Over the past year my post has caused me to meet and work with a wide range of colleagues in English who are addressing the issues surrounding the impact of digital technology in the curriculum. During my secondment in the English Subject Centre from the Drama Department at Royal Holloway I have been working to understand both the concerns of the discipline and the hurdles which stand in the way of change for many colleagues. I am now nearing completion of a large digital project which I hope will open up discussion of some of these issues. My background in Drama has perhaps defined, to a large extent, the approach I have taken in that the outcomes I will describe are collaborative, exploratory and practice-based. Working with colleagues in English has, however, forced me to consider a wider range of theoretical issues than I had at first anticipated.
The task defined
While a great deal has been done in the English Subject Centre to create a context for teaching, including a number of case studies, I was presented with the task of working towards creating the first teaching resources that might be both used and discussed by the community. In response to this significant challenge I have taken a three–pronged approach which I hope will not only provide teaching materials and examples of possible ways of working, it will also put in place a structure that will facilitate further development work in this area by the English Subject Centre.
‘Digital Resources for Teaching and Discussion’ is a new area of the website which will help to answer questions but also instigate discussion about the potential use of digital resources for the teaching of English (the website can be found at http://www.english.ltsn.ac.uk/designshake/index.htm). It is formed of three sections each of which assume different levels of expertise and levels of commitment to a change in the curriculum. The first section to be completed, then, has been created assuming a collaborative relationship between the English Subject Centre and individual academics working towards creating materials for a particular course in their own departments. The second section, which has just been put online, involves a different level of English Subject Centre involvement in that we have acted as the observers and documenters of a specific programme through the creation of a digital case study. The third section, which is still under construction, will simply present examples and guidance online, more in line with the traditional publications the English Subject Centre has produced in the past. In developing this threepronged approach I hope to point out the various models that are possible for colleagues both in terms of form and content of digital resources but also in terms of the way in which individual academics and departments can interact with the English Subject Centre.
The context
My approach has been to try to address the wide range of concerns across the discipline from a generic point of view, while remaining true to my own subject area, contemporary Shakespearean production. While working as Director of the Centre of Multimedia Performance History in the Department of Drama and Theatre at Royal Holloway I was responsible for the development of two large digital research projects in this area. The first, The Cambridge King Lear CD-ROM: Text and Performance Archive, which I co-edited with Professor Jacky Bratton, aims to combine the concerns of textual studies and performance studies. The Lear CD attempts to give general access to textual and performance materials which have formerly been available only to private scholars working in restricted reading rooms which are geographically spread across North America, Australia and the United Kingdom. By, on the one hand, drawing together the primary materials of concern for two related, but largely unconnected disciplines, and on the other hand, providing access to those materials for a wider range of people through digital technology, an opportunity for new kinds of teaching and research to develop was created. This project also introduced a new way of displaying information about parallel texts by creating a colour-coded finder or enfolded text.
The second project for which I acted as Principal Investigator, by contrast, developed a body of information to facilitate a visual approach to the study of Shakespeare in performance which is presented in a flexible way on the web. The aim of this second project, Designing Shakespeare: An Audio-visual Archive 1960-2000, has been to create and collect performancebased materials which have not formerly been available and which are focused on the temporal and spatial aspects of theatre production. The archive is made up of four databases that include: credits and review extracts for all productions of Shakespeare in London and Stratford from 1960-2000; pictures of these productions in performance; interviews with designers and 3D models of the theatre spaces where Shakespeare is most often performed. This collection of four databases is housed by the Performing Arts Data Service at the University of Glasgow and is freely accessible on the web (http://www.pads.ahds.ac.uk click on ‘browse’ and then ‘Theatre Resources’).
Through both of these projects it has been my aim to raise questions about the use of new technology for research in this field. However, it has also been my aim to develop new kinds of materials to facilitate new approaches to teaching. One of my objectives in joining the English Subject Centre was to have the opportunity to look more closely at the ways in which these resources might be used in teaching. Having spent seven years collecting these materials I was anxious to see if they were going to be useful in the classroom as well as in research.
English and IT: the current position
Over the last year I have developed a stronger sense of the concerns which face academics who are interested in adding digital resources to their teaching. The general picture is a lack of time, skills and support. What has become clear is that there is a great range of interest in and understanding of the use of digital technology across the discipline. While colleagues interested in language have used computers for many years for detailed studies of large corpora, those studying literature have not, until quite recently, embraced digital technology at the same rate or in the same way. What is exciting to discover is that this situation is changing quickly. Increasingly, there are pockets of very interesting and forward-looking activity all over the country. Many of these individuals are, however, working in isolation and without support or encouragement. My initial vision, therefore, was to create a centralised point of contact where the issues could be discussed, connections could be made and a sense of community might develop.
