson, 14. 12. See Lisa Botshon, ‘All Aboard Blackboard’ in Teaching, Technology, and Textuality, 97; Alan Liu ‘The Humanities: A Technical Profession’ in Teaching, Technology, and Textuality, 6; Thomas, 30. 13. Thomas, 30. 15

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New Media, New Practices: Collaboration and Team-Building in E-Learning ownership of a project that belongs to no single ‘author’ and where investment in the enhancement of teaching and learning is far more likely, let alone widespread.

Conclusion Lisa Botshon’s call for those invested in achieving excellence in teaching and learning to be ‘savvy about how and why’ we use technology and new media in English Studies is crucial in the context of my discussion (104). To facilitate collaborative or team-based practices demands that we review our current notions of authority and intellectual property rights. We need to decide too how we are going to credit this sort of innovation, let alone with whom (or how) the requisite debate might be conducted. Do we rate work only at source and/or as it circulates out and beyond its ‘original’ institution as a renewable resource to be remixed, sampled, used as a cut and paste template by others or built upon in ways that go beyond the conventions of print-based material? (14) So far the Humanities have been slow to recognise and reward those who genuinely work collaboratively or at the interdisciplinary interface. As long as this continues, single-authored claims on electronic resources or sites will proliferate as part of a move to ensure work ‘belongs’ to an individual required to create a traditional research profile. It is precisely this pressure to perform that we must undo. As Alan Liu argues, it is not enough to re-badge collaborative work simply as a multi-author, multi-disciplinary project within which ‘the now ingrained,

individual research and teaching of the humanities can continue unchanged’ (17). Rather, we need to find new ways of thinking about teams and not individuals and to re-value the ways in which we might rate contributions. At the same time, none of this will happen unless we also invest time, money and training in supporting those willing to work together. Christie Carson suggests that the average academic is ‘enthusiastic’ about new media but too overburdened to get to grips with it; as a result, many innovators currently work ‘in isolation’ (16,15). Whilst this may not be strictly true - there are many projects currently in progress around the UK - we still need to bring communities together, across and within institutions and disciplines, to offer workshops and conferences, and, perhaps above all, to re-focus our attention, away from practicalities and towards theoretical principles and ideas. Most of us know by now that we cannot simply ‘translate’ a real-life classroom and its activities into a virtual one. Some are expert in using the technologies of new media. But few of us critique its workings and not everyone is fully aware of how we might harness its energies more creatively and efficiently or of the ways in which its use alters the parameters of learning processes. This, plus individuals working to their strengths in imaginative teams where all are equitably rewarded, is the way forward if we are to ensure that our activities in this sphere are taken as seriously as other research.

Desperately Seeking Someone? Working alone on the design of a new course, writing a project proposal or finding speakers for a forthcoming conference can sometimes be frustrating. The English Subject Centre’s Directory of Experience and Interests aims to provide you with access to the knowledge and ideas generated by colleagues at other institutions. Take a look, and while you’re there register yourself and share your ideas and questions with colleagues all over. Registration is easy and takes just a few minutes! Simply go to http://www.english.heacademy.ac.uk/find/ colleagues/index.php

14. See Christopher Kelty ‘Intellectual Property and the Humanities’ in Teaching, Technology, and Textuality, 53. 16

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E-learning Touches Base in English Studies Departments Brett Lucas (English Subject Centre) recounts how the English Subject Centre and six English Departments are ‘growing their own’ e-learning specialists and changing how we teach our subject in the process.

“E-learning is increasingly a natural way to engage students in their learning and for me it has opened up all sorts of opportunities to be innovative in teaching.” (1) Over the last 6 years the English Subject Centre has funded at least 25 departmental mini-projects that have had a considerable e-learning component in them, ranging from online Punctuation and Spelling exercises in Aries (2) via explorations of new forms of creative interpretation like digital video and animation (3) to our recently released Medieval Hypertext Course pack. (4) The aim has been to provide both individual lecturers and small teams with financial resources to develop their skills and expertise in the emerging field of e-learning and thereby encourage the cascading of these new pedagogical ideas across their departments and the community as a whole. In 2005 the English Subject Centre carried out a national scoping study into the use and perceptions of elearning in the subject. (5) We received responses from almost half of all English departments in the country and so have been able to gain a valuable snapshot into the ways in which e-learning practice is evolving in the subject. On the whole, reaction was positive to the use of the new digital technologies as the following comments illustrate: “The possibilities are only limited by the imagination and ingenuity of the lecturer” “Gives another dimension to the classroom and to resources and can be very enjoyable, adding variety for the teacher and for the learner. Can occasionally stimulate a new approach. Colourful.”

“I think VLE directed activities, which students respond to in the Forum, add a whole new dimension to a course, and in particular extend discussions that start in the seminar beyond the classroom. They also have the potential to offer students learning experiences that aren’t possible within a classroom setting.” (6) However a great deal of scepticism still remains: “I think that there is a limit to how much you can actually teach and how much people can learn via electronic resources. It only makes sense if you have a model of education that is purely about transfer of knowledge.” “You lose the psychodynamics of education – people can’t fall in love with knowledge and the educational process if they encounter it via a screen.” “It is time consuming to create the materials and the students often show little interest in becoming involved in the course work outside of class. It entirely depends on the group and how much use they make of the materials on offer. It can be discouraging putting a great deal of time into something that does not in the end add a great deal to the student experience.” (7) The insights gained from the survey are already helping to shape the Subject Centre’s e-learning support. The 2005 survey, for example, has revealed a high level of use of some form of Virtual Learning Environment (almost 100%). However far fewer practitioners appear to be using e-learning to its fullest potential in imaginative, engaging and interesting ways.

1. English Subject Centre E-learning Practitioner Survey 2005. 2. ARIES: Punctuation, Spelling and Reference for the Web available at: http://tinyurl.co.uk/wl5h. 3. New Tools for Creative Interpretation: An Investigative Study using Digital Video and Computer Animation available at: http://tinyurl.co.uk/ygaubs 4. Old English Online Coursepack available at: http://tinyurl.co.uk/s0cl. 5. The LTSN Generic Centre (2002) defined e-learning as “Learning facilitated and supported through the use of information and communication technologies.” 6. English Subject Centre E-learning Practitioner Survey 2005. 7. English Subject Centre E-learning Practitioner Survey 2005. 17

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E-Learning Touches Base in English Study Departments Tables 1 and 2 show the answers to a question in the survey which presented the main pedagogical uses of e-learning and asked respondents to indicate whether they took advantage of these in their teaching and whether they perceived them as being valuable. Of particular note is the high perceived value but low use of online discussion, the development of literacy or writing skills and improving accessibility to learning materials generally. Using e-learning for assessment and feedback was not considered valuable or useful. These results indicate that sponsoring small-scale innovations in the subject, running e-learning events and disseminating information through the website may not be the most effective way to embed e-learning best practice in English studies.

When asked about the main barriers to using e-learning technologies 43% of respondents mentioned lack of time: time to upload materials; time for training opportunities; time to set up initial programmes; time to stay up-to-date etc. Other barriers included lack of technical expertise as well as a lack of understanding of the potential of using these new teaching tools to enhance the student learning experience. Instead of sponsoring another round of e-learning projects in departments around the country, we felt it might be more effective to provide a solution to the issue of ‘time’ by offering academics time-out from their dayto-day teaching and research commitments to focus on the development of e-learning materials and resources,

Table 1 * How often do you currently use e-learning for: Never

Rarely

Quite often

Frequently

1% (2)

5% (6)

11% (13)

83% (97)

supporting discussion among students

18% (21)

36% (41)

30% (35)

16% (18)

creating learning resources for students e.g. a website or VLE based course

16% (19)

20% (23)

24% (28)

40% (46)

providing access to learning resources

7% (8)

9% (11)

36% (42)

47% (55)

improving literacy/essay writing skills

36% (41)

32% (37)

20% (23)

11% (13)

supporting classroom activities

8% (9)

22% (25)

41% (47)

29% (33)

supporting learning outside the classroom

7% (8)

27% (31)

35% (40)

30% (34)

improving accessibility for all students e.g. part-time dyslexic

20% (22)

32% (36)

31% (35)

17% (19)

assessing students and giving feedback

30% (34)

29% (33)

28% (31)

12% (14)

tracking students’ activity/progress

33% (38)

31% (36)

23% (27)

12% (14)

managing classes

34% (38)

27% (31)

24% (27)

15% (17)

communicating with students

Total Respondents

116

* Source = English Subject Centre E-learning Practitioner survey – June 2005 (x)= number of responses for each choice

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E-Learning Touches Base in English Study Departments Table 2 * How valuable do you think e-learning is for: not at all valuable

of limited value

of considerable value

extremely valuable

communicating with students

0% (0)

4% (5)

21% (24)

75% (87)

supporting discussion among students

0% (0)

29% (33)

39% (45)

31% (36)

creating learning resources for students e.g. a website or VLE based course

2% (2)

11% (13)

40% (46)

47% (55)

providing access to learning resources

1% (1)

6% (7)

36% (42)

57% (66)

improving literacy/essay writing skills

4% (5)

52% (60)

33% (38)

11% (13)

supporting classroom activities

8% (9)

19% (22)

48% (55)

28% (33)

supporting learning outside the classroom

4% (4)

17% (19)

40% (46)

41% (47)

improving accessibility for all students e.g. part-time dyslexic

2% (2)

14% (16)

50% (57)

36% (41)

assessing students and giving feedback

1% (1)

44% (51)

34% (39)

16% (18)

tracking students’ activity/progress

6% (7)

47% (54)

31% (35)

18% (20)

managing classes

4% (5)

46% (52)

27% (30)

16% (18)

Total Respondents

116

* Source = English Subject Centre E-learning Practitioner survey – June 2005 (x)= number of responses for each choice

and give them the time to examine the effectiveness or otherwise of existing approaches. As Oliver and Dempster (2002) have noted: In responding to the call for innovation, particularly alluring in the e-learning arena, we can become guilty of failing to embed what has already been successful in developing teaching and learning. We fall into the trap of ‘project’ frenzy, always moving to the next strategic priority or technological facility before evaluating the extent to which the previous development was

effective and worthwhile. It is also important to consider what influences staff engagement and participation in teaching developments in order to shift practices at a rate that is appropriate for a department or institution. (8) Could there be a smarter way to support the sustainable development of e-learning in the subject? Could we experiment with discipline based approaches to the support of e-learning development? Why, given the focus and investment in both centralised and decentralised e-learning support within institutions over the last few years is so little of that support reaching English departments across the country? (see Table 3)

8. M. Oliver & J. Dempster, ‘Strategic Staff Development for Embedding E-learning Practices in HE.’ Interactions Vol 6, No 3, 2002. 19

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E-Learning Touches Base in English Study Departments Table 3 * To what extent do you have: None

some

all I need

more than I need

Access to e-learning resources relevant to your subject area?

4% (4)

48% (54)

37% (42)

12% (13)

Up-to-date information about e-learning te chnologies?

6% (7)

54% (61)

35% (39)

5% (6)

Suitably equipped classrooms? e.g. data projectors, interactive whiteboards,PCs etc

10% (11)

65% (73)

20% (23)

4% (5)

Support for your students in accessing and using e-learning technologies outside the classroom?

7% (8)

66% (75)

24% (27)

2% (2)

Training for you in how to use e-learning technologies?

7% (8)

50% (57)

38% (43)

4% (5)

Staff development in using e-learning technologies for effective learning?

9% (10)

50% (57)

36% (41)

4% (5)

Reward recognition and career incentives for using e-learning technologies

59% (67)

32% (36)

8% (9)

1% (1)

Opportunities to share e-learning ideas and experiences with colleagues?

22% (25)

58% (65)

19% (22)

0% (0)

13% (15)

50% (56)

30% (34)

4% (5)

Robust technical infrastructure?

Total Respondents

116

* Source = English Subject Centre E-learning Practitioner survey - June 2005 (x)= number of responses for each choice

In response to such concerns the Subject Centre applied for funds being offered through the Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC) Distributed E-learning Strand, the aim of which, from a practitioner perspective, is to provide guidance on how to access, plan and use e-learning resources within appropriate e-learning systems (Bailey, 2006). We were successful in our application to establish of a network of e-learning ‘advocates’. Over the summer we then opened a national bidding process in which any English department in the UK could bid for money to fund one e-learning advocate. The result is our ambitious e-learning project for the 2006-7 academic year taking place in six different English departments. Six colleagues currently devote one day a week to working alongside their departmental colleagues as a designated e-learning advocate. Their brief is to discover and understand what kinds

of new pedagogical tools the digital age is providing us and how to use them to create meaningful learning experiences within individual departments. The role of the e-learning advocate includes activities such as: • working on the particular projects identified by their departments in their proposals; • increasing awareness of the potential of e-learning by running seminars or giving presentations within their departments; • providing formal or informal training and or consultancy to academics as appropriate; • identifying academics with ideas for e-learning resources and helping them to develop these into real tools; • advising the department on the sort of facilities and hardware that would facilitate e-learning;

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E-Learning Touches Base in English Study Departments • working in partnership with academics and support staff to develop e-learning tools and gather student feedback;

pedagogical toolkit and potentially enhance the overall student experience.What methods are most successful? What factors affect interest and uptake?

• reporting back to the Subject Centre on best practice in collaborative working between learning technologists and academics;

3. Help overturn some of the entrenched beliefs held by academics within the community towards pedagogical innovation by enabling them to make educationally sound choices about using technology in their courses. Can discipline-based approaches to e-learning support overcome academic scepticism?

In short, these advocates will act as both a catalyst for change within a department and a source of practical help and advice for those wishing to make greater use of e-learning. Our inaugural group of six advocates (profiled at the end of this article) were selected from a wide range of submissions. The criteria for selection included factors such as strategy, impact, sustainability, need and spread of ‘contexts’. By providing six English departments with an e-learning advocate we hope to achieve the following goals and posit answers to the following questions: 1. Have a foundation on which to provide evidence-based advice on effective and sustainable staff e-learning support models to the English subject community. By allowing different approaches to be developed and compared can we be smarter about the integration of technologies at a subject level? 2. Amongst as many members of each participating department as possible, raise overall understanding of the ways in which e-learning can broaden their

4. Encourage contribution to research and publication in the area of e-learning from within the discipline. Are we merely replicating existing practice online or can the teaching and learning of the subject be enhanced? We anticipate that the variety of support mechanisms which evolve during the course of the project using this departmental ‘advocacy’ framework will provide valuable new insights into best practice for encouraging the adoption of new teaching methods or materials in the teaching of English. If you would like further information about the project or would like to know how the project is progressing, please contact Brett Lucas at brett.lucas@rhul.ac.uk

The project website can be found at: http://tinyurl.com/hsbsr

Dr Matthew Day

Dr Lesley Coote

Dept of English

Dept of English University of Hull

Bishop Grosseteste College The English Department at Bishop Grosseteste runs both an undergraduate programme and provides input to the Primary and Secondary PGCE programmes. The department is well-resourced technologically (Whiteboards, tablet PCs etc) and so the advocacy model will provide information, support and advice to all staff in how to effectively use the technologies to make stimulating learning experiences. Key to the approach is the development of subject specific resources as examples of best practice for dissemination within and beyond the college.

