Work in Progress home page (last updated 15th December 2009)
Overview
There are many sources for the ideas the Subject Centre pursues. These include ideas emerging from the Subject Community (often via the Advisory Board or CCUE), projects unrolling from the Higher Education Academy, not to mention ideas we have generated ourselves. We are constantly responding to change within the curricula and methods of our subject and within UK Higher Education as a whole. Given how rapidly ideas develop and circumstances move, this section of the website gives a brief overview of ‘work in progress’: ideas and activities that are in the process of being realised, but which are not yet the subject of a specific event or publication. We also hope that this will help our community to appreciate the breadth of our activity – and better still to identify ways in which they might join in.
Our current ‘work in progress’ includes:
- Focus Groups on the experience of studying English
- Consutation on external examining
- Curriculum and Teaching Survey 2009
- HumBox - providing learning resources online
- Designing, moderating and assessing online discussion
- Teaching the New English
- Guide to work-related learning in English
Focus Groups on the Experience of Studying English
In the late spring of 2009 the consultant John Hodgson ran a series of focus groups of undergraduate English students in order to explore the student experience of the discipline. The purpose was NOT to gather information about individual courses but to enrich both the Subject Centre's and the discipline community's understanding of how students experience English programmes. John is writing up his report over the autumn, and it will be available early in 2010. For further information contact Jane Gawthrope.
Consultation on External Examining
In response to the current high level of interest in external examining across the sector, in February the English Subject Centre is organising a focus group on this topic. The focus group will help to collate the discipline's views on and priorities for the external examining system.
Curriculum and Teaching Survey 2009
The English Subject Centre ran a survey of the curriculum and teaching in English Literature, Language and Creative Writing in the spring of 2009. Forty percent of English departments completed a questionnaire and the report of the survey (to be published in January 2010) will provide information about what subjects are taught, how they are taught and perceptions of the key issues in learning and teaching.
HumBox - providing humanities learning resources online
A consortium of 4 Humanities Subject Centres has received funding for a significant new initiative to provide Open Educational Resources to the Humanities community. The HumBox project aims to publish a bank of good quality humanities resources online for free download and sharing, and in doing so, to create a community of Humanities specialists who are willing to share their teaching materials and collaborate with others to peer review and enhance existing resources. The resources published as part of our project will be placed in the HumBox, an innovative new online storage area for teaching and learning materials. More details on the project webpage.
Designing, moderating and assessing online discussion activities
The English Subject Centre is working with a number of lecturers at the University of Wolverhampton led by Rosie Miles to write a guide to designing, moderating and assessing online discussion activities. The guide will be published in spring 2010.
Teaching the New English
This is a prestigious series of edited volumes produced through collaboration between the publishers Palgrave and the Subject Centre. The object of the series is to promote dialogue between research scholarship and the practices and processes of the classroom. The first six volumes (Teaching Children's Fiction, Teaching the Gothic, Teaching Chaucer and Teaching, Technology, Textuality, Teaching Shakespeare and Early Modern Dramatists, Teaching Holocaust Literature and Film) have been published with a further half dozen titles in the pipeline. Palgrave is enthusiastic about the series, which we hope will contribute to the lively interchange between research and teaching. If you would like to propose a volume, please contact the Subject Centre.
More information on the New English Page >>