Completed projects: ‘Images of Violence’
My discussions with colleagues led me to understand that any work I undertook had to take for granted that the average academic was overburdened even if enthusiastic. With a presentation at the ‘Condition of the Subject’ conference just four months away it was my aim to see if we could use the resources of the Designing Shakespeare project to develop an example of a teaching resource for a particular course, an example for discussion so to speak. Dr Ewan Fernie of the English Department at Royal Holloway quickly saw the potential of this approach and devised a plan for a teaching resource entitled ‘Images of Violence in Titus, Lear and Othello’. With the help of a web designer, Nicholas Watton, this resource was created for use in the Shakespeare MA programme and was based on the assumption that students would be assigned images to view along with questions to consider in preparation for a seminar class. A group of images, selected by Dr Fernie, therefore appears at the beginning of this digital resource. The students are then given three sets of questions to consider in relation to those images. The ‘Images of Violence’ resource can be viewed at http://www.english.ltsn.ac.uk/designshake/complet ed/index.htm
Throughout the process of development one issue that we tried to address was how we could make a resource that was both specific to Dr Fernie’s needs but also flexible. Perhaps the most exciting part of this resource was the development by our web designer of a media browser which allows the students to review not only the images that were selected by the lecturer but also all of the images available from the productions under discussion. Using the browser the student is then free to make a personal selection from the images available which could be used as the basis of a seminar discussion, a presentation or an essay. The media browser also gives other lecturers the opportunity to disregard the framing context which Dr Fernie has applied by facilitating the selection of a different group of images to pursue another line of enquiry. The great advantage of this resource then is that it allows for a flexible approach to a visually based discussion which is not relentlessly linear, as programmes such as Powerpoint tend to be.
Completed projects: ‘Performance Approaches to King Lear’
The second resource which I developed with Nicholas Watton’s help is entitled ‘Performance Approaches to King Lear’. This resource (which can also be found at http://www.english.ltsn.ac.uk/designshake/completed/index.htm) combines not only images but also textual resources from the King Lear CD and sound recordings of designers interviewed as part of the Designing Shakespeare project. This resource involves three sections; one on Designing Lear, one on Directing Lear and one on Acting Lear, which pose questions about the play and present images of performance for consideration. The advantage of this resource is the ability to juxtapose images of different productions side by side. This comparative approach is something that I always hoped to facilitate through my work but which I came to realise is actually quite difficult to achieve from the Performing Arts Data Service site. The three sections of this resource can be used in any order or can be used in isolation. The final section brings the acting, directing and design perspectives together in an analysis of a single production directed by Helena Kaut-Howson and starring Kathryn Hunter. Again, if the framing context which I have used seems inappropriate or unhelpful the media browser offers over 150 images of King Lear in performance over the past four decades which can be used to pursue any number of other lines of enquiry or argument. Both of these resources also include external links that point to the richness of resources on the subject that are now freely available on the web.
The aim, then, of this initial venture was to see what we could create in a very short period of time using existing materials to develop resources for use in established programmes. The two resulting teaching packages were made available on CD to the attendees of two papers I delivered over the summer, first at the ‘Condition of the Subject’ conference in July and then again at the British Shakespeare Association conference at De Montfort University in August. Initial responses to the work were very enthusiastic but I fear this resulted rather more from gratitude for making the resources feely available than from an engagement with the issues at stake.
Linking teaching and research: The King’s/Globe MA Case Study
The second prong of work has taken a slightly different approach. It has been aimed at tackling a larger, more generic problem, of curriculum development and has involved the creation of a digital case study. Again the resulting resource (which can be found at http://www.english.ltsn.ac.uk/designshake/linking/ index.htm) can be seen to be both a specific example of curriculum development and a template for the way in which information about pedagogy can be collected and distributed digitally. This resource has been designed to form part of a larger project that has been instigated by the LTSN Generic Centre to look at the link between teaching and research. The objectives of this case study exercise are to document the development process of this innovative programme, to illustrate the concrete links made between teaching and research and to interrogate the usefulness of this approach for others working in the discipline of English. Therefore the case study presented is designed to illustrate, in detail, the success of one particular programme which brings the practical application of research into the classroom. The digital dissemination of this material is designed to illustrate a useful way in which research in teaching and curriculum development can be stored and distributed.
The subject of the case study, The Text and Playhouse Shakespeare Studies MA, taught jointly by King’s College London and the Globe Theatre concentrates on Shakespeare’s dramatic texts, and the manner of their performance at the Globe Theatre. This MA programme combines two areas of scholarly research, textual studies and performance practice, to give students a very practical experience of these two subject areas. By working with a leading theatre company in London the students have a chance not only to learn from practitioners but are given the opportunity to test their own textual theories on the Globe stage.
The King’s/Globe MA Case Study involved indepth video interviews with the two convenors of the course at King’s College London, Dr Gordon McMullan and Professor Ann Thompson; the Globe Education Lecturer, Dr Gabriel Egan; the Director of Globe Education, Patrick Spottiswoode and two former students, Abigail Rokison and Madeline Knights. It also contains an edited film of a class, as it was taught on the Globe stage by one of the theatre’s musicians, plus the immediate response of four current students. Finally, the study contains a wide-ranging discussion about the links between teaching and research in which Dr McMullan, Professor Thompson and Dr Egan convey their personal experiences of the programme. While all of the interviews are available in full (nearly six hours in total) the case study directs the user through the development of the MA course drawing on responses from each of the speakers to key questions. A variety of responses are offered to each question and the user can choose to view any or all of these answers before moving on to the next question. As a result, the programme provides both a digital archive of material that can be used for a variety of purposes and a clear argument about the development of the MA programme which can be viewed in either a linear or non-linear fashion.
