Course materials development

Introduction

The main part of my work as a Lecturer of French is being part of the regular teaching team for the FREN 101-102-201-202-301-302-401-402 language sequence (and their predecessors, for courses whose numbering is now different after curriculum and program changes). I’ve also coordinated FREN 101 and 102, a large course with multiple sections and instructors: co-coordinating with Jacques Bodolec in 2012 (July-December), and coordinating from 2013 to December 2021. After that, I was on sabbatical from January to April 2022.

As the coordination of multiple-section courses in our department is a rotating responsibility, I’m now (2022-26) a regular teaching-team member and for the language sequence my course creation work is smaller-scale course materials development (class slides, activities, assignments) and contributing to the collective, via Canvas Commons.

In my time at UBC I’ve also developed materials for other courses, where I was part of the team but not coordinating or therefore designing that course: most recently FREN 201, 202, 401, and 402.

In 2025 I aim to post some of these materials here, accompanied by reflection comments (what was I thinking, why did it seem like a good idea at the time, what worked, what didn’t, what would I do differently next time, et mea culpa cetera).

See also: course materials developed as part of course design (when I designed that course myself).

The first section of this page is the curated collection of resources that I’ve selected, created, and organised from 2003 onwards. They range from the general (guidance and where to find further help, free online texts and research materials and communities) to the particular (guides for writing commentary on literature for a specific course and its specific readings). I have not necessarily checked all links recently—this, too, is work for 2025 now that I have more time—but even the most antique items in the repository are still useful and adaptable to other purposes, courses, and colleagues in other areas.

Resources

(at Meta-meta-medieval)

 

  • HELP
    (2018 version)
    General useful openly-accessible freely-available UBC information.

    • An old page—I made the first version in 2012– but while some links are broken, it’s still quite solid. I first developed and started maintaining this collection of resources when the “service” part of my work included French advising and placement.
    • I use these resources a lot with students in office hours (and other guidance, support, and pastoral care associated with teaching), you might also find them helpful, and they could also help you to help someone else.
    • There are many people here at UBC who can help; even if it is “just” talking to someone with whom one feel comfortable and whom one trusts, who will listen to you, that alone is already a vital service. Even if sometimes this seems like an overwhelmingly large university, and impersonal through its size and complexity: UBC is a compassionate caring community, made up of individual human beings. Departments, the student AMS, academic advising, the Centre for Accessibility, UBC student services, stress, anxiety, sleep, well-being, exam preparation, safety, accidents, emergencies.

 

  • REVISING FOR EXAMS
    (2018 version)
    A revision guide for beginners’ French, general exam preparation and revision guidance, exam season guidance, and (local, UBC) exam practicalities

    • This, too, is old but even when I’ve used it as a base for copying and pasting into a fresh HTML page on a Canvas course site, I’ve changed little (except in 2020-21, obviously).
    • General exam guidance hasn’t changed since its first version (2001), when I was a graduate student TA and “don’t do what I did when I was 18” was still fresh in my mind.

 

  • GUIDES & RESOURCES FOR READING & WRITING 
    (2003-22)

    • On reading, writing, and commentary
      (2016 version)
      The original title of this resource was “Criticism & commentary,” but it’s really about reading and writing as harmoniously-integrated activities within the larger whole that is a literary continuum and polyphonic collective; uniting all participants in a living textual network.
      Premises and provisos:
      (1) Commentary is one of the core and ancient literary/communicative forms, along with story-telling and translation; story-telling is the living beating heart of this human trinity of curiosity, criticism, and creativity.
      (2) Literature in its broad—inclusive, hospitable—sense extends to “any object that can be read, seen, interpreted” and reading is in the broad / Roland Barthes sense, to include perception by any of the senses, with “making sense of” as its purpose and “interpretation” translated into expression via any of the senses.
      (3) Literature is synonymous with communicative expression. Not as one kind of communication, but the other way around: what passes in other (non-literary) fields as “communication” is a more or less appropriately human, or humanly-appropriate, kind of literature.
      (4) All writing has a right, duty, and responsibility to be beautiful, imaginative and innovative, and critical and creative. All writing can and should be literature.
      The present version of this resource is based on MDVL 302: “CRITICISM” (2012) and MDVL 301A: “THE LIBERAL ARTS” (2016). I’ve tweaked it slightly over the years. The “writing resources” section is its most ancient archaeological layer, from a now-deceased ancestor site, The Rose of the Romance (2003).
      Resource categories:

      • for the practical work of reading and writing,
      • including for this course’s online blog-comment writing, midterm commentary, and final paper/project
      • guidelines on assessment
      • a selection of resources for writing
      • and some for research
    • Comment lire la bande dessinée (et au-delà)
      (2017)
      La dernière semaine « méta » du cours ci-dessus : métamorphoses, adaptations, traductions, transformations, avenir ? — le médiéval – le déploiement, et une lecture en 4D sur le vif — les expositions et les musées — en ligne — la critique et la théorie, et les innovations qu’y apportent les créateurs de BD en ré-imaginant ces formes de penser et d’écrire.
      (Reading (and) comics, medievalised: notes from the last—“meta”—week of that same bande dessinée course.)

 

 

  • RESOURCES FOR FRENCH
    (2003–)
    As much as possible is freely available online. Used as a base for Canvas sites for French language courses at all levels from 101 to 402.
    Resource categories:

    • listening and watching
    • pronunciation
    • sound atlas of French varieties in Canada / Atlas sonore des variétés de français au Canada
    • gender in French, including inclusive French / Le français inclusif
    • grammar
    • dictionaries
    • reading
    • local Francophone life

 

  • READING & RESEARCH
    (2003–)
    For teaching, learning, combinations thereof, and any other scholarly adventures; freely available and openly accessible online.
    The present version was mostly from 2009, with minor revisions in 2015 and 2020. This area of my main site is the core around which I built it, at that time as an archive of my first website: The Rose of the Romance (2003), about medieval things, mostly literary, centred on 10th-16th c. CE western Afro-Eurasia; and context, scholarly communities, art, material culture, manuscripts, museums, libraries, bibliography, resources, lists of resources, lists of lists, etc.; especially around Old Occitan and Old French romance, hence the title. I built it as an old-fashioned classic website, a metasite repository of resources and curated collection of useful links. The Rose started out as a place to gather references to online materials, projects, and hyperprojects. It was a tangent from doctoral work—working on medieval superbooks and metabooks, and thinking about what it meant to be a book—and what might pass as procrastination light relief that kind of still counted as background and contextual work so that I didn’t feel too guilty about it (but still a bit guilty). Putting it publicly freely online felt better, as it might be useful to someone else, which would make it worthwhile.
    Resource categories: