As you may or may not know (probably the
latter), I’m a lecturer in Education at the University of York, where I teach
all research all things related to children’s literature, creative writing,
literary translation, cultural studies of childhood, etc. (Things that are, as you can
see, wildly different from the other career I have, as a writer, reader and
translator of children’s literature. But enough about my monomaniacal existence.)
My colleague Sarah Olive and I have developed an
online course on visual culture for children, ‘Pictures of Youth’, on the
Future Learn platform, with support from our university (tip of the hat to the
amazing Iain Barr, head of Lifelong Learning).
It’s a MOOC, I guess – Massive Online Open
Course – though Future Learn doesn’t use the term – namely, it’s free, open to
all, and although its pedagogy is adjusted for a general audience, it is very
much inspired from our research and teaching in the field of visual culture for
children. The four sessions – each takes roughly an hour to get through – are
on picturebooks, comics, children's cinema, and television.
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| More fun to shoot than it is to watch, perhaps |
Each session is made up of a number of
steps, including short videos, exercises, quizzes, articles to read, etc.,
which allow learners to progress leisurely from one to the next while hopefully
learning a few things. The course is now will soon begin its third run (in
July! do sign up!) and it’s been pretty successful the first two times.
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| in part because of the longing looks I throw Sarah from time to time |
It’s interesting
for us to see the make-up of the student cohort – they seem to be mostly education
professionals, or people in the fields of culture, the arts, and literature.
But there are also people who were simply drawn by the theme, who hadn’t thought of
that as an object of study before, and who thought – ok, well, it’s free –
let’s. And in no small measure we also have aspiring writers and illustrators, and I've been contacted by a few of them who have identified (quite rightly, I think) that visual analysis can help them with visual storytelling.
It's made me think of the potential of MOOCs for writers. There are very many online courses, as I'm sure you know, on writing and publishing - you will all have seen, doubtlessly, that
Neil Gaiman is now also doing an online masterclass (not free, that one) on the
Art of Storytelling.
Personally, I’m about to embark on An Introduction on Screenwriting and What is Poetry? An Introduction to Literary Analysis, though mostly because I want to test them before recommending them to my own
students in my modules on Creative Writing for Children and on Children and Literature.
Wouldn't you just like to be the kind of writer who, for a writing project, dutifully completes every step of An Introduction to Forensic Science, before shifting to Effective Livestock Production with Low Use of Antibiotics, then learning all about Managing my Money for Young Adults, and - last but not least - Physical Theatre: Exploring The Slap?
Wouldn't you just like to be able to read such a writing project?
Alas, most MOOCs remain woefully unifinished. And most writers will doubtlessly favour The Art of Storytelling over Livestock Production with Low Use of Antibiotics, even though the latter is probably far fuller of inspirational possibilities. If you've completed a MOOC, quirky or not, for your writerly career, pray tell of the experience in the comments.
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2 comments:
Clementine, thank you for this. Your course sounds as if it is really interesting and innovative in its content and audience - and not tied to being in one location, which is a very good thing imo. Must look into this MOOC world more closely.
Fascinating! At some stage, I'm going to do a Future Learn course in Italian...
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