In all three of these projects a framework has been developed as well as a working relationship which combines the resources of the English Subject Centre with the resources of particular academics working in particular Departments. The two Departments which were chosen in the first instance were the host Departments of the Subject Centre, however, two different models have now been developed which can be employed working with other academics in other Departments across the country. The two teaching packages appear in the Completed Projects section of the website (http://www.english.ltsn.ac.uk/design shake/completed/index.htm), an area of the site designed to house an ever-expanding library of resources that are open to anyone in the community. The larger and more complex case study, appears on the website under the title Linking Teaching and Research (http://www.english.ltsn.ac.uk/designshake/linking/index.htm), providing an example of how the curriculum development process of an entire programme can be documented as well as examples of specific teaching approaches. This section of the site can also expand to hold any number of further case studies. These first two prongs of the approach assume that the resources of the English Subject Centre can be used to aid one Department specifically but others indirectly both by example and by the creation of a working model and a template for further work.
The final stage of the project: adapting digital resources
The third prong of the approach is designed for the academic or Department who would like to create digital resources independently and would like to turn to the English Subject Centre for ideas and advice rather than direct involvement. This final section, which is still under development, will both provide teaching resources that use existing materials and will show how these resources were created, providing recipe cards or ‘how to’ guides. The collaborative model demonstrated in the first two projects is not practical for every Department therefore it seemed essential to provide a guide to aid colleagues developing resources in their own institutions. The aim of this section of the Digital Resources site is to present three quite simple resources again drawing on the materials collected as part of the Designing Shakespeare project. The three resources planned are based around the following areas: a) Character and Representation – looking at transgendered casting in Shakespearean production, b) Politics and Performance of Place – looking at a range of productions of Julius Caesar set in different periods and c) Audience, Actor and Space – looking at four performances at Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre. These examples will show how freely available digital materials can be brought together in a simple but useful way for teaching.
Colleagues will be encouraged to use these resources as they appear but also to offer feedback and use the examples presented as a source of ideas for their own work. The aim of this part of the Digital Resources initiative is to show ways in which individuals, without a great deal of time or expertise, can develop teaching resources that suit their own needs. One of the things that has been most striking for me in developing the teaching materials we have already created has been the realisation that new resources are being made available online everyday. For example when creating the King Lear CD it was necessary to license the reproduction of each page of the Folio and Quarto individually, however, now the entire Folio and Quarto can be accessed online through the University of Pennsylvania. As a result, for ‘Performance Approaches to King Lear’ it was possible to simply make links to these pages. Similarly for the ‘Images of Violence’ resource Dr Fernie wanted to refer the students to an image from the surrealist film Un Chien Andalou which again we found online. In addition we were able to find three separate interviews with the Director Julie Taymor discussing her approach to the visualisation of violence in her film Titus.
The aim of this section of the website is to encourage colleagues to take a step in the direction of including digital resources in their teaching even if it is only in the form of a links list. However, basic questions about copyright and resource creation will also be addressed for those colleagues who would like to begin to take the process of creating their own resources a step further.
Conclusions
The overarching project, then, of ‘Digital Resources for Teaching and Discussion’ has several aims. It has been designed to show how existing resources can be developed into both simple resources and complex resources for teaching. It has been designed to create several templates for the development of more specialised projects of this kind and several kinds of examples of collaboration between the English Subject Centre and individual academics. It has created both an example of and a template for a case study of curriculum development. It has begun a library of flexible resources that can be used by any academic in the country. Finally, and perhaps most importantly, it has tried to map out some of the issues that are at stake, as well as some of the opportunities that are available, as a result of digital technology.
This work has made me increasingly aware of the many hurdles which exist when trying to bring digital resources into the classroom. They include lack of time, expertise and physical infrastructure to support the lecturer who would like to move in this direction. Like many advances in teaching, the development of the sophisticated use of digital technology in the classroom is being hampered, on the one hand, by practical concerns and, on the other, by limitations of Articles the imagination in terms of thinking of creative new ways of working. ‘Digital Resources for Teaching and Discussion’ aims to address these issues in a positive way.
However, there seems to be another, perhaps more fundamental, issue at stake which had not occurred to me before I began my work in the English Subject Centre. I have witnessed again and again a profound wariness in addressing a new communications medium that we know so little about. I am strongly of the opinion that digital technology provides a wide range of new communication channels that should be incorporated into the curriculum both from a theoretical point of view and from a practical point of view. This is undoubtedly the bias of my Drama background, a discipline that insists on the integration of practice and theory. I have come to understand, however, that a serious question must be not only how will digital resources be incorporated into the traditional areas of study within English but how and when will this communication technology also become a significant subject of study in itself? It is this question which is increasingly of greatest interest to me as a subject of research, teaching practice and theoretical speculation. It is a question which the current project does not address directly in its content but I believe does address, to some degree, in its form through its multiple approaches.
