Distance-Learning Materials for Students of Literature

Distance-learning materials for students of literature

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Distance-learning materials for students of literature

Rowena Murray, University of Glasgow

Introduction: the course

The distance-taught M.Phil. in Scottish Literature is a three-year part-time course, covering three periods: Medieval and Renaissance Literature, 1375-1625; Poetry and Fiction, 1750-1900; and Poetry, Fiction and Drama since 1920. Students can enter the course at any point in the three-year cycle.

This is a comprehensive course, including literature in English and Scots. We send the students Study Guides for each of the six units in the year’s work. For example, this year we offered the Twentieth-century course: Modern Scots (language), MacDiarmid and the Scots Renaissance, The Modern Novel, Poetry Since 1940, Drama Since 1920, Classroom Applications. By the end of three years, therefore, the students will have collected 18 Study Guides. Every year there is a language unit and a Classroom Applications unit for with all other units focusing on literature.

The Study Guides are designed to simulate the interaction between student and tutor, and we have introduced questions, suggestions, and cross-referencing throughout the text, constantly breaking into the on-going discussion. The Study Guides are also intended as a resource, and therefore include bibliographies, biographies and background information. In order to assist our students in making choices about how to direct their studies, we have devised a Core-and-Options structure for each unit.

Six to eight weeks’ work is contained in each Study Guide, and students select five units to focus on, writing an essay on each. There is also a dissertation of about 12,000 words to be submitted in the final year and a final exam.

The students come in to the University at the beginning of the year, in October, then again in January, for one-day sessions. Finally, there is a week’s summer school in July. Each student is assigned to a tutor, who will mark essays, conduct telephone tutorials, and help the students to develop essay and dissertation topics.

My post as co-ordinator of the M.Phil. has been funded for two years by an INSET (In-service Education of Teachers) grant; much of the writing and editing of course materials in the six Study Guides (of between 150 and 200 pages each) was my responsibility, although other members of this department, and other departments, contributed to the writing. me next two years’ course materials will be written and edited by members of the department. Since there is already some demand for one-year courses, it may be that there will be spin-offs from the Study Guides.

Why distance learning?

There are many reasons: the geography of Scotland often makes it difficult to attend a university or college course close to home; it may simply not be possible to take advantage of ‘in-house’ continuing education.

School teachers, for example, currently have a particular need for this kind of support. Recent changes in Standard Grade, Higher, and Sixth-Year Studies English mean that, for the first time, Scottish Literature has been given a place in the curriculum. For teachers who choose to include Scottish authors in their courses, this means finding a considerable amount of information before they can develop courses on Scottish texts. Since most teachers of English will have completed a degree in English, they will not be equipped to tackle either the literature or the complexities of the Scots language and the debates about dialect.

Since this M.Phil. project was funded by an INSET grant we have included a Classroom Applications unit in each year of the course. We anticipate that roughly half of our students will be school teachers, with the others taking the course for a variety of reasons, from personal interest to career switch.

This course has, in this way, helped us as a department to forge new links with the teaching profession, links which keep us in touch with the development of the subject at the high-school level and with the implementation of changes in the curriculum. We are now playing a much more active role in the broader educational forum. This is the result of well-established contacts with bodies like the Association for Scottish Literary Studies and National Committees which formulate educational policies, but these links are now formalised, more firmly established.

The hefty Study Guides are, in fact, designed with the resource hungry student in mind; the Study Guides have a life beyond the M.Phil. course.

This kind of course is, therefore, a means of widening access to our courses, of raising FTE’s of bringing a substantial amount of revenue into the University. (There will be 45 students enrolled on the course.)

In addition, there can be ‘spin-offs’: one-year Certificate courses, for example; worksheets for high-school use; studies of individual authors, for undergraduates; bibliographies, etc. Our ‘Modern Scots’ Study Guide, on twentieth century varieties of the Scots language, is the first of its kind: a comprehensive guide to rural and urban dialects, along with an introduction to the skills and theoretical bases of linguistic study. It will probably be published as an individual volume. All of the Study Guides contain new material, original research, as well as reviews of previous work.

One crucial point: the vocational element of our M.Phil. makes it more likely that students will find financial support, either from their educational authority or from other sources than if the course dealt exclusively with language and literature.

Effects of the programme

Preparing this kind of degree has made us even more student-centred in our teaching, and our thinking about teaching, than we were before. In having to devise course goals and objectives, to consider learning progressions and to produce assignments and evaluation criteria which would support them, we have committed ourselves to putting into effect some new teaching methods which formerly had only been matters for discussion.

In addition, we have had to construct mechanisms for evaluation of our course materials and our teaching-at-a-distance. These will eventually find their way into our in-house programme.

We have had problems in calculating the time it takes to produce these materials; an initial estimate was one study guide per ten-week term, followed by two in the second term, once the design had been finalised. A more recent report on distance learning within the university has put it three months, full-time, but even this estimate has been questioned by our writers. This scheduling difficulty has produced considerable pressure for us all, as deadlines have had to be revised and work reallocated.

On a more positive note, the distance-learning programme has given us an opportunity to challenge some of the home truths about the discipline, to question the canon of Scottish literature, for example. Moreover, our awareness of the presence of practising teachers in our class has made us consider the implications of such apparently theoretical issues.

The distance-learning course will also affect our in-house teaching; already we have used some of the Study Guide activities in our undergraduate seminars, allowing students to enter a critical debate more quickly, and providing a focus for discussion.

Discussion

I would like our discussion to focus on the specific examples of our course material which are attached to this summary.

In this way I hope to make it clearer to you what we have been doing, how we have developed a structure, a tone, a set of goals appropriate to a wide variety of postgraduate students.

In particular I will define the form and functions of our Classroom Applications unit, pointing out the vocational elements and defining how they meet the current needs of our students.

Our discussion may also include consideration of the implications of this kind of course for the curriculum of literary studies in the University system.

M.Phil. in Scottish Literature

University of Glasgow, 1989

‘The Modern Novel’

Introduction

Clemency Ealasaid

pp. 7-11

Discussion:

public and

personal

CONTENTS

Goals of this unitv

How to use this guidevi

BLOCK 1General Introduction to Classroom Application1

Purposes of Language and Literature Study 1

Scottish Literature in the Curriculum3

Rationale for Teaching Scottish Literature in
Scottish Schools5

Choosing Texts8

Methods, approaches, ants Contexts10

Your Contribution to Scottish Language and Literature12

Introduction to Classroom Applications for
Twentieth-Century Literature13

BLOCK 2 Whole-Class Units19

Introduction19

Unit on Greenvoe20

Planning21

Implementation23

Evaluation of the Novel33

Follow-up to the Unit35

Appendix: Plot Map37

BLOCK 3 Unit on the Poetry of Edwin Morgan40

Planning41

Implementation43

Your Evaluation of this Unit51

Follow-up to the Unit53

BLOCK 4Unit on the Poetry of Norman MacCaig54

Planning55

Implementation57

Evaluation of this Unit65

Follow-up to the Unit65

BLOCK 5Personal Reading Study Guides69

Introduction69

Study Guide on Docherty72

Introduction73

Ideas and Activities77

Thinking About the Novel85

Follow-up Reading87

BLOCK 6Study Guide on The Ballad of Peckham Rye88

Introduction89

Ideas and Activities91

Thinking About the Novel95

Follow-up Reading104

BLOCK 7Group Projects105

The Nature of a Group Project105

Examples of Topics108

Group Project: Drama, The Slab Boys Trilogy109