Contents
Presenter
Dr Jonathan Gibbs – Senior Lecturer in Creative Writing
Talk
This lightning talk presents a simple rolling seminar structure that I’ve developed at both UG and PG level that encourages students to work outside class, and engage with each other’s work, and includes space for formative feedback that demonstrates to students how their learning builds towards assessments.
This talk presents a seminar structure that I’ve used on both UG and PG Creative Writing modules in MCCI. It pertains to the beginning and end of the class, with the middle of the class used for other activities, often group discussions.
The structure involves three elements: exercise, out-of-class forum work, and feedback:
- Exercise: I devote the last 5 minutes of the seminar to a short writing exercise
- Forum homework: I then tell students to continue the exercise in their own time
- I give them a suggested word count, and encourage them to post their finished piece in a weekly forum set up for that purpose
- I also tell them to read each other’s submissions and comment on them. (As seminar leader I don’t comment on the forums myself.)
- Ahead of the following week’s seminar I quickly review the forums and copy examples of good practice in the forum submissions onto PowerPoint slides.
- These slides of student examples are then presented (anonymously) at the start of the next seminar, with explanations of what they do well, together with a reminder that this is a form of formative feedback, and signposting towards assessment, grading criteria and learning outcomes.
This ‘virtual circle’ engages students in their leaning process by making clear the links between individual study, seminar work and assessment preparation. It gives them structure for their individual study time, encourages them to engage with each other as a learning cohort, and gives general feedback they can all use as they prepare for assessments.
While I have used this in Creative Writing modules the structure should be useful in many other subject areas. Encouragement to start drafting possible submission material early will also give students the confidence to be self-sufficient in their writing and not turn to Gen AI for text production.
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