The advocacy model at Hull centres on the use of the Interactive Whiteboard – a technology which brings together many associated e-learning tools – as a catalyst for the development of e-learning skills more generally in the department. The project also aims to build a collection of ‘Whiteboard materials’ which will be made available to the wider community.

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E-Learning Touches Base in English Study Departments

Dr Christopher Ringrose Dept of English University of Northampton This advocacy model will explore levers for change that might facilitate the uptake of technologies within a department. The advocate will be facilitating the move from basic use of e-learning to more integrated, interactive and innovative pedagogical approaches across all modules. These developments will occur during a major ‘curriculum revision’ exercise. This will be achieved using such means as a VLE site where elearning work-in-progress can be shared by staff, use of on-line logs and portfolios for assessment and the incorporation of regular student feedback into the development process.

Dr Lee Horsley Dept of English & Creative Writing University of Lancaster The English department at Lancaster have a successful track record in the teaching of Creative Writing. Their advocacy model will use the established Creative Writing methodologies as a starting point for the development of e-learning in the teaching of literature. The tools used within the VLE designed to engage Creative Writing students and tutors in a process of creation-response-creation will be adapted to the teaching of literature by promoting the more fluid articulation of critical arguments/ counter-arguments and to promote a sense of the critical text as process.

Dr Stuart Robertson

Dr Rosie Miles

Dept of English University of Central England (UCE) – Birmingham

University of Wolverhampton

The advocacy model at UCE will explore best practice in blended learning courses delivered through the VLE. The advocate will work with colleagues teaching the first year poetry module to create a best practice example of integrating e-learning into undergraduate teaching. This will assist in the development of VLE courses across the department. The project involves developing the skills of staff in using discussion fora, planning online activities that jigsaw with classroom work and with students’ independent learning. There will also be monthly themed workshops involving all teaching colleagues in the department.

Dept of English

A slightly different advocacy model is being explored at Wolverhampton. The advocate will establish a regional network for e-learning in English studies between three English departments in the local region. They will liaise with departments on e-learning developments; discuss and suggest ways in which elearning could be used within particular departmental contexts; support individual initiatives as an external friend; act as a conduit to enable colleagues to make useful contacts in the region; to disseminate relevant information and ideas (e.g. via an e-bulletin).

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Module Handbooks and Audit Culture Exploring the production of module handbooks, a research project by Cris Yelland, University of Teesside, uncovers some surprising facts about how students regard them. This article is based on a small research project into module handbooks, or module guides. These are the fairly substantial documents which tutors at my institution (and at many others) give to students at the start of a module. Such handbooks contain some prescribed information, and much else as well. They are usually stapled or thermal-bound, and are essentially mixed texts (1), being simultaneously instruments of audit, and expressions of individual approaches to the craft of pedagogy. From the point of view of the university management, of course, module handbooks are not mixed at all.They are legal instruments. They give students information, which students cannot then deny having received, and to make this transaction doubly secure the management prescribes what the minimum content of a handbook should be. Here is an extract from one university’s formula for a module handbook. It is not from my own institution, but it is so similar that it might as well be:

Synopsis of Module

Copied from module descriptor

Module credit

Abstracted from module descriptor

Module Aims

Copied from module descriptor

Module Learning Outcomes

Copied from module descriptor

Learning, Teaching and Assessment Strategy

A reference to the module descriptor

Summative Assessment

Summary of assessments, with reference to Module Descriptor

And so on - there is more of this bureaucratic definition, more of the reliance on synthetic phrases like ‘module descriptor’, more of the cloth-eared carelessness which can’t make up its mind whether ‘module descriptor’ has capitals or not, or a ‘the’ or not. And there is the denial of

the experienced reality of a module. As far as the formula is concerned, everything in a module handbook is referred to the ‘module descriptor’, not to the tutor or the students. In the corresponding document from another university, the fact that teaching a module is a transaction between tutors and students is panickily occluded in the instructions about module handbooks: It is the responsibility of the Module Leader for each module to ENSURE that each student has been provided with a Module Handbook. (italics, and upper-case, in original) This combines emphasis on What Is To Be Done with a refusal to imagine real people doing it. The ‘has been’ instead of ‘is’ is especially interesting. The language insists that the module leader must do certain things - but resists the image of the module leader in the act of doing them. ‘Is provided’ might image what really happens - the module leader gives the handbooks out, of course. But the present perfect tense redefines the tutor’s role as the bureaucratic function of checking procedure, rather than imagine the tutor doing anything which tutors actually do. Module handbooks are instruments of audit culture, and of the ‘new managerialism’ which has been very critically discussed in recent issues of the Critical Quarterly, the Cambridge Quarterly and the Oxford Literary Review (2), and which has been subjected to anthropological critique by Strathern and others (3). But it is equally true that the managerialist prescription of handbooks does not succeed in standardising them all that much, beyond insisting on some prescribed content. At my own institution, there is a lot of variation in the size of English handbooks: from eight pages to sixty-two. This variation in length is greater in English handbooks than in many other disciplines, I was pleased to discover. Colleagues’ feelings about their handbooks vary a lot too. Some were resentfully compliant: ‘They insist that we do them, so we’ve got to - but it’s just another burden’. Others saw the handbook as a place to share enthusiasm: ‘It’s a first chance to sell the module - to get students interested in it.’ And there were colleagues who invested a lot of themselves:

1. I am using the term ‘text’ here in the broad sense in which Fairclough uses it. See Fairclough, N. Critical Discourse Analysis Longman, London 1995, pp.4-10. 2. Oxford Literary Review17 Nos. 1-2 (1995). 3. M.Strathern (ed), Audit Cultures: Anthropological studies in accountability, ethics and the academy, Routledge, London 2000. 23

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Module Handbooks and Audit Culture ‘I put in a lot of work in the module handbook; it’s a chance to show students that I care about them.’ This range of views about handbooks shows in the differences in length, and also in variety of content. As well as the material from the management prescriptions about learning outcomes etc., handbooks often contain accounts of the week-byweek structure of the module, with detailed advice about reading and preparation. Sometimes they have enthusiastic personal statements about the material of the module. In the Critical Quarterly (4), Richardson compares the ‘ideal university’ to the building of a Gothic cathedral, ‘with autonomous workers gaining pleasure from their labours’, and the variations in module handbooks show that even in instruments of audit culture there can be expressions of unalienated labour.

Students’ views about module handbooks I distributed 60 questionnaires to students at Teesside, in all three years of an undergraduate English programme. There were 26 returns, most of them (16) from thirdyear students. In addition, some members of staff at Royal Holloway (RH) kindly distributed some questionnaires for me there (and sent me some module handbooks), and there were 6 returns, which usefully make a small group for comparison between Teesside students and students at a pre1992 university. I shall go through the responses to the questionnaire, picking out issues for discussion where appropriate. The first section of the questionnaire asked questions about good and bad handbooks. Question 1 asked students to think of a module handbook which they rated highly and, without naming the module, say what its good qualities were. The responses indicate that students value clarity and comprehensiveness of information most highly. The things students praise are: details of what will happen each week; suggested reading for each week; detailed information about assignments, in fact the nuts-and-bolts information about what work to do, when and how. Two representative quotations about good handbooks:

which is extremely helpful because I get to prepare for it.There is also a bibliography which is essential so I know where to focus my reading. (Teesside Year 3) Sets out clearly coursework + assessment deadlines. The course outline is clear and easy to read as it is split up into weeks and describes what is expected of each week. It also contains a week by week breakdown, with suggested reading. (RH) The answers to question (2), which asked about bad handbooks, were mirror images of the answers to question (1). Lack of clarity, vagueness and skimpiness were bad points. One addition was adverse comments on handbooks which were poorly produced. Handbooks which consisted of only a few pages, or were simply the required information from the module descriptor, or were poorly stapled together, were criticised. So were handbooks which were only available online. The picture which emerged was one in which students value the text of the handbook, want to keep it, and are sensitive to the amount of work which seems to have gone into it. The second set of questions asked how useful module handbooks are, and how students use them.The responses show that students attach a lot of value to module handbooks, and see them as an important part of their learning. Students in year 1 English at Teesside thought that handbooks were very useful, quite useful or not useful at all in the ratio 4:2:0. Students at Royal Holloway, and in years 2 and 3 at Teesside, said ‘very useful’ without exception (with some variation like ‘indispensable’ and ‘couldn’t do without them’). The slight variation between first-year students and the rest suggests that students need to learn to use their module handbooks in the same way that they need to learn to use any other learning resources, but that the effort is worthwhile. Also, more advanced study means that students work more closely with their handbooks, especially with the week by week details and instructions which they value so highly. Students described their use of module handbooks in very pragmatic ways: ‘To prepare for lectures and

‘The picture which emerged was one in which students value the text of the handbook, want to keep it, and are sensitive to the amount of work which seems to have gone into it.’

Lists module details, outline, set texts, aims, outcomes, attendance, assessment. It also gives a lecture and seminar week by week programme

4. A. Richardson, ‘God, Ruskin and Management’, in Critical Quarterly 44, 4, (Winter 2002) pp.46-49. 24

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Module Handbooks and Audit Culture seminars’ (Teesside 3); ‘Knowing how to prepare for each week’ (RH); ‘As a weekly timetable’ (Teesside 2); ‘Know what is expected in terms of preparation and essays’ Royal Holloway (RH). The next section of the questionnaire consisted of a brief content-analysis. The questionnaire set out a list of twelve items which might be found in module handbooks, and asked students to rate these as ‘very good ... good ... fairly good ... poor’. I then turned the responses into numerical scores, giving 3 for ‘very good’, then 2, then 1, with zero for ‘poor’. The aggregate scores are given below, with the items in rank order, not in the order they appeared on the questionnaire. 1. Week-by-week schedule of topics 2. Elaborated week-by-week schedule, with detailed information about questions for discussion 3. Information about referencing 4. Advice about assessment for the module 5. Essay titles 6. Lengthy list of secondary reading 7. Primary source material 8. Module learning outcomes 9. Generic description of assessment bands 10. Information about plagiarism regulations 11. Pictures 12. Quizzes, games

84 77 72 71 70 70 69 67 55 51 29 13

I shall pick out four issues for comment. Note that with 32 returns, and a maximum available score of 96 for any item, the table above has a familiar look because it roughly resembles a table of students’ results, expressed as percentages. Thought of like that, the results are two fails, two lower seconds, and a higher range from good upper second to outstanding first.

The fails Ludic or decorative elements of module handbooks score very low. The idea of a quiz in a handbook (they are rare, but occasionally occur) attracted scornful incredulity in the responses. One student added ‘???’ to her ‘poor’ rating, and another asked ‘what would be the point?’ And putting pictures in a handbook, which can be fun to do, doesn’t score much better. In these reactions, the pervading theme of students’ pragmatism is visible - if students regarded pictures in a module handbook as primary source material, that would be likely to score much better.

The lower seconds The responses value information most when it is specific to the module, not when it is generic. Information about plagiarism is (at Teesside) part of the prescribed content of module handbooks, so it appears in all of them, and in students’ programme handbooks too. There were comments about this, and some students wrote that the information was unnecessary more than once. The same principle appears in the scores for generic assessment bands and module-specific advice about assessment: 55 for the generic information, 71 for the specific.

Learning outcomes Module learning outcomes are a central issue in the whole debate about audit culture and the ‘commodification of learning’. The demand to state the learning outcomes of a module has been strongly criticised. One criticism is that learning outcomes are overly behaviourist: When applied to learning, we have the situation where an internal process is described in terms of outcomes which can be construed as quantifiable products amenable to (pre)specification in tangible and concrete form. (5) Similarly, Goodlad distinguishes between ‘training and the inculcation of low-level skills’ and ‘the tentativeness and “authoritative uncertainty” that is at the heart of the academic enterprise.’ (6) Learning outcomes are appropriate for the former, but not the latter. Another criticism is that stating learning outcomes makes it impossible to deviate from the script, even when this would be a good teaching tactic: ...the presumption that the teaching and learning that takes place on the course can only be justified to the extent that it satisfies learning outcome requirements has the effect of stifling aspects of the course she is teaching that she sees as vital to its life. (7) As well as these objections to learning outcomes, Hussey and Smith attack them from a philosophical point of view, and argue that they are really much less meaningful than their supporters claim. Hussey and Smith’s argument is that learning outcomes cannot be precise or objective accounts of what is learnt or demonstrated. Beyond the acquisition of practical skills (for instance in ascending capabilities in

5. G. Howe, ‘Universities in the UK: drowning by numbers’, Critical Quarterly 47, 1-2 (Spring and Summer 2005), p.3. 6. C. S. Goodlad, The Quest for Quality: Sixteen Forms of Heresy in Higher Education, Open UP, Buckingham 1995, pp.48-49. 7. P. Standish, ‘Towards an economy of higher education’, Critical Quarterly 47, 1-2 (Spring and Summer 2005), pp. 54-55. 25

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Module Handbooks and Audit Culture IT) they can only be meaningful in the light of alreadypossessed knowledge of what is appropriate at different levels of learning and in different disciplinary contexts. ‘In brief, they are parasitic upon the very knowledge and understanding that they are supposed to be explicating.’ (8) One example is of a ‘critical evaluation’ of a poem (Hussey and Smith’s example is Hardy’s ‘At Castle Boterel’). If student A gives an account which discusses intellectual context, and connects this to a detailed and insightful discussion of the poem’s form, and discusses major issues in criticism about Hardy’s poetry generally, whilst student B writes that it’s old-fashioned boring rubbish, then both have produced a ‘critical evaluation’.The learning outcome cannot explain why student A gets a First and student B fails. we praise one and dismiss the other only because we know roughly what is to count as a critical evaluation at this level: the descriptors themselves do not tell us this. Both teacher and student need this knowledge to interpret the learning outcomes.The student has to judge what is required by reference to the levels set by the teaching, seminar discussions, reading and so on. The learning outcome itself indicates only the general nature of what is expected. (9)

applies even more strongly to the detailed scheduling which students value so highly in their responses. Docherty, for example, objects to week-by-week schedules because they may be used for audit: If my published schedule said that I would be discussing Racine, say, in week 6, then I had to make sure that when the inspectors arrived in week 6, my seminar was indeed focused on Racine. The fact that students might have become so engrossed in Moliere the week previously that they wished to defer discussion of Racine ... would only redound negatively on our QAA result. (10) A similar distinction between what is prescriptively stated and what is pedagogically valuable runs through many of the contributions to the same issue of the Cambridge Quarterly. It is visible in Rosslyn’s contrast between the ‘On the face of it’ of a seminar and the ‘at another level’ and ‘At a more complex level’ where the real value of the experience lies. And for Rosslyn the prescription of a seminar is inevitably defeated by the fact that ‘For each student the memorable content of each seminar is likely to be quite different.’ (11) Hussey and Smith concede that preparatory information can be valuable, but object to prescription because it inhibits good teaching:

‘If stating learning outcomes for a module has attracted criticism because it stifles creativity in teaching, the same applies even more strongly to the detailed scheduling which students value so highly in their responses.’

I find Hussey and Smith’s critique completely convincing (though I think it would apply with even greater force to things like generic level descriptors and generic assessment criteria).The students’ responses, though, suggest that they find some value in learning outcomes, even though I do not. They are evidently reading learning outcomes actively, making meaning from them, even though the author (this author at least) believes there is none.

Week-by-week schedule of topics If stating learning outcomes for a module has attracted criticism because it stifles creativity in teaching, the same

...unplanned diversions from the intended focus of classroom activities account for over 60% of changes that occur: good teachers seize on such moments. (12) Yet the students’ responses attach very high value to detailed schedules of what will be discussed and what needs to be read beforehand. My own experience suggests to me that the students are right, and that a seminar is most likely to be valuable if the students are properly prepared, and, crucially, have the confidence which comes

8. T. Hussey & P. Smith, ‘The trouble with learning outcomes’, Active learning in higher education 3, 3 (2002), p.225. 9. Hussey & Smith, p.226 10. T. Docherty, ‘Clandestine English’, The Cambridge Quarterly, 34, 3 (2005) p.227. 11. F. Rosslyn, ‘Literature for the Masses: the English Degree in 2004’, The Cambridge Quarterly, 34, 3 (2005) pp.313-322. 12. Hussey & Smith, p.229. 26

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Module Handbooks and Audit Culture with knowing that they are properly prepared. Like most teachers, I greatly value the experience of a seminar shifting gear to a higher level, when tutor and students feel that they are sharing discovery. The detailed schedule is not an inhibitor of this, but an enabler, because of its effect on students’ confidence. Without this confidence, what looks like discovery is too often the timeworn tactic of shifting discussion away from what you don’t know about towards the safer ground of what you do. The last section of the questionnaire asked about different varieties of language. I invented a module and wrote a paragraph from a handbook for it in three different styles (The point of inventing a module rather than using real extracts was to avoid biasing responses with students’ feelings about modules they had experienced. I chose an unusual field of study for the same reason). The invented extracts were these:

A. Literature and Social Conflict in Nineteenth-Century Russia This module will deal with the following topics: • The Decembrist uprising and the autocratic reaction • Romanticism and Nationalism: Pushkin and Lermontov • Liberalism and the Superfluous Man: Herzen and Turgenev • Belinsky, Chernyshevsky, Chto Dyelet? and the Positive Hero • Nihilism, Populism and the Narodnaya Volya • The conflict between Westernizers and Slavophiles: Saltykov-Schedrin • Religion and Reaction: Dostoyevsky and Tolstoy • Plekhanov and the development of Bolshevism Students will be required to write essays on three of these topics.

B. Literature and Social Conflict in Nineteenth-Century Russia Welcome to this exciting module! It’s likely that you don’t know much (if anything!) about this fascinating subject, but by the time you’ve done this module, you’ll have learned a lot about some of the most famous (and some of the strangest) writers who ever lived. There are some broad themes in the module, all to do with the very turbulent politics of Russia in the nineteenth century and the ways that various writers engaged with political ideas and movements. We’ll start off by looking at the ‘Decembrist

uprising’ of 1825 (it’s called the ‘Decembrist’ uprising because it happened in December!) and then we’ll go on to look at a range of political ideas and movements, and the ways they involved literary figures. One example is the conflict between people who wanted Russia to become a modern democracy like France or England (these were called the ‘Westernizers’), and others who thought that Russia had special qualities which were better than anything in the West (the ‘Slavophiles’). There are lots of exciting (and sometimes weird) ideas in the module, and you’ll find plenty of opportunity to develop your own interests as we move through this fascinating area. There are three essays to write for the assessment for this module, and you’ll need to read all the poems, plays, novels and short stories in the reading list. Then it’s up to you to decide what interests you most.

C. Literature and Social Conflict in Nineteenth-Century Russia The lecture programme is structured as a spiral curriculum, to foster autonomous learning. Unit 1 approaches the question of political writing first through an examination of political events and the social and political context(s) of Russian literature in the period. The events considered are: the Decembrist uprising; the autocratic reaction 18251855; the Crimean War; the liberation of the serfs in 1861; the assassination of Alexander II; the reign of Nicholas II. Writers considered in this Unit are Pushkin, Lermontov, Herzen and Turgenev. Unit 2 is based on political ideology, and especially theories of the relationship between literature and the autocratic state. Theories which will be examined are: Liberalism, Nihilism, Populism, religious reaction and Marxism.Writers to be examined are Belinsky, Saltykov-Schedrin and Dostoyevsky.The last two weeks of the course will be devoted to an examination of Tolstoy’s theory of history. Throughout the module, students will be expected to engage in collaborative learning activities. Assessment is by three essays, in which students will be expected to demonstrate appropriate learning skills and reflective and critical metacognitive knowledge. These inventions were intended to exemplify some of the varieties of language in module handbooks. The first is bullet-point brutal enough to come from a ‘module descriptor’; the second adopts, and perhaps caricatures, very ‘reader-friendly language’, and the third is a runningtext version of the first, with some jargon added in the form of ‘collaborative learning’ and ‘metacognitive knowledge’, phrases which are on Wareing’s list of not-understood

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Module Handbooks and Audit Culture terms from the language of educational development.(13) The questionnaire asked students to rank the extracts in order of preference, and to add comments. To measure preferences numerically, I gave two points for being put first, one for a second place, and zero for a third place. The totals were: Passage A: 20 Passage B: 6 Passage C: 22

Conclusions My original intention for this study had been directed towards the relationship between Them (the management and the QAA) and Us (academic staff); including students in the project changed this model. Much of what students told me ran counter to my own beliefs and wishes. They showed much higher tolerance of, and enthusiasm for, aspects of module handbooks which I and others might dismiss as vacuous managerialism. Are learning outcomes valuable? Valuable to whom? They clearly are valuable to students, despite the fact that the rhetoric of ‘Quality’ says they are. More generally, and to adopt Readings’ metaphor, can this exercise tell us anything about living in ‘The University in Ruins’? The students’ pragmatism and enthusiasm about module handbooks suggest at least that real work is going on in their part of the ruins. Managerial prescription about module handbooks may be irksome, but it does not succeed in reducing module handbooks to uniformity: far from it. And handbooks are very highly valued by their readers. Module handbooks offer an example of Readings’ tentative prescription for the future: ‘... to dwell in the ruins without belief, but with a commitment to thought...’(14)

This preference for anything but passage B was visible in the comments too. Comments on passage A included: ‘This is clear and concise. I know exactly what is expected of me.’ (RH); ‘This is all you need. Bullet points are easy to read - straight to the point.’ (Teesside 2). Passage C was praised similarly: ‘I like the way the topics are detailed and broken down into units.’ (Teesside 3); ‘Quite professional in language - being serious and students should take it seriously’ (RH). There was some comment on the jargon in passage C (one student complained that if plain language had been good enough for A. C. Bradley it ought to be good enough here), but the detail and professionalism of the passage made up for this. Passage B, though, was sharply criticised: ‘Very condescending’ (RH); ‘Completely useless’ (Teesside 3); ‘Long-winded and boring’ (Teesside 1). The responses show again that practicality is very important to students. Even though much in passages A and C was incomprehensible to them (the Chto Why Study English? Dyelet? and the Narodnaya Volya as well as the www.whystudyenglish.ac.uk jargon in C) the students showed a very high tolerance for the unfamiliar. Perhaps the fact The Subject Centre is pleased to announce the launch that strange topics were stated directly meant of this new website, designed to encourage young people that students felt they could begin work for thinking about which subject to study in higher education to the module, for instance by putting the strange choose English. It’s written by a recent graduate to provide terms into the library’s search facility. straightforward and relevant information about studying English

at university. There’s a strong focus on employment prospects, and a section (You want to study what?!) reassuring parents. The website supports a ‘Why Study English’ leaflet we distribute annually to all secondary schools and careers offices: it is also available free of charge to departments to support open days etc. If you would like copies, please email esc@rhul.ac.uk stating how many you require.

13. S.Wareing, ‘It ain’t what you say, it’s the way that you say it: An Analysis of the Language of Educational Development’, English Subject Centre Newsletter 7 (November 2004), pp.13-17. 14. B. Readings, ‘Dwelling in the Ruins’, The Oxford Literary Review 17 Nos.1-2 (1995), p.23. 28

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The Arts and Humanities Data Service: Keeping the digital past for the future Did you know that you can access a central archive of free literary and linguistic resources for UK Higher Education? That you can deposit your resources there, and take advantage of a free archiving and long-term preservation service? And you can get free help and advice on the creation of electronic resources for use in your research? Plus you can get free advice on preparing technical aspects of AHRC research grant proposals? Dr. James Cummings of AHDS Literature Languages and Linguistics explains.

What is the AHDS? The Arts and Humanities Data Service (AHDS) is a nationally funded service aiding the discovery, creation and preservation of digital resources in and for research, teaching and learning in the arts and humanities. The AHDS aims to serve the arts and humanities education community by: • Supplying advice and guidance in the creation of digital resources to quality standards that ensure their suitability for informed use in research and researchled teaching, and their long-term viability • Providing rich, deep, access to the intellectual content of arts and humanities digital resources created by or for Higher and Further Education • Preserving arts and humanities digital resources created by Higher Education. The creation of the AHDS in 1996 was based on a Feasibility Study and Report written by Lou Burnard and Harold Short and initially funded by the Joint Information Systems This Committee (JISC). (1) Feasibility Study was in part a response to the increasing fears for the sustainability and preservation of publiclyfunded electronic resources. This report recommended the creation of a distributed service named the Arts and Humanities Data Service expanding on existing provision in this area. The organisational structure that they proposed consisted of a Management Committee (to act as a

liaison between the Service and its funders), an Executive (to manage the Service and overall policy), and a number of distributed subject centres responsible for the specialised services the AHDS would offer. This distributed structure was novel and a forward-looking solution now common in many similar subject-based services. After a long period of yearly funding as a project by the JISC, in 2003 the Arts and Humanities Research Board (now Council) agreed to co-fund the AHDS with the JISC with each funder contributing 50% over a longer period. Although the AHDS has evolved over the years its overall structure and mission still closely resembles that set out in the initial Feasibility Study by Burnard and Short.

Structure of the AHDS The AHDS today comprises six distributed but interrelated and cooperating centres which provide an integrated service for arts and humanities research and teaching for the creation, management, preservation and use of digital resources. (2) These six elements are: AHDS Executive The AHDS Executive, based at King’s College London, is responsible for the overall direction and management of the AHDS. It undertakes the strategic planning, financial organisation, policy creation and maintenance, and the running of a shared technical infrastructure for preservation and dissemination. The AHDS Executive works closely with those at the distributed Centres to coordinate all aspects of the AHDS. (See http://www.ahds.ac.uk/)

‘The AHDS provides expert guidance and training on the creation and scholarly use of digital materials.’

1. A PDF copy of the original report is available from http://www.ahds.ac.uk/about/publications/ 2. For contact information for any branch of the AHDS see the AHDS website at http://www.ahds.ac.uk/ 29

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The Arts and Humanities Data Service: Keeping the digital past for the future AHDS Literature, Languages, and Linguistics The AHDS subject centre that serves the disciplines of English language and literature in particular is the AHDS Literature, Languages, and Linguistics. This is hosted at the Oxford Text Archive (OTA) at the University of Oxford. The OTA was founded in 1976, and after 30 years of collecting digital resources the OTA collection is wide and varied. It collects, documents, curates and promotes the use of digital resources to support research and teaching within the disciplines of literature, languages, and linguistics. It also provides advice and support to digital data creators and users. Its holdings include all types of resources related to its subject areas, such as digital versions of literary works, linguistic corpora, collections of language data and resources related to research and teaching. Although primarily an archive of electronic textual data, in recent years its collection has incorporated multimedia resources. As with a number of the other subject centres, only those resources which have been collected after the creation of the AHDS are archived centrally by the AHDS Executive. All older deposits are preserved at the OTA, while most recent deposits are preserved both with the OTA and the AHDS Literature, Languages, and Linguistics. One of the lessons learnt over the last thirty years of archiving resources is that the adoption of standardised formats is beneficial to both resource creators and those who wish to use them. Although for textual resources the OTA now strongly recommends the use of the most recent guidelines of the Text Encoding Initiative (TEI), which is a recognised international standard for textual materials in the arts and humanities, and which the OTA has assisted in developing, many of its earlier resources pre-date such standards and may contain unanticipated or individualistic forms of markup. (3) AHDS Literature, Languages, and Linguistics is happy to advise in the use and re-purposing of these resources for research and teaching. AHDS Literature, Languages, and Linguistics participates in many subject-based organisations related to English language and literature. These include not only standards-creating bodies such as the TEI and the Open Language Archives Community, but also subject specific organisations which encourage good practice in their particular discipline such as the Poetics and Linguistics Association, the British Association of Applied Linguistics, or those concerned with particular temporal span, such as Digital Medievalist and Digital Classicist. (4) AHDS Literature, Languages, and Linguistics would be interested

in hearing of any conferences, seminars, or workshops in the areas of literature, languages or linguistics where there may be those who would benefit from further advice or consultation concerning the creation of digital resources. Please do email info@litlangling.ahds.ac.uk for further information or advice or go to http://www.ahds.ac.uk/ litlangling/ AHDS Performing Arts AHDS Performing Arts, based at the University of Glasgow, is hosted by Humanities Advanced Technology and Information Institute. It acquires, documents, maintains and promotes the use of digital resources in support of research and teaching across the very broad field of the performing arts: music, film, broadcast arts, theatre, dance. It is intended for performing arts researchers, teachers and students in UK Higher Education. AHDS Performing Arts has an interest in all types of resources related to the performing arts from digital versions of works themselves, representations or constituents of the works, materials about the performing arts and catalogue data. See http://www.ahds.ac.uk/performingarts/ AHDS History AHDS History, based at the University of Essex, is hosted by the UK Data Archive. It undertakes to provide longterm preservation for digital resources which result from or support historical research, learning and teaching. As with the other centres it offers a range of services including providing advice and training about creating, describing, using and preserving historical digital resources; collecting and curating historical digital resources; providing access to a wide-ranging collection of historical digital resources; establishing thematic special collections, and enriching and enhancing selected data collections; and promoting standards in the creation, description, use and preservation of historical digital resources. See http://www.ahds.ac.uk/history/ AHDS Visual Arts AHDS Visual Arts is based at the Farnham site of the University College for the Creative Arts. AHDS Visual Artsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s mission is to support research, learning and teaching, by providing visual arts digital resources through online access and long term preservation; and to encourage, support and facilitate engagement with visual arts digital resources, through collaborative and creative endeavour, primarily within UK Higher and Further Education.

