The first English Subject Centre study day was held at Royal Holloway on December 2nd 2000. The event focused on what happens in seminars. Seminars in some form remain central to the study of English at undergraduate level. However, despite the increasing assessment of teaching the seminar remains a private area of experience. Delegates took the opportunity to discuss with colleagues from other institutions the different ways in which the seminar fits into student learning and teaching practice.
Robert Eaglestone, from Royal Holloway’s English department, provided a phenomenological account of the seminar and spoke to the delegates about the difference between what we feel seminars should do and what we feel they actually do. The discussion moved from real seminars to virtual seminars in a workshop, presented by Siobhán Holland, that introduced delegates to ‘virtual’ seminar materials developed at Staffordshire University to supplement ‘real’ seminars for level one students. After lunch, Tory Young from Anglia Polytechnic University, introduced materials developed at APU to raise student awareness of the purpose of seminars and the roles and responsibilities of students in them (Tory discusses these materials elsewhere in this newsletter). She also generated a discussion which gave all of the delegates the opportunity to discuss perceptions, and uses, of the seminar in their own institutions.
It emerged that different ideas about the seminar were embedded in their administration in different departments. In some, attendance at seminars remains entirely voluntary and this policy reflects a conception of student learning which takes place predominantly through independent study. The seminar is not being signposted as the most important arena for learning. Elsewhere, ‘three strikes and you’re out’ policies signal the seminar as a compulsory element of university education and as absolutely central to student learning. At Anglia Polytechnic University 10% of each module at every level is awarded for participation in seminar discussions, so that the discursive function of seminars is privileged. Clearly the broader administrative structure of a degree programme, structured to some extent by pedagogical concerns, sends out messages to students about the role and value of seminars in an English programme.
Before the final discussion, Nick Otty led a workshop which drew on methods developed by DUET (Development of University English Teaching). The workshop encouraged us to reflect on discussions which had developed during the day. It also drew attention to the ways in which the discussion sessions had returned again and again to the issue of seminars as they related to students' acquisition of skills. This emphasis no doubt reflects the increasing pressure on academics to justify student learning in terms of skills. More hopefully, the event as a whole suggested that English lecturers wanted to put stress on skills that were subject-specific and not simply generic. The attempt to identify these subject-specific skills, and an interest in focusing on the specific issues involved in teaching texts, will form a part of future Subject Centre events on the seminar.
Newsletter Issue 1 - May 2001
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