3. See http://www.tei-c.org/ for information about the TEI consortium. 4. See, for example, http://www.digitalmedievalist.org/ as an example of one umbrella group encouraging best practice. 30

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The Arts and Humanities Data Service: Keeping the digital past for the future It promotes good practice for the creation and use of visual arts digital resources, and provides advice and training in their creation and use. See http://www.ahds. ac.uk/visualarts/ AHDS Archaeology AHDS Archaeology, based at the University of York, is hosted by the Archaeology Data Service. AHDS Archaeology supports research, learning and teaching with high quality and dependable digital resources. It does this by preserving digital data in the long term, and by promoting and disseminating a broad range of data in archaeology. It promotes good practice in the use of digital data in archaeology, it provides technical advice to the research community, and supports the deployment of digital technologies. See http://www.ahds.ac.uk/ archaeology/ These five AHDS subject centres, in conjunction with the AHDS Executive, provide good coverage over the arts and humanities disciplines. While there are many subject areas which do not have subject centres of their own, these are often catered for by the existing centres. For example, someone researching in Theology might find resources and advice in a number of the subject centres. The cross-search catalogue provided by the AHDS Executive enables the discovery of AHDS resources across these subject areas.

availability and use of resources, whether they may be fit for the userâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s intended purpose, or possible alternative resources. They are also happy to collaborate with those seeking to improve and extend the usefulness of existing collections. The main service given to users is the access to the wonderful richness of resources produced by and for the higher education community in the UK. Services to Funding Applicants The AHDS provides free advice for those applying for funding to create a digital resource in the arts and humanities. It is funded specifically to provide help and advice for those writing applications for AHRC funding or British Academy funding, however, it will attempt to help others on a best effort basis. The AHDS is happy to read drafts of AHRC and British Academy funding applications, however, you should contact the relevant centre significantly in advance of the deadline to arrange this. If successfully funded, the AHDS is happy to liaise with and provide advice to the project throughout its lifetime. Those who receive project funding from the British Academy or AHRC are required by the terms of their funding to deposit a copy of the resource with the AHDS. This helps to ensure that resources created with public money do not simply vanish, and has become a model for similar initiatives internationally.

The AHDS provides numerous services to different sectors of the community which all reflect its three main aims to provide long-term preservation for resources, provide access to these resources, and encourage the creation of better resources through advice on good practice. It currently holds a substantial collection of electronic texts, databases, images, and mixed media resources relevant to teaching and research in a wide range of arts and humanities disciplines. The forms of metadata used in each of the centres is determined by the needs and standards in that subject area. However, the conversion of all of these to an agreed common metadata format allows the cross-disciplinary discovery of resources. Similarly, different resources may have a number of restrictions on their use, or require a variety of delivery mechanisms appropriate to that resource.

Services to Funding Agencies In an intentionally circular process which encourages the creation of better resources in preservation-friendly formats, the AHDS also assesses the technical appendices for AHRC funding applications with a significant digital output. It provides expert reviews of what the application claims concerning the project management of technical aspects, data development methods, infrastructural support, data preservation and sustainability, access, copyright and IPR. This also acts as another method by which advice can be returned to the funding applicant. The AHDS is also quite active in the development of key standards by participating in relevant standards bodies and encouraging their application. This, along with the advice and guidance given to resource creators, benefits funding agencies by helping to ensure value for money in the creation of publicly funded resources in preservation friendly formats through sustainable methodologies.

Services to Users The AHDS provides free or at-cost access to all of its services and collections for Higher and Further Education communities. It creates an online catalogue and delivery methods for the resources deposited with the AHDS. The AHDS subject centres are happy to advise on the

Services to Resource Creators The AHDS provides expert guidance and training on the creation and scholarly use of digital materials. It does this through a variety of means including workshops, seminars, training courses, participation in academic conferences, and publications. In addition to submitting academic articles

Services Provided by the AHDS

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The Arts and Humanities Data Service: Keeping the digital past for the future in the relevant subject areas, the AHDS itself publishes a number of Guides to Good Practice, Information Papers on particular topics, and Case Studies of successful projects. (5) The AHDS will participate in collaborative projects with resource creators to create, curate and disseminate digital resources. One of the foremost activities of the AHDS is the provision of a centralised data archive of deposited resources for long-term preservation. These are then made available for dissemination by the AHDS on behalf of the resource creator. The AHDS provides cataloguing and metadata for the resource as an AHDS collection using recognised international standards. In addition the resource will be promoted and publicised using wellestablished and recognised channels for the dissemination of information concerning new AHDS deposits.

Depositing with the AHDS If you have created a digital resource that you feel may benefit others in your subject area as a primary source, then depositing with the AHDS is a generally straight-forward process: simply contact the relevant AHDS subject centre

for advice and support. They will inform you of each step to be taken â&#x20AC;&#x201C; from copying your data and documentation to the final transfer of your resource into AHDS digital repository. Donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t wait until the end of your project to make contact. For best results liaise with the AHDS from the beginning and throughout the life of your project.

Conclusion The future for the AHDS looks good. The AHDS is always looking for new ways to meet the challenges which working with digital resources inevitably create.The changing nature of the subject communities in the arts and humanities, and the perpetual forward development of computing technology, mean that AHDS must be ready to evolve to meet new requirements and challenges whilst simultaneously maintaining those aspects, such as the strong subject focus found in the expert centres, which have led to it becoming so successful. It is hoped that the continued work by the AHDS will help keep the digital resources of the past for the researchers of the future.

5. See http://www.ahds.ac.uk/about/publications/ for a list of publications the AHDS provides. 32

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The Student Experience U210: The English Language: Past, Present and Future As announced in our last issue, Open University student Rachel Davies won first place and £250 in prize money for the English Subject Centre competition on the set topic, How does your experience of your course compare with any expectations you may have had? We are delighted to now publish her essay in this issue, followed by that of runner-up, Michael Aiken. When I looked for a course for 2005, I thought I had found ‘a bit of a soft option’ in U210: The English Language: Past, Present and Future: how hard could it be? The course blurb suggested relatively little reading, certainly compared with the intensive literature courses I had been doing: only the course materials and a sharp eye for topical references in the press. I had been a fluent speaker of English for more than half a century; I had a working knowledge of English in art and history from previous Open University courses; I had a well developed understanding of early language acquisition and educational English, having taught in primary schools for twenty-five years, latterly as a Headteacher in an English as an Additional Language (EAL) setting. I had an easy first-name-terms familiarity with English. ‘Sixty points cheaply purchased,’ I chuckled as I filled in the application form. She who laughs...at my age I should know there is no such thing as a free lunch (or an easy OU option!). The course work forced me to realign all my assumptions about English. Politics, economics and social change loomed large in national and international perspectives. The development of Standard English around the Thames Estuary dialect, for instance, was spotlighted as an historical and geographical accident, attributable in part to the importation of printing from Europe via the English Channel. Indeed, I learned of not just one but several ‘Standard Englishes’, often prescribed by statute, based in colonialism and post-colonial reaction.To use or not to use English has been a fundamental socio-political decision in countries as near as our own island group, or as distant as Africa, India, the Americas or Australasia. Pidgins, Creoles, Singlish, Standard Indian, Australian or American English: I began to see that my ‘first names’ familiarity with ‘English’ deserved an address with a little more respect.

Unfamiliar perspectives in the study of English language revealed a complex and multi-faceted jewel. The clever use of rhetoric, not only to persuade but also to elicit audience response and affirmation, for instance, I found fascinating. I read about political speech-making at the time that the 2005 General Election campaign was at its height, and politicians of all parties provided a rich vein of three part lists and contrast structures, each manipulating audiences with the skill of latter-day Svengalis. The complementary use of language and graphics in advertising was also an eye-opener: and there I was thinking the pictures were just there to look pretty! Awestruck, I saw how the language of a small island nation off the north east coast of Europe spread through colonial trade to all corners of the world, ultimately becoming the minimal text of global technology corrupted from the Standard English of one of the island’s former colonies, the USA. Even those aspects of the course which had formerly seemed grassy knolls of comfort (English as Art, English in education, early language development) became nettle patches of realigned thinking; the self-affirming decision, for instance, of post-colonial authors and poets to use, or not, the English of imperial oppression which, historically, was responsible for ‘taking us away from ourselves to other selves, from our world to other worlds’ (1). Equally, the use of English in the classroom, which had seemed fairly uncontroversial to someone working in a UK primary school, presented as a life defining decision in, for example, a girls’ school in Bhojpur where the ability to speak English could be the key to socio-economic status. Even the need to speak to children in order to facilitate their own developing language was shown to be culturally biased toward a ‘white western middle class’. Clifton Pye’s Central American research suggested that children learn language more than adequately

1 Ngugi wa Thiong’o, ‘Decolonizing the mind’ in Using English: from conversation to canon, (1986; J. Maybin and N. Mercer London: Routledge/OU, 1996) p.277. 33

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U210: The English Language: Past, Present and Future well in a variety of social settings without what I had always assumed to be necessary interaction with adult talk models, (2) including the ‘child directed speech’ which is a common element of that interaction in ‘middle England’. I had been writing assignments for Open University courses since I first enrolled in 2001, but if I thought there would be a comfort zone in writing assignments for U210, I was wrong again. The first Tutor Marked Assignment (TMA) I submitted achieved the lowest score of any I had submitted in my four years of study with the OU! Positive, constructive comments from the tutor, and an assurance that she was a ‘harsh marker’, did little to ameliorate the shock. My writing had addressed the question well but was too descriptive and not showing sufficient personal experience to illuminate the course material. Personal experience? In academic study? I reached for the smelling salts! I had been brought up to understand that academic assignments should be objectively written: ‘I’ should not appear. It took a seismic cultural shift to realise that the spiritual portfolio of anecdotal evidence I had accrued from a lifetime of teaching English, and personal experience as a multi-contextual English user, could contribute something to the academic success of the course. The tutorials were invaluable in this respect: discussions with other students, under the guidance of the tutor, helped us to see how we could relate our own experiences to the issues we were debating and put the course work into a three dimensional context which brought the theory to life.

U210 was not the ‘soft option’ of my expectations. I had thought of English as the language I lived in, the comfort blanket I carried around when I travelled abroad; I was challenged to see it also as a de-identifying restraint on subject peoples who continue, even into the 21st century, to strive to free themselves from its yoke. I had thought of it as the sweet scented rose of Shakespeare’s poetry; I was challenged to see it also as a spreading weed of international lexical ‘borrowing’ and linguistic interference. I had thought of it as the intimate medium of conversations with colleagues, family and friends; I was challenged to see it also as the oppressive and impersonal medium of colonial trade; or the corrupted ‘txt msg e-speak’ of internet technology; or a mesmerising language of manipulation and persuasion, seeking my subconscious agreement to and acceptance of,well,just about anything really! But mostly I was encouraged to keep an open mind about it, and to see that all of the above, and none, are definitive interpretations of what ‘English’ is.

‘Personal experience? In academic study? I reached for the smelling salts!’

2 Clifton Pye ‘Quiché Mayan speech to children’ Journal of Child Language no. 13 p. 86-100; 1986 (Quoted in Mercer N and Swann J Learning English: development and diversity Routledge 1996 p. 15-16). 34

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Tackling Coleridge Michael Aicken of the Open University came second out of sixteen entrants in our student essay competition for his essay on the set topic, How does your experience of your course compare with any expectations you may have had? All entries can be read on the English Subject Centre website. See http://www.english.heacademy. ac.uk/explore /resources/studexp/essays.php I remember, at school, reading Coleridge’s classification of readers and the division he made between those he classed as ‘Strain-bags, who retain merely the dregs of what they read’ and those fortunate few, the ‘Mogul diamonds, equally rare and valuable, who profit by what they read, and enable others to profit by it also.’ My reading and listening reinforced my own feeling of inferiority. Reviewers and critics seemed able to pass judgement, with unerring conviction, on books, plays and films. I lacked that confidence, and my expectation on studying literature at degree level was that I would be able to discuss texts with authority. I wanted to be able to declare War and Peace the greatest novel ever written and to state categorically exactly what a literary work is about. If Frankenstein is a novel about the dangers of unchecked scientific research, then I wanted to say so. My quest to become a Mogul diamond had, as Coleridge implies, a moral dimension. I wanted to ‘profit’ from literature and to find myself, at the end of my studies, a different, better person. These were certainly great expectations, and my experience of studying literature has not been to find these expectations unfulfilled but, like the wishes granted in a fairytale, to find them satisfied in unexpected ways. I have, for example, come to treat sceptically any judgement made about a literary text’s ‘worth’. To compare two texts, and then pronounce one as the ‘better’, is an exercise of such subjectivity that it seems likely that the judgement will reveal more about the judge than the texts. The ‘worth’ of a literary text is a judgement that is not fixed in time, and I have enjoyed the aspects of my course that have helped to place literary texts in their historical context. In particular, a recent unit on Romantic writings had a well-chosen end-of-unit assignment, which required a comparison of poems by Byron and Joanna Baillie. This aided an exploration of how the work of female poets of the Romantic period, once popular, came to be lost from the conventional canon of Romantic poetry through a complexity of influences, including Victorian anthologists’ opinions about the value of women’s role in society.

My expectations have changed as a consequence. I am now learning to understand why a particular text is, or is no longer, valued, and to argue why I find certain texts personally valuable. I have also come to the reassurance that texts are remarkably resistant to authoritative treatment. My course has introduced a variety of ways in which a text can be ‘read’: a reminder that it is not possible to categorically state what a text is about. My selection, as a twentyfirst century reader, of what is important in a text will not necessarily match that of a past or future reader. In particular, there has been a strong emphasis on gender issues, and I have enjoyed reading texts with issues of gender representation in mind.This has been most successful when the assignments have been comparative, and allowed for a study of how different writers, at different times, and even writing in different genres have explored similar themes. In particular, when the texts chosen have been widely different, a more interesting contrast can be shown. One memorable assignment from last year required the comparison of the representation of femininity in Pygmalion, George Bernard Shaw’s 1914 play, with its representation in Wide Sargasso Sea, Jean Rhys’s 1966 novel. However, as all assignment titles are published in a booklet at the start of a course, I have found that my reading of a text has tended to be limited by the necessity of gathering essay material. Thus, while I feel confident with their representations of femininity, I have little knowledge of, say, how Wide Sargasso Sea, set in Dominica in the early nineteenth century, functions as a postcolonial novel, or how Pygmalion, with Henry Higgins as a professor of phonetics, fits with other representations of scientists in the theatre. I feel that the prescriptive nature of the assignments leaves only limited scope for the identification and exploration of the themes that I find are the most important in a given text. And, while I would not welcome this freedom in every assignment, I believe that at least one assignment per semester (or part-time

‘I wanted to ‘profit’ from literature and to find myself, at the end of my studies, a different, better person.’

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Tackling Coleridge equivalent) should have this greater element of choice. Of the seven assignments in my present course, only two have an element of choice and in each case that has only been in the choice of text (from a very limited list) to use in discussion of a prescribed theme. My final expectation – that of somehow becoming a ‘better’ person – has already been refined by my course’s emphasis on relativism. What I mean by ‘better’ is inevitably tied to my own political, historical and cultural context. In the language and values of modern corporate Britain, I have usefully gained ‘transferable’ skills such as ‘problemsolving’ and ‘communication’. I have also gained confidence. My opinions count and are valued, with each assignment I write contributing towards my final mark for the course. I have learned not to accept the unjustified judgements of others, but to question how they came to such judgements.

This even applies when that other is as eminent as the poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge. His classification of readers is now, in my opinion, unacceptably elitist. After all, almost everyone who uses reading in their everyday life, from a call centre worker to a newspaper reader, can ‘profit by what they read’ and they ‘enable others to profit by it also’. We certainly are not, as Coleridge would have us believe, as ‘rare’ as Mogul diamonds. In spite of Coleridge and, to a certain extent, in spite of the strictures of my university assignments, I am learning to approach my reading with as open a mind as possible. In so doing, I am less inclined to come to quick, or simple judgements. I have taken to repeating the mantra (adapted from another poet, Derek Mahon):‘I who know nothing go to read’, and I feel a better person for it.

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Book Reviews In the Classroom: Perspectives on Women Writers and Teaching Practice Dr Andrew Maunder Principal Lecturer, Department of English Literature, University of Hertfordshire reviews a new book of essays about teaching that includes a module outline with each contribution.

• Jeanne Moskall and Shannon R Wooden, eds., Teaching British Women Writers 1750-1900. New York: Peter Lang. 2005. ISBN 0820469270 This helpful collection of essays addresses what its editors describe as the “radically changed educational landscape, offering practical proven teaching strategies for newly “recovered” writers...” The collection promises to address “institutional issues confronting feminist scholars who teach women writers in a variety of settings and the kinds of career-altering effects the decision to teach this material can have on junior and senior scholars alike.” Just what these “career-altering” decisions are in 2006 is not really explained but the rest of the book broadly does what it claims. The book is split – slightly randomly – into two halves. The first offers accounts by teachers of their experience of teaching particular texts or pairs of texts and the strategies to which their students seemed to respond best, and the second discusses wider pedagogical issues. Thus in the first section there are essays on reading the works of Eliza Haywood alongside texts by male contemporaries or studying Felicia Hemans’ The Bride of the Greek Isle with Keat’s Grecian Urn. Elsewhere, Kirstie Swenson offers a useful account of teaching Krupabi Satthianadhan’s novel Saguna (1890) and Elizabeth Gruner suggests ways in which short stories by Mary Braddon and Margaret Oliphant might be approached. In the second section there is an informative article by Patricia Hamilton on teaching students to use secondary sources and one by Emma Cleary on using assignments based on the Corvey collection (http://extra.shu.ac.uk/corvey/) to underpin research based modules and assessments. Helpfully, all the contributors include copies of their module outlines so that teachers or graduate students faced with teaching nineteenth-century women’s writing get a sense of how coverage might be achieved. Given that teachers often spend a long time wondering how to achieve sufficient coverage and also what texts to choose, these text-specific essays with their discussions of what kinds of approaches help students are a good resource, not least for the ways in which they suggest

how canonical and non-canonical authors might sit together in conversation, as perhaps they did in life. Although many of the claims in this book strike the reader as sensible, occasionally there are some that prompt a raised eyebrow. For example, the editors announce that “teaching non-canonical writers invigorates the curriculum as a whole, not only by introducing the voices of women writers, but by incorporating new genres, by asking new questions about readers’ assumptions and aesthetic values, and by altering the power relations between teacher and student for the better.” Few would dispute most of this, though the last benefit is not fully explained. There is one essay in which teacher and student both describe how working together on the preparation of a critical edition of a novel helped them understand the other’s point of view but then, to paraphrase that other famous Romanticist Mandy RiceDavis, “it would, wouldn’t it?” Not much mention is made of the other 25 students on the course. Indeed this collection for all its virtues is on much surer ground when the editors stick to the practical challenges of the curriculum. The essay by James Simmons on teaching non-canonical women on a Romantics course should be required reading for anyone teaching the period for the first time and much of what he says about students will strike a chord in those teaching in post-1992 universities and I suspect elsewhere. In contrast, it is when the contributors get onto reflecting about their practice in any detail - as, of course, we are meant to - that the effect is rather queasy and by turns self-aggrandizing or self-pitying. The classroom is compared to a “battlefield”; teachers of non-canonical women writers are apparently foot-soldiers or actors facing much tougher assignments than those who stick to Shakespeare. Thus we are reminded: “With non canonical writers, however, much of the stage hasn’t been built yet. As a result, many of us feel like the circus roustabouts whose job it is to raise the tent in a few hours before the first performance” (123). This kind of comment is rare but it strikes a rather odd note in a book where the emphasis is on the enjoyments of teaching. There is a similar tendency for some contributors to cast themselves as beleaguered 37

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In the Classroom: Perspectives on Women Writers and Teaching Practice because they are the only ones teaching non-canonical women writers in their institution. “The alternative to working with another scholar?” asks one contributor rhetorically at one point - “it was working alone.” This, we are told “is the condition of many scholars who work on non-canonical women writers. Scholars who work on Dickens and Wordsworth can usually be assured that their colleagues have at least read Bleak House or The Prelude” (125). There is presumably a point to be made here about sharing teaching practice and experiences

with colleagues, but presumably this happens anyhow, whether within an institution, via web discussion forums or at conferences. In spite of these minor issues, Teaching British Women Writers is a timely collection, wide-ranging and wellwritten. Although much of what its contributors write is based on the U.S. system, most people teaching eighteenth, Romantic and nineteenth-century literatures will find something in this text which is both interesting and helpful.

Just Published! English at ‘A’ Level: a Guide for Lecturers in Higher Education Have you lost track of what’s happening to the English ‘A’ Levels? Are you mystified by a seeming plethora of Assessment Objectives? Are you slightly vague about the number and range of texts your Level 1 students may have studied? Do you find it easier to assume it must still be a bit like your ‘A’ Level circa 1980- something? If so, our new guide to the ‘A’ Levels in English was written for you! As Ben Knights says in the Foreword to this Guide, ‘much of what passes for knowledge about A-level in academic departments is a mixture of increasingly distant memory, folklore, and hearsay.’ The Subject Centre commissioned the Guide from Barbara Bleiman and Lucy Webster of the English and Media Centre (www.englishandmedia.co.uk) in order to help HE lecturers get to grips with what ‘A’ Level is all about and to help them to identify the implications for their first year teaching. We reasoned that lecturers who have a better understanding of curricula and teaching methods at ‘A’ Level will be better attuned to the expectations and prior learning experiences of their Level 1 students. The Guide comprises a short description of the background to Curriculum 2000 and each of the three (yes, there are now three!) ‘A’ Levels. It then gives statistics on candidates and grades before looking at set texts, assessment objectives, teaching methods and marking. The common ground and main differences between examination boards are drawn out, and there is a handy table in an appendix that enables you to compare them in more detail. But the Guide does much more than simply provide basic information.We believe that it will provide colleagues with a detailed and vivid snapshot of the current AS and A2 environment: the QCA criteria for the three A Levels, the specifications of the Awarding Bodies and typical modes of teaching and assessment. Two copies of the Guide have been mailed to each department in the UK, but if you would like another please email esc@rhul.ac.uk. The Guide is also available as a PDF on our website at http://www.english.heacademy.ac.uk/archive/publications/reports/alevel_ report.pdf.

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Debating Creativity: Literature, Language, Theory and Practice Emily Horton (University of Nottingham) analyzes three recent books on creativity that tread the language, literature and creative writing borders. • Derek Attridge, The Singularity of Literature. London: Routledge, 2004. ISBN 0415335930 • Ronald Carter, Language and Creativity: The Art of Common Talk. London: Routledge. 2004. ISBN 0415234492 • Rob Pope, Creativity: Theory, History, Practice. London: Routledge. 2005. ISBN 0415349168 The concept of ‘creativity’ is now pervasive and its uses multiple. It can be found not only in aesthetic theory, but also in self-help books stressing the value of creativity as a means to psychological well-being and success, or in ‘creative’ managerial programs that view creativity as a resource for problem-solving and successful marketing. In academia, the term’s undeniable importance is perhaps most obvious in the current discussion amongst British and American universities as to the importance of creative writing courses, though it is also apparent in primary and secondary schools in debates over the place of the canon, traditional methodology, and the appropriate distribution of the budget between ‘artistic’ and ‘scientific’ studies. Three recent books, each published by Routledge, take creativity as their central theme: The Singularity of Literature by Derek Attridge, Language and Creativity: The Art of Common Talk by Ronald Carter, and Creativity: Theory, History, Practice by Rob Pope. In exploring the meaning of creativity and the extent of its relevance both within and without literary studies, Attridge, Carter and Pope all insist upon an essentially democratic understanding of creativity. This understanding becomes apparent in two ways. Firstly, where past analyses of the term tend to privilege its use to specific contexts – be it to literature rather than spoken language, the humanities rather than the sciences, the individual rather than the group – these studies all allow for the possibility that it is in fact much more frequent in occurrence and multiple in form than conventionally acknowledged. Thus, for Carter, creativity exists not only in written language

or literature, but also within the subtle innovations of everyday speech. Through the use of CANCODE, informal dialogue can be dissected to uncover multiple implications within what have traditionally been seen as practices of limited or instrumental function. Likewise, both he and Pope repeatedly insist that an adequate definition of creativity would not limit it to the individual genius of Romantic literary theory but would to the contrary allow for its everyday occurrence as well as its communal dimensions. Attridge limits his study to an exploration of the particular nature of literary creativity, but even then he acknowledges that creativity may exist outside literature and the humanities. All three studies place crucial significance on the notion of the ‘other’ either as a participant in the creative act or as a subject of empathetic recognition brought about by this act. For Attridge, it is the confrontation with what is foreign, different or unrecognised in relation to me, and the surprise this produces upon encounter, which constitutes the act-event of creation (33). For Carter, similarly, creativity within informal group discussions becomes a way of establishing or reinforcing power hierarchies. Pope too argues that a revised conception of creativity, taking into account its unique form within distinct disciplines and cultures, will allow for an increased awareness and sensitivity between traditionally divided academic and social spheres. While sharing a common concern for the democratic nature of creativity however, these analyses are extremely different in their approach to the subject. Attridge’s, for example, focuses primarily on the creativity involved in writing and reading literature, while Carter’s works within a specifically linguistic framework, taking interest more particularly in the types of creativity found in everyday spoken discourse. Rob Pope’s study, by contrast with both these, engages in an extremely wideranging exploration of the various theoretical, historical and practical aspects of creativity not only within the arts

‘This conception of creativity as an event, experienced both in the process of writing and of reading, is central to Attridge’s understanding of the term.’

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Debating Creativity: Literature, Language,Theory and Practice and social sciences but also within the natural and physical sciences, continually questioning the possibility for a single shared understanding of the term across these ‘two cultures’ (as well as within the various dimensions of each side). In this sense, Pope’s book could be said to bring together the two other books, challenging the possibilities for communication and understanding between literature and linguistics, and comparing and contrasting creativity in nature with its appearance in the artificial realm of language. The Singularity of Literature centres on a distinction between three terms: creativity, originality and invention. Attridge defines the first simply as the making of something new, surprising and unpredictable. Everyone can be creative, and importantly, creativity can still be considered ‘creative’ even when it has been done before and though it can be done again by others. A seven-year-old is creative when he paints an interesting or beautiful picture of his family in spite of the fact that similar pictures have been painted repeatedly by many different children in many different cultures. Originality, by contrast, requires a more unique ability to recognise cultural norms and to challenge the tensions within these in order to produce something which not only the creator, but also the surrounding culture find surprising and innovative (36). Correspondingly, an understanding of past originality entails an understanding of the culture in which it was construed. Invention is different in this respect. Not only does it challenge existent cultural norms at its time of production; it maintains its challenge (along with its ability to surprise) in future cultures. It is lasting (though not necessarily universal) in its effect of surprise, and its recognition therefore does not require historical analysis (42-3). This tripartite distinction allows for a more detailed explanation of our experience of creativity and a more dynamic one in so far as it recognises the dual demand on both the creator (in this case, the writer) and his audience (the reader) in the creative process. Thus, for a work to be truly original or inventive, Attridge explains, it must be recognised as such by both parties, not simply by the creator. The reason for this (one which challenges both New Criticism and Postmodernist literary theory) is that creative writing is not only an act, an effort on the part of the writer, but also an event which happens to her. This conception of creativity as an event, experienced both in

the process of writing and of reading, is central to Attridge’s understanding of the term, distinguishing his understanding from both that of New Critics and Pragmatists. Even as an author writes, the process of writing itself surprises her, unearthing tensions and vulnerabilities inherent in her culture, of which she herself might not be entirely conscious. Reading reinstates this event as it surprises the reader (in the act-event of reading) with the same cultural inconsistencies and thereby forces him to take a new perspective on existing conventions. If the surrounding culture does not experience the event of reading in this way, Attridge argues, the literary production is not truly original, for in this case it simply does not sufficiently challenge cultural norms but merely reinstates the status quo. One example he uses to illustrate the importance of cultural reception in defining a work’s status as singular is Blake’s poem The Sick Rose. In analysing this poem, he explains, it is helpful to know something of its historical context, to be familiar with the other poems of Songs of Experience, to recognise various poetic genres associated with four-beat verse, and to acquaint oneself with Blake’s autobiography. Yet, he warns, none of these factors is sufficient to recognise or experience its singularity. In order for this to happen, the work must have an impact within the culture in which it is read. The literary object’s uniqueness does not transcend history, however: the features that constitute The Sick Rose as a poem with a certain richness and density at the beginning of the twenty-first century are different from those that constituted it at the beginning of the nineteenth century. This is to say that, while it remains the same poem, the grounds of its uniqueness have continued to change – in fact, only through this process of constant and endless change has it remained the same. Again, this is a feature of all semiotic identity. (67) Another (more recognised) way of putting this is to say that original literature is not only communicative but also performative; it offers not merely a message but also an experience, and the transmission of this cannot be put down to a simple notion of the writer’s intention but rather incorporates the effect of the text upon both writer and reader.

‘Carter celebrates the more subtle forms of creativity established by repetitive patterns and inversions of vernacular in ordinary dialogue.’

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Debating Creativity: Literature, Language,Theory and Practice The New Critical approach likewise questions the importance of authorial intention in textual interpretation, as well as that of the reader’s emotional response. Yet its argument is, for Attridge, overly simplistic in so far as in doing so it does not merely attempt to limit the importance of these influences, but much more radically, largely rejects the notion of social context, isolating the text from the cultural and historical background of its creation and presentation. By ignoring these social criteria for analysis, and by supporting the presumption that a text could stand on its own, New Criticism thus suggests that reading is an entirely objective project, a matter of defining and seeking out tensions inherent within the work itself. This approach correctly denies authorial intention as an adequate source for textual meaning. Yet by envisioning the text as a transcendent creation, it rather ironically fails to recognise the important ideological implications it originally set out to uncover by rejecting an intentional hermeneutics. Attridge’s argument, by contrast, suggests that while authorial intention is not wholly relevant to literary interpretation, it is nevertheless important to recognise the author as a key participant in the event of creativity, an actor in a performance whose meaning extends beyond intention to include both conscious and subconscious elements. Indeed, his role as writer makes him an origin for textual meaning, though this depends also upon the later participation of the reader. Attridge explains, “[A]n invention is not wholly to be explained as a self-generated eruption in the cultural field, but has as its site of origin a mind or group of minds” (102). It is this idea of the author as an origin for an evolving textual meaning which distinguishes artistic invention from natural beauty or singularity. We may experience a natural object – a leaf, a waterfall, a cloud – as singular and other, and its singularity and alterity may produce a reshaping of our habitual modes of apprehension in the manner that we have seen is the sign of alterity, but...we do not experience it as an invention. (102) Thus, for Attridge, creativity entails a specifically human encounter, in which the process itself of creating grants an artwork or text an ethical significance unavailable in nature. To put it another way, artistic creativity involves a manipulation of ideological tensions, where natural beauty is ideologically ambivalent. By rejecting the notion of authorial intention as an adequate source for textual meaning, while at the same time reasserting the importance of both the author and reader in creating meaning, Attridge is able to draw attention to social context as an essential hermeneutic element. “There is no question,” he writes, “of defining

the singularity of the poem by drawing around it a line that separates it from something that might be called its “context.” Context is already there in the words – in so far as they are words and not sounds or shapes – and it is already there in my response, in so far as I respond as a culturally constituted human individual and not a physiological apparatus or a sophisticated computer”(114). Yet while Attridge sees cultural context as relevant to textual understanding, he is careful to note that this does not imply (as ‘pragmatists’, like Stanley Fish and Richard Rorty, have argued) that a text is open to endlessly multiple interpretation and that consequently, the best way of handling a text is by assigning to it a particular meaning and then using the text to support this. Attridge reacts against this instrumentalist approach to textual analysis by drawing attention to the co-dependency of content and form in a work of literature, emphasising the importance of the way an idea is expressed to its meaning. Form stands as an obstacle to any simplistic reduction of a text’s meaning to its context alone. It is the combination of these elements, rather than the content alone, which allows a text to powerfully question recognised political and ethical beliefs “by momentarily dissociating them from their usual pressing context, performing the ethical decisions and the political gesture” (119-120). Correspondingly, understanding a text’s political or ethical message does not mean employing it to support whatever argument one happens to favour, but rather allowing one’s preconceived political agendas and ethical presumptions to be challenged through a recognition of their possible irrelevance to the text’s message. Language and Creativity: The Art of Common Talk begins with the claim that “linguistic creativity is not simply a property of exceptional people but an exceptional property of all people” (13). In doing so, it differs from Attridge’s analysis of creativity not only in its disciplinary focus (on linguistics), but also in its attempt to recognise the pervasiveness of creativity in everyday situations. Where Attridge builds on Kant’s notion of “exceptional originality” (36), to emphasise the rarity and uniqueness of true creative expression, Carter celebrates the more subtle forms of creativity established by repetitive patterns and inversions of vernacular in ordinary dialogue. In doing this, he challenges Chomsky’s claim that there is much more pre-patterned than creative in our everyday dialogue. Once creativity is redefined to include interrelational encounters (and especially informal discussions, in which power relations are more evenly distributed), he argues, language can be seen as continually creative, constantly developing and playing upon new patterns of repetition, alliteration and assonance. 41

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Debating Creativity: Literature, Language,Theory and Practice Carter’s analysis of creativity is also important in so far as it challenges the popular tendency in English departments to privilege artistic or literary production over other uses of language. Traditional linguistics, he admits, has been stifled by the limitations of available corpora and of what he terms “arm-chair linguistics”, non-empirically based theories on how language is used. These, he argues, have stood in the way of a more realistic encounter with everyday informal speech. His own analysis, by contrast, uses a corpus-based approach to reveal a much more dynamic use of both grammatical structures and spoken vocabulary. In this way, he claims to offer a more objectively substantiated explanation of the role of creativity in everyday speech and also to grant linguistics an often unrecognised scientific authority. Key to Carter’s analysis of spoken language is the idea that it is both referential and representational: it does not merely convey information or initiate action, but also engages in complex, collaborative and competitive forms of wordplay (6). Building on Deborah Tannen’s claim that repetition is “the central linguistic meaning-making strategy, a limitless resource for individual creativity and interpersonal involvement” (7-8), Carter argues that repetition is not merely echoing, but also a means of conversational game playing. That is, repetition across speaking turns helps not only to reinforce a point but also to infer secondary meanings by bending linguistic rules. The effect may be both poetic and purposeful. Repetitions may, for instance, develop into patterns, whose rhythm actually changes the meaning of the word or phrase repeated, or grants metaphorical significance to words originally intended to be taken literally. This in turn may help to reinforce understanding or antipathy in relationships by creating pleasure or offering a sense of belonging between speakers (109). Repetition works both to explore multiple meanings within conversation and to reinforce social ties between speakers. Carter explains, “The main creative functions seem to be in the dialogic building of a relationship of accord between ... speakers, the extensive repetition here creating what might be termed an affective convergence or commonality of viewpoint” (8). As repetition is one of the most common aspects of everyday discourse, and as it is also one of the most essential elements of creativity in spoken discourse, Carter’s argument is

intended to show, above all, that creativity itself is not limited either to geniuses, nor solely to the written word or a specifically aesthetic context, but is rather common to both written and spoken discourse and is much more frequent in occurrence and varied in form than is generally acknowledged. Pope’s Creativity: Theory, History, Practice, like Carter’s analysis, recognises just how pervasive the term ‘creativity’ has become within modern literary, linguistic, and scientific thought. Pope questions and in many cases rejects current understandings of the term, replacing them with a more etymologically precise and open-minded definition. Creativity demonstrates a strong frustration with popular “employmentoriented and economy-based” applications of creativity which in their instrumentalist use of the term restrict its function and thereby deny its playful, as well as subversive, implications (27). The same goes for ‘old-school’ understandings of creativity which stubbornly restrict its appearance to the recognised literary canon, thereby denying creative genius to new, more dynamic and culturally diverse artistic productions. Indeed Pope shuns all attempts to allocate creativity to a given few. The book constitutes an attempt to reject stereotyped conceptions of ‘Romantic’ creativity including essentially “the hyper-individualistic notion of solitary genius: the lone artist in his garret or the isolated scientist slaving away in his laboratory” (66). From this limited conception of creativity follow also the popular distinction between ‘fine’ and ‘applied’ arts (39), the associating of inspiration with the subconscious (70), the conception of the genius as mad or obsessive (76), or alternatively as divinely inspired (103). In reaction to these stereotypes Pope supports a much more dynamic view of creativity. Firstly, it may be communal as well as individual, and indeed, may be enhanced by co-operation. Dismissing the distinction between arts and crafts, it is common to both letter writing and poetry writing, picture painting and house painting (39). Far from seeing creativity as the product of madness, he supports Jameson’s argument that creativity means being able to “respond to ...conditions, biological and social, in ways that are healthful and ‘healing’ rather than harmful and destructive” (76). Likewise, he suggests that a more critical understanding of Romantic poetry and literature offers a much more dynamic view of creativity

‘Pope offers a detailed and extensive analysis of creativity’s conceptual origins, taking from this a special interest in its mythical side’

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Debating Creativity: Literature, Language,Theory and Practice than the stereotypes surrounding Romanticism generally acknowledge (235-7). In reaction to all these limited applications of the term, Pope offers a detailed and extensive analysis of creativity’s conceptual origins, taking from this a special interest in its mythical side: its appearance in the Christian and Darwinian creation stories, as well as in indigenous American, Australian and African mythology. He contrasts these narratives not so much as a way of suggesting a universal understanding of creativity but rather in order to emphasise its multidimensional nature. In this respect, one of the most intriguing sections of the book is the chapter on creativity in science. Pope offers an overview of recent changes in the philosophy of science, highlighting within this a constant fluctuation and co-mingling of two opposing views of scientific knowledge. The first sees nature, physics and scientific law as independent of language and observation, and therefore “attempts to avoid the deceptions of metaphor and ordinary language and the habits of merely received ideas (‘myths’) at all costs” (173). The second, by contrast, rejects the idea of nature as independent of human observation and correspondingly sees science not as the pursuit of external laws but rather as a means towards understanding cultural assumptions and values relative to different scientific communities. This perspective “readily embraces metaphor, ordinary language and myth as key objects of enquiry – precisely because these prove immediately accessible” (173). According to Pope, the opposition of these views as radically separate and exclusive in their understanding of scientific knowledge stands at the basis of the traditional (erroneous) distinction between the ‘pure’ natural sciences and the ‘impure’ human sciences. What is flawed in this separation, he argues, is that it fails to adequately account for the ways in which both perspectives come together to bring about changes in the sciences, both revolutionary and evolutionary. Thus, an adequate explanation of scientific change involves both an understanding of the external world and its laws and a recognition of the ways in which new theories are received and assimilated by cultural and linguistic communities. It is essential to develop more stringent guidelines for theoretical experimentation and testing. Yet at the same time, it is important to remember that “we cannot get away from the appeals and perils of

language (especially metaphor) and the threats and risks of more of less dominant ‘myths’ (paradigms, epistemes – call them what you will)” (178-9). This holds for the natural, physical sciences as well as the social sciences and arts. As he acknowledges the common requirements and dangers involved in the pursuit of knowledge, Pope calls for a re-framing of the long-lasting ‘two culture’ debate between the sciences and arts, one which seeks not so much to find a common language as to acknowledge the importance of “natural knowledge” and “creative art” to both disciplines (186). Thus, while the natural and physical sciences have a different object of focus to the humanities, this does not imply that they are any less creative in their methods. To the contrary, he believes that “it is precisely the scientists and technologists who are up there claiming to be the really creative vanguard in contemporary society, whereas the humanities people are tied – even hung-up with anxiety about the nature and function of criticism” (189). Reacting to this recent switch in focus towards creativity or objectivity between the sciences and arts, Pope ends by emphasising the importance of communication (rather than amalgamation) as a means to complicating existing paradigms of knowledge. “Perhaps the problem needs re-posing,” he writes. “Maybe we need to be more attentive and sensitive to difference: not to dream so much of a ‘common language’ (in the sense of a unitary and potentially homogeneous culture) but to look for the possibilities of exchangeable and changeable modes of communication and understanding (intensely dynamic and extensively heterogeneous)” (190). These three analyses can be seen as an attempt to establish a more democratic conception of creativity, in which the frequency and multiplicity of the term’s occurrence is seen not as a way of erasing disciplinary or cultural differences, but rather as a means of rejecting a false hierarchy between traditions. This hierarchy has been kept in place by a combination of inertia, and largely unexamined acceptance of post-Romantic ideology, confining creativity to individual, uncommon and literary genius. In refusing to abide by the restrictions of this interpretation, these works can thus be understood as a crucial step towards awareness and sensitivity between undeniably diverse practices, beliefs and values.

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News & Reports The Sound of English Ros King, Professor of English, University of Southampton reports on a one-day event held at the British Library on 26 April, 2006.

Speaking and listening have been part of the National Curriculum since its inception in 1992 but only in the last two years has any serious attempt been made to encourage teaching in this area - and then only in primary schools. One of my own most vivid memories of primary school was sitting in class in what was designated as a ‘silent reading’ session, quivering with fear as the teacher castigated us all because one or two of my friends were moving their lips as they read; that was a babyish thing to do. The students I teach now have much the same attitude – except now they quiver with fear when I first ask them to read out loud. On the principle that one should never ask someone to do something that one is not prepared to do oneself, I believe it is important to read to them –and not just in a rushed this-is-the bit-I-mean fashion, but really read. Once they have realised how written language, particularly the language of poetry, often makes so much more sense when it is heard, and even more when they have spoken it and felt it in their own mouths, they become delighted converts to the importance of sound.

Sound is not just the medium in which stories and poems were conveyed before they could be written down. Until the beginning of the last century it was probably the way in which most people (even most educated people) most frequently encountered written language, as they listened not only to plays and sermons, but also to family members reading aloud from books and newspapers. We must assume that authors knew this and wrote partly with that in mind. Sound is a fundamental aspect of literature. It is also an aspect of language that predates language. It thus forms part of both the sense and the sensuality of language and literature. Most of us are born with hearing, we are even, so neurologists have now demonstrated, born with the memory of sounds we have heard in the womb; we recognise mummy’s voice and that helps us recognise her face, because different sensory experiences are mutually reinforcing. Perhaps the most disappointing aspect of that approach to literary study which went under the name of ‘cultural materialism’ was that it failed to pay due attention to the materiality of the written language it was ostensibly describing. Close reading analysis went out of the window and as a result, students who can happily sit down with a pile of secondary reading to turn out an essay on sexuality are non-plussed when asked to describe how it is that something they are reading achieves its effects of sensuality. Although many, reaching back to conventionalised approaches to close reading that they learnt in some dim past at school will happily tell you that any succession of ‘s’ sounds in a sentence is reminiscent of a snake - whether that is relevant to the content of the piece under discussion or not. We live in a noisy world, and we therefore all have to learn to listen to distinguish between sound that is significant and sound which is not. Though it is difficult to appreciate this today, sound presupposes silence. Many of our students never experience silence. Not only does the noise of the modern world drown out the natural sounds that are stuff

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The Sound of Literature of so much poetry written before the twentieth century, but it makes it even more difficult to learn to concentrate on those sounds that are significant. And if sound is neglected in literary criticism and teaching, the silence that surrounds words, that makes rhythm identifiable and that makes sound significant, is almost never heard. Students who only do silent reading never notice silent characters in a play, for example, and never experience the emotional charge of a pause. The conference The Sound of English at the British Library in April 2006, organised by the English Subject Centre in conjunction with the British Library Sound Archive, was the first in what we hope might be a series of events to try to redress this balance. The day started with an introduction to the wealth of resources in the Sound Archive itself by Steve Cleary, Curator of Drama and Literature. This was followed by a demonstration of the Archive’s resources on regional speech, by Jonnie Robinson, Curator of English Accents and Dialects, who has recently completed an online archive of dialect recordings. Mick Short from the University of Lancaster (someone who is famous for his use of an inflatable ‘arbitrariness hammer’ on students who make those conventional statements on alliteration) ran a provocative workshop on

‘Teaching your grandmother to suck alliterative, assonantal and rhyming eggs’ in order to try to distinguish‘which soundsymbolic reds are living under the bed’. Derek Attridge from the University of York, equally provocatively, spoke about ‘how not to teach rhythm and metre’; they are, after all, two distinct things, although they are often confused. Finally the award wining performance poet and musician, Zena Edwards put all these aspects of sound and sensuality, language and literature together in a session that was part performance and part workshop. Perhaps things are changing - and not just because of the popularity of audio books and celebrity author readings at literary festivals. This year’s BBC Reith Lectures, given by the pianist and composer Daniel Barenboim, were devoted to the cognitive and social importance of learning to listen, and there is growing research interest in the soundscapes of literary works and of the cultures that produced them. Given the success of The Sound of English event, and the feedback it generated, the English Subject Centre would therefore like to run some follow-up sessions. If you have any suggestions for such events, please contact Jonathan Gibson Jonathan.Gibson@rhul.ac.uk or me r.king@soton.ac.uk.

Writing Matters Writing Matters:The Royal Literary Fund Report on Student Writing in Higher Education – examines the difficulties that many students encounter in their written work and proposes a range of measures to address these. Chapters in the report: • provide an overview of student writing in the UK; • illustrate the benefits of good writing to students, universities and society; • investigate why students need help with writing; • advance detailed proposals for writing development in HE; • present an action plan for the first year of undergraduate study; • outline employers’ concerns and the role business can play in funding writing development; • argue the case for a greater focus on writing skills throughout the education system and in teacher training. Available to download at http://www.rlf.org.uk/ fellowshipscheme/research.cfm or order a free copy from rlitfund@btconnect.com

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Teaching Medieval Romance Dr Raluca Radulescu, (Lecturer, Centre for Medieval Studies, University of Wales, Bangor) and Dr Roger Dalrymple (Senior Lecturer, Buckinghamshire Chilterns University College) report on an event held last May in Bangor and provide details of a new network and plans for online materials.

From Hollywood movies like the recent King Arthur to Monty Python and T. H. White, medieval chivalric romances show their continued appeal to the wider public. In the university classroom, a number of pedagogic issues are raised when students first encounter the original romances. These challenges led to the initiative of organising a ‘Teaching Medieval Romance’ day conference through the collaboration of Jonathan Gibson at the English Subject Centre and Raluca Radulescu, who hosted the event at the Centre for Medieval Studies, University of Wales, Bangor, in May. Drawing on personal teaching experience and consultations with fellow lecturers in other universities, especially at the ‘Romance in Medieval England’ conference held in March at York, a number of key areas were identified, ranging from ‘the unfamiliar’, ‘contextual teaching and interdisciplinary approaches’ and ‘materials/assessment/ ICT’. The resulting discussion at Bangor highlighted the importance of assessing the current state of teaching in the area of medieval romance, and the presentations given by Roger Dalrymple (BCUC), Rosamund Allen (Queen Mary), Alison Wiggins (CELL, Queen Mary), Lesley Coote (Hull) and Phillipa Semper (Birmingham) were received and discussed with great enthusiasm. Other participants, among whom Peter Field (Bangor), Maldwyn Mills (Aberystwyth), Gail Ashton (Manchester), Samantha Rayner and Chiara Luis (Bangor), and Gareth Griffith (Bristol), also raised numerous relevant issues, and proposed key initiatives, as outlined below. In the initial session Roger Dalrymple outlined a few key pedagogical challenges characteristic of the ME romances, including: definitions of the genre, the elusive status of the text, anonymity, the generic nature of the plot material, generic orientation of much of the secondary literature, anonymity of many of the texts, difficulties of language and challenges of introducing context.

Texts and editions The starting point of the (extended) discussion was the availability of texts and preference in choosing particular editions. Delegates discussed how issues of textual variation loomed large in study of the romances. Students might often encounter romances in parallel text editions; individual editions vary greatly in the amount of guidance provided in terms of glossaries, textual notes etc.

There was evaluation and comparison of editions commonly used in teaching the romances. Alison Wiggins presented a number of issues involved in producing a student-friendly edition, while making reference to her recently published edition of the Stanzaic Guy of Warwick for the TEAMS series.This series and others were discussed, alongside the need to make online editions more widely available in a format suited to student needs (including accessibility). Ros Allen introduced the topic of in-house editions of romances which university lecturers produce for their students, in the absence of enough available copies of several texts. It was widely agreed that teachers from various universities could cooperate in exchanging ideas (and such editions, perhaps) in order to improve student access to medieval romance texts.

Plot motifs There was some discussion of how ME romance can present particular challenges in requiring students to gain a rapid grasp of formulaic diction and traditional plot motifs. Do constraints of time and assessment mean that students can reasonably be expected to gain only limited familiarity with the sources and analogues of their core texts? Delegates discussed the value of using plot summaries, anthologies of Middle English writing, and short excerpts in the teaching of core texts. Some consensus was reached on the matter of providing students at first and second year level with reasonable amounts of reading material without playing down the importance of acquiring the period-specific skills of analysis and interpretation. In some universities emphasis is placed on understanding the plot, and Gail Ashton (Manchester) presented the advantages of teaching in translation, a point that was further discussed in relation to language barriers.

Language There was much discussion of the challenges of teaching the romances in the original Middle English. Rosamund Allen presented some of the students’ responses to the barrier of language and the necessity to adapt to their various levels of ability. Arguments were made for teaching the texts in translation in year one; others felt that schooling in the nuances of the original language was best begun as early as possible though it was widely acknowledged that difficulties of language and the general

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Teaching Medieval Romance alterity of ME literature can be offputting for students when lecturers are making ‘pitches’ for their courses. There was consensus around the value of encouraging students to read original texts aloud and to treat the texts as ‘scripts for performance’. The value of electronic media for language learning was also discussed (online concordances, use of Virtual Learning Environments).

Context The value of interdisciplinary and contextual approaches to romance was discussed at length. Delegates discussed instances where contextual information from history, art and architecture, had greatly enhanced undergraduate study of the texts. It was agreed that teaching the texts through manuscript culture was one particularly effective technique and the increasing availability of electronic and online manuscript resources was welcomed in this regard. Examples were given of current successful practice in incorporating the manuscript element in undergraduate teaching at Bangor, and Raluca Radulescu made a further point about the need to emphasise the appeal of the unfamiliar in the teaching of medieval literature, by contrast with some other practices, which favour the removal of linguistic and conceptual barriers in an effort to ‘sell’ the period to students. Gail Ashton suggested that an electronic package of contextual resources (images, sound clips, MS images, text excerpts, plot summaries) would prove very helpful as a learning and teaching resource. At Jonathan Gibson’s recommendation, it was agreed that a small working party will be formed to explore this possibility further.

Assessment innovations There was wide-ranging discussion of how far assessment innovations might benefit the undergraduate study of romance. A ‘patchwork text’ model of assessment could encourage students to link romances with other forms of narrative (fairy tales, science fiction, the Western film) and to identify themes of particular interest. Small-scale applications of problem-based learning could help students to gain a purchase on the wider context of romance (for example, they might extrapolate themes, motifs or key generic characteristics from a collection of plot summaries; they might explore the question of audience and context by looking at a selection of facsimiles of MS miscellanies in which romances appear). Lesley Coote’s presentation demonstrated how adaptation of medieval texts into different media can form an excellent and highly engaging form of assessment for learning. Phillipa Semper pointed out the implications of internet use and the involvement of the lecturer in vetting sources. Further discussion took

place on the usefulness and limitations of internet sources, plagiarism software and the need for collaboration on these issues among institutions. Following the success of the‘Teaching Medieval Romance’ conference, and in the light of previous discussions with the English Subject Centre team, Raluca Radulescu proposed a meeting of the participants at a later date. The meeting took place in London on 4 July 2006 and was hosted by the English Subject Centre. The purpose was to take the issues identified in the conference further, by putting together a ‘Medieval Romance network’, whose primary purpose would be to enable both teachers and students of medieval romance to use texts and context tools in a more efficient way. Furthermore a specific objective was set out, as already sketched in discussions with the English Subject Centre: creating an online learning and teaching resource to support the study of Middle English romance. After a wide-ranging discussion, the meeting identified five key components of the online resource they would like to see developed.

I Making Primary Texts Available online The group hoped to make a large number of primary texts available in reliably edited and glossed online versions.This database of primary texts might have to start life in a PDF or Word format with the longer-term aspiration being that these might be upgraded into searchable html text at a later date. It was agreed that Raluca Radulescu will coordinate the compilation of an extensive list of primary texts, with Alison Wiggins, Rosamund Allen and others kindly offering to help out and supply own editions of romances.

II Multimedia Elements a) Sound Recordings of Illustrative Sections of Text The group considered it would enhance students’ study of the romances if short sections of text were available as sound-clips. It was suggested that the first stanza or ten lines of each text be recorded plus at least one key scene from each romance.The sound clip could be flagged at the appropriate point in the e-text of the romance. Roger Dalrymple and Alison Wiggins would coordinate this aspect, following further discussions with members of the team.

b) Clips Illuminating Context There was also discussion of whether the network might include video materials available for online replay or podcast. One suggestion involved the filming and posting 47

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Teaching Medieval Romance of short video-clips of localities featured in the romances (eg. Wallingford Castle, Tower of London, Warwick Castle, Guyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Cliff, Grimsby!) complete with commentary on context or (as with the audio clips) expert readings from the original text. One format for these clips might involve a head-and-shoulders shot of the expert reader (perhaps the editor of the text) reading a section of the romance against a relevant backdrop - Glastonbury, Stonehenge, Tintagel etc. Short and attention-grabbing clips were thought to be a good starting-point though members of the meeting were also interested longer-term in the posting of lectures or conference addresses. English Subject Centre resources would be available for the initial videoing of the clips. Conferences would provide good opportunities for gathering a number of these clips from the assembled authorities. (The Arthurian Society conference generally includes excursions to relevant sites).

III Database of Synopses The group felt that the resources should include short synopses for as much of the canon of ME romance as possible. Ideally, students would be able to search the synopsis database to gauge the prevalence of particular story-patterns, motifs and topoi. Roger Dalrymple offered to build up and edit this database, with some initial help (in contacting possible contributors) from Raluca Radulescu.

IV Commentary on Romance Themes The resource might helpfully include some contextual material on prevalent romance themes.This could be keyed to the list of romances and the online versions of the texts. Raluca Radulescu agreed to coordinate the compilation of a list of relevant themes, with a view to sending out a spreadsheet to the Teaching Medieval Romance list (and perhaps beyond to include members of the Romance in Medieval England list) with help from Samantha Rayner. Some themes have already been proposed and include popular romance, orality, magic, family, exile and return, and gender. Philippa Semper would be interested in contributing material on relations between medieval romance and fantasy in modern literature.

V Reports on Teaching, Learning and Assessment Innovations It was felt that the web resource should also include material dedicated to teaching resources and to reports on innovations in teaching, learning and assessment. These reports might be posted either on the main site or in the Case-Studies section of the English Subject Centre site (with a link to the Romance Network website). The kinds of assessment innovation presented by Lesley Coote at the Teaching Medieval Romance Conference might be reported on here and perhaps illustrative materials included.

Keep up to date with the Subject Centre As well as this free twice-yearly Newsletter, the English Subject Centre now also produces a regular eBulletin containing brief updates on our activities. This new publication replaces the old paper-based Bulletin. If you would like to receive a copy, please join our main electronic mailing list at http://www. english.heacademy.ac.uk/communicate/contact/mailinglist. php.You can use the same link to join our print mailing list, which is used to distribute the Newsletter and to circulate information about events. Details of other Subject Centre publications can be found at http://www.english.heacademy.ac.uk/explore/publications/ index.php. We now also have a webpage designed to keep you up to date with our work in progress (http://www.english.heacademy. ac.uk/explore/progress/index.php).

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Mini-Project Digest The Subject Centre delivers much of its programme through a series of projects, many of which involve external collaboration or sources of funding.The details of past and on-going projects can be found on the projects homepage of our website, along with information on various funding opportunities at http://www.english.heacademy. ac.uk/explore/projects/index.php We are pleased to briefly outline below the eight ‘mini-projects’ which are receiving English Subject Centre funding in 2006-7:

“Responsive Critical Understanding”: Extending the possibilities in the relationship between English and Creative Writing Project Leader: Prof. Graeme Harper, University of Wales, Bangor. Project partners: Prof. Jon Cook, University of East Anglia, Prof. Rob Pope, Oxford Brookes University, Dr Samantha Rayner, University of Wales, Bangor, Ms Pippa Lamberti MSc, University of Portsmouth. The similarities and differences in critical understanding involved in the study (teaching and learning) of English Literature and the practice and study (teaching and learning) of Creative Writing are not yet fully researched or, indeed, understood. While there is a general sense of how one area informs the other there is no resource base on which to draw to look at key issues such as: • In what ways do the theoretical positions adopted in the study of English inform or challenge notions founded in the practice and study of Creative Writing? • If “criticism” is seen to be associated with the subject of English and “practice” with the subject of Creative Writing what do we mean by these terms and what are their philosophic and pragmatic dimensions? • Where the subjects of English and Creative Writing are in close proximity (as often they are in English Departments) are there pedagogic developments that occur through “natural interaction” and/or “orchestration” and, if so, are they distinctive enough to be discussed as a group of practices/ideals/intentions; • In what ways does the association of English and Creative Writing produce what might be called “responsive critical understanding” (ie. critical understanding that responds to the needs of the “critic” [ie. those applying critical consideration], in terms of explanation, an approach to truth, personal need or public requirement, and how does this relate to the connections between reader and writer?

The project will explore “responsiveness”, create a map of current understanding/s and a resource base of potential future associations, critical-creative approaches, modes of relationship, notes on difference and similarity, and a close examination of the nodes and modes of contact.

Learning on the Language-Literature Border: Ways of integrating language and literature within final year modules Project Leader: Dr Helen Day, University of Central Lancashire . The primary purpose of this project will be an examination of a variety of methods for integrating language and literature within final year modules both within the core module EG3301: Language and Literature Seminar at the University of Central Lancashire and at other institutions. Building on the work already undertaken by the English Subject Centre (Teaching on the Language-Literature border at University of Sheffield) and lecturers at other institutions (i.e. Nigel Fabb, ‘Linguistics in a department of English Literature, English Subject Centre Newsletter Issue 8, June 2005) a key outcome of this project will be a one-day English Subject Centre event ‘Learning on the Language-Literature border’ where case studies and workshop activities will be disseminated and discussed. Central to this event will be an emphasis on the question ‘How can assessment and related classroom activities enable students to explore the interface between these two traditionally divided subjects within the context of their own studies?’

Implications and Diasporas: English Studies in Scotland’s higher education institutions Project Leader: Marion Wynne-Davies, University of Dundee. Project partner: Gail Low, University of Dundee. The Implications and Diasporas project engages with immigrant, non-white and minority groups who are studying English at Scottish universities, in order to uncover and assess their concerns and experiences. A series of discussions, media-related projects and workshops, together with the subsequent analysis of these activities, follows key educational and subject-based criteria, such as experience of pre-admissions, induction, teaching methodologies and curriculum content. We regard it as essential that the students involved retain ownership of their contribution, 49

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Mini-Project Digest so that they retain their roles as independent subjects within the system, rather than becoming objects for analysis by academics. As such we intend to use film-making by the students themselves in order to retain creative subjectivity, while at the same time producing material for reflective analysis. Therefore, the research and data collected enables teachers of English in the UK to perceive, pre-empt and try to resolve tensions produced by racial and religious difference. Finally, it will, hopefully, enrich English studies through a recognition and acceptance of diversity and through a readiness to re-work and so revitalise English as a subject taught in higher education.

English and Creative Writing: Coherence, progression and fitness for purpose – student perspectives Project Leader: Dr Steve May, School of English and Creative Studies, Bath Spa University. We all devise and deliver our courses with the best of intentions. However, it is only our students who experience the totality of our efforts. This project deals specifically with courses involving English and Creative Writing. It records students’ understanding of and responses to their courses as a whole, and addresses issues of coherence, progression and fitness for purpose from the point of view of those who have to make sense of the provision we offer.

Word Webs: Exploring vocabulary Project Leader: Prof. Christian Kay, University of Glasgow. Project partners: Jean Anderson, University of Glasgow, Dr John Corbett, University of Glasgow. The project aims to demonstrate how a knowledge of vocabulary, and of the ways words develop and interrelate, can illuminate the study of texts and the cultures in which they are embedded. Through the use of electronic resources, we will explore two major linguistic areas of relevance to students of English Language and Literature: (1) The growth of the English vocabulary, and (2) The vocabulary of literature. These will be followed by two case studies: (3) Shakespeare’s vocabulary, and (4) The vocabulary of gender. Our main source material will be the Glasgow Historical Thesaurus of English (HT), but reference will also be made to online text databases and corpora, such as the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) and the Scottish Corpus of Texts and Speech (SCOTS). The project will draw as appropriate on techniques developed in Stylistics and Discourse Analysis, sub-branches of linguistics which provide a meeting ground for language and literature. It will be presented as an interactive

web-site designed to engage student interest through content, tasks and suggestions for project work.

VRLM – Virtual Reality Literary Magazine Project Leader: Jennifer M Young, University of Hertfordshire. Project partner: Steve Bennett, University of Hertfordshire. The aim of the project is to create an online Virtual Reality literary magazine that will feature creative work by UK university students. The University has created its own Virtual Reality (VR) environment for audio visual presentations called SmirkVR which turns the slides of a presentation into the walls of a virtual auditorium. The audio narration of that slide becomes audible as your virtual character nears that wall. In this literary magazine, those auditoria will host students’ creative work, and each edition of the magazine will be a virtual city of such work.Visitors to the site will enter as an avatar – a virtual character where they choose their gender, appearance and name, which gives them a discernable point of view as they move around the literary city. While in the site, visitors will have the capacity to interact with other visitors in real time, as well as leaving permanent comments in the site. These permanent comments can take the form of straight text or hyperlinks. The magazine’s editorial and production boards will be staffed by students and supervised by university staff members. The magazine will give students from all UK universities opportunities to publish their creative writing, photography and art, while the experience of editorial and production work will benefit students’ learning experiences. The project will allow visitors to make permanent comments on the work but also importantly will allow staff to monitor such comments regularly to ensure that the content is appropriate to a university publication.

The Production of University English Project Leader: Professor Ken Jones, Keele University. Project partners: Professor David Amigoni Keele University, Dr Susan Bruce, Keele University, Dr Monica McLean, University of Nottingham We aim to contribute to teaching expertise and to knowledge about the social construction of English by investigating the ways in which the subject is produced in day-to-day teaching situations in diverse types of university. Our particular focus is on the work of the ‘teacher’. We will make use of contemporary theories of rhetoric, in seeking to explain the construction of ‘English-as-taught’ in terms of the relations between

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Mini-Project Digest rhetors (university teachers, who draw from various kinds of knowledge-based and pedagogic repertoires), audience (students, and the cultural and intellectual resources they draw from) and purposes and procedures, defined, for example, by quality assurance bodies and institutional contexts. Working ‘from the ground up’, the project aims to identify both the common characteristics of the subject and its institutionally influenced differences. To achieve this, we will: • video tutorials and seminars, • analyse them in terms of a multi-modal approach, attentive both to speech and writing, and also to nonverbal modes of communication, • share our understandings both with the academics whose work we explore and with the wider ‘English’ community.

Creative Assessment in the English Literature degree: Towards criteria for assessment Project Leader: Dr Lesley Coote, University of Hull. Project partner: Dr Kevin Burden, University of Hull. Building on work already undertaken by students and staff at the University of Hull, the project will investigate creative and innovative approaches to the support and assessment of student learning, by the use of the visual image. This will include the authoring (by tutors and learners) of digital media in both formative and summative roles. Particular attention will be paid to the summative use of the visual image, still and moving, in assessment both of subject knowledge and of transferable/employability skills. Central to the project will be the development of assessment criteria which will enable quantitative and qualitative assessment of these within the honours degree curriculum in English Literature, whilst retaining the character of the discipline and the rigour of the appropriate descriptors for the subject at Levels Four, Five and Six.

WIN £10! Uncertain about how to begin your seminar tomorrow? Or perhaps you have a fresh idea for teaching Gwendolyn Brooks’ poetry? Either way T3 is for you. Organised by text and topic, T3 is our growing web-based resource of pithy teaching ideas especially designed for hard-pressed English lecturers. T3 is interactive, so we invite (and eagerly await) your contributions – on whatever texts and topics you prefer. For a limited period only we are offering a £10 book token for every contribution (to a maximum of £50 per applicant). You may either: • submit a completely new text or topic (with at least one named theme and activity) by downloading the word template • or you may wish to add a new theme and activity or just another activity to an existing topic or text by using the links on the relevant page. We look forward to receiving your ideas! More details on the T3 homepage www.english.heacademy.ac.uk/explore/resources/t3/

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Grants to Enhance Career Services for English Students Jane Gawthrope, English Subject Centre The English Subject Centre is continuing to work with university Careers Services in order to help students think more effectively about the many career choices open to them. In summer 2006 we organised a networking event for Careers Advisers on working with humanities students. This created an opportunity for Careers Advisers to exchange ideas and experiences about assisting this group of students whose aspirations are often not clearly defined or as open as they might be. Following on from this event, we offered small grants of ÂŁ750 to Careers Services to help them enhance their services to English students and were inundated with twenty-seven (very good) applications. Obviously we were unable to fund them all, but the following ten applications were successful and we look forward to seeing how these initiatives develop in the 2006/07 academic year. For further information contact Jane Gawthrope jane.gawthrope@rhul.ac.uk

Institution

Contact

Brief Description of Project

University of Birmingham

Melanie Billingham

An alumni event for all English undergraduates, featuring speakers from a range of occupational areas

Brunel University

Stephanie Darking

An e-booklet produced by and for English students and graduates on the theme of aspirations and expectations for life after university

University of Edinburgh

Janet Forsyth

Increasing the engagement of first year English Literature students through a seminar, supporting literature and web-pages

University of Gloucestershire

Nicki Castello and Jane Turner

Development of a careers area on the English departmentâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s website

University of Hertfordshire

Catrin Davies

Baseline survey of the careers awareness and aspirations of level 2 and 3 English students, followed by a workshop

University of Liverpool

Diane Appleton

Student production of a podcast (and supporting guide) on commercial awareness for English students, including interviews with a range of employers

Graduate Prospects

John Bellerby

Series of chatrooms for English students to develop employability, improve interview performance and increase awareness of the options available.

University of Northampton

Andrea Duncan

A pack of English-specific PDP materials for use in/alongside curriculum activity to promote awareness of the relevance of English skills to workplace contexts

University of Reading

Claire Jones

A careers fair in conjunction with the alumni department organised by English students

University of Sheffield

Hilary Whorrall

A careers workshop involving alumni presentations, small group work, graduate destinations presentation and introduction to online career-planning pack

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IT Works! Brett Lucas (English Subject Centre) casts his eye over recent developments in the world of e-learning.

Accessibility Essentials Series Techdis have two new informative publications/websites: Making Electronic Documents More Readable This guide has been designed to give practical step-by-step information to enable anyone reading material to amend its look and feel into a style which suits them. These hints and tips will not only be of great use to people who read documents on-screen, but also to those presenting material (for example, via a data projector) in different lighting conditions, or those who work in differing levels of light (for example, while working on a train). http://tinyurl.com/frkb6

Writing Accessible Electronic Documents with Microsoft® Word This guide outlines the techniques people need to ensure the writing of accessible electronic information using Microsoft® Word. When producing electronic information the biggest accessibility gain is ensuring the user can amend the look and feel in a way which suits them. However, there are a number of font and structure techniques which can increase the readability for a larger number of people. http://tinyurl.com/ksznm

Hard copies for your staffroom are available by contacting the Techdis team.

JISC Digitisation programme Keep your eyes peeled to the web for the launch of a new set of digital resources developed for Higher and Further Education. All materials will be freely available for use in your online or face-toface courses and will be available by Christmas. Archival Sound Recordings Service This project will deliver a slice of the world’s rich audio heritage to your fingertips with up to 12,000 segmented encodings totalling 3,900 hours of sound recordings from distinct and unique collections including the ‘Sony Radio awards’ – Cutting edge radio dramas from the 80s and 90s and the ‘African Writers Club’. The resource will be available from September 2006. Visit the project website: http://tinyurl.co.uk/b0oq

18th Century British Parliamentary Papers This project will deliver up to 945,000 pages from all surviving printed House of Commons and House of Lords Papers, Bills, Journals and Reports for the period. The resource will be available from January 2007. Visit the project website: http://www.bopcris.ac.uk/18c/ 19th-Century British Newspapers at the British Library Read all about Britain and the world from the Industrial Revolution to the Boxer Rebellion. This project will deliver up to 2 million pages, totalling approximately 10 billion words of British newspapers from 1800–1900. The resource will be available from September 2006. Visit the project website: http://tinyurl.co.uk/w25n Newsfilm Online 3,000 hours of television news and cinema newsreels, taken from the huge collection of the ITN/Reuters archive, is to be made available online in high quality format for teaching, learning and research. The news film will be delivered in downloadable form. The beta site is already live with a number of test recordings to view. http://tinyurl.co.uk/n9qq

New Resources Old English literature: A hypertext coursepack Developed as part of an English Subject Centre project this simple-to-use coursepack for Old English brings together some of the main ‘set texts’ in Old English used by UK universities. Each text has a running gloss with links to further notes, translations, images, explanatory articles, reading lists and discussion forums. http://www .english.ox.ac.uk/coursepack/ Web-PA Web-based peer assessment system If you are exploring new forms of assessing face-to-face or online group work and want to save mountains of paper and potentially time and hassle too have a look at Web-PA.

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IT Works! It is an online peer assessment tool developed by the Engineering CETL which provides an easy to use method for anonymous peer moderated marking of group work. It is currently being trialed in-house and could be a worthwhile addition to your software portfolio. Contact the team for a demo. http://tinyurl.com/mrdsl and Take a tour of the staff side of web-pa: http://eec.lboro.ac.uk/webpatour/

New Tools Make long URLs shorter! Many of you will be familiar with this free utility that generates a short URL in place of those ridiculously long ones that break in email messages and distort your word docs! http://tinyurl.co.uk

ProfCast Now this is turbo-charged podcasting! ProfCast is for Mac users once more and allows you to integrate PowerPoint presentations, bookmarks, weblinks, screen captures all wrapped up with your amazing lecture for delivery to an MP3 player or Quicktime over the web. http://www.profcast.com/public/index.php

Revealicious Anyone who uses the popular bookmarking site Del.icio.us http://del.icio.us/ will enjoy this set of creative visualisation tools which enable you to see your information in new and often stimulating ways. http://www.ivy.fr/revealicious/

Presence in the online environment! Wimba Voice tools This is a set of tools that allow you to create online listening and speaking environments (voiceboards – the vocal discussion forum), voice emails, live voice chat and you can embed voice announcements. Seamless integration with WebCT, Blackboard, Moodle etc. Expensive to purchase but I’ve heard good things about this set of tools. http://www.horizonwimba.com/products/ voicetools/ Campfire Campfire is a free web-based group chat tool that lets you set up password-protected chat rooms very quickly. The beauty of the tool is that you can save and archive the chat, share files and preview images etc all from outside your VLE! http://www.campfirenow.com/

New Publications • William Rice, Moodle e-learning course development (PACKT Publishing, 2006 – ISBN: 1904811299) http://moodlebook.packtpub.com/ • David McConnell, E-learning Groups and Communities (OU Press, 2006 – ISBN: 0335212808) • Shirley Bach, Phillip Haynes and Jennifer Lewis Smith, Online Learning and Teaching in Higher Education (OU Press, 2006 – ISBN: 0335218296)(Published 01/12/06)

Garageband 3 Creating Podcasts is definitely a hot topic at the moment and I have previously mentioned the free program Audacity (http://audacity.sourceforge.net/)which allows you to create and edit sound files easily. Mac users should also take a look at Garageband 3 which is a step up in functionality allowing embedded tracks as well as images to provide visual clues to a change in content. http://www.apple.com/ilife/garageband/

• Where possible I try to recommend software that is open-source, free-of-charge, copyright-cleared, shareware or freeware • All URLs on this page were last accessed in September 2006 • You can access all the links on this page directly in the online version of the newsletter

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The English Subject Centre Report Series Our Report Series is now well-established. Copies of all reports are available on our website at www.english.heacademy.ac.uk/resources/general/publications/reports and most are circulated in paper form to English Departments in the UK. Further copies are available on request, subject to availability. Send your request to: esc@rhul.ac.uk.

Published Reports: Report no. 1

Admission Trends in Undergraduate English: statistics and attitudes, Sadie Williams, April 2002, ISBN 0902194437

Report no. 2

The English Degree and Graduate Careers, John Brennan and Ruth Williams, January 2003, ISBN 0902194631

Report no. 3

Postgraduate Training in Research Methods: Current Practice and Future Needs in English, Sadie Williams, February 2003, ISBN 0902194682

Report no. 4

Access and Widening Participation: A Good Practice Guide, Siobhรกn Holland, February 2003, ISBN 0902194739

Report no. 5

English and IT, Michael Hanrahan, December 2002

Report no. 6

Creative Writing: A Good Practice Guide, Siobhรกn Holland, February 2003, ISBN 090219478X

Report no. 7

External Examining in English, Philip Martin, April 2003, ISBN 0902194933

Report no. 8

Survey of the English Curriculum and teaching in UK Higher Education, Halcrow Group, Philip Martin and Jane Gawthrope, October 2003, ISBN 0902194291

Report no. 9

Part-time Teaching: A Good Practice Guide, Siobhรกn Holland, August 2004, ISBN 0902194291

Report no. 10

Four Perspectives on Transition: English Literature from Sixth Form to University, Andrew Green, February 2005, ISBN 090219498 4

Report no. 11

Living Writers in the Curriculum: A Good Practice Guide, Vicki Bertram & Andrew Maunder, March 2005, ISBN 090219414 3

Report no. 12

English at A Level: A Guide for Lecturers in Higher Education, Barbara Bleiman and Lucy Webster, August 2006, ISBN 1-905846-03-7

Report no. 13

Teaching Shakespeare: A Survey of the Undergraduate Level in Higher Education, Neill Thew, September 2006, ISBN 1-905846-04-5

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English Subject Centre CETL Liaison Officer: Dr Christie Carson Administrator: Jackie Fernandes Manager: Jane Gawthrope Academic Co-ordinator: Dr Jonathan Gibson Academic Co-ordinator: Dr Nicole King Director: Professor Ben Knights Website and Systems Development Assistant: Payman Labaff Website Developer & Learning Technologist: Brett Lucas Administrative Assistant: Rebecca Price

The English Subject Centre, Royal Holloway, University of London, Egham TW20 0EX T• 01784 443221 F• 01784 470684 esc@rhul.ac.uk

ESC Newsletter 11.indd 57

www.english.heacademy.ac.uk

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The English Subject Centre Newsletter is produced twice a year and distributed widely through all institutions teaching English in Higher Education. The newsletter’s aims are: • to provide information about resources, developments and innovations in teaching • to provide a discursive or reflective forum for teaching and learning issues • to evaluate existing and new teaching materials, textbooks and IT packages We welcome contributions. Articles range from 300–3000 words in length.

Editor: Nicole King nicole.king@rhul.ac.uk

The English Subject Centre Royal Holloway, University of London Egham TW20 0EX T• 01784 443221 F• 01784 470684 esc@rhul.ac.uk

ESC Newsletter 11.indd 58

www.english.heacademy.ac.uk

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