Enhance Student Engagement: Facilitating the Seminar – Teaching & Learning: Creative Writing

Here’s my approach to planning one session of a flipped/blended seminar course.

First, I find it useful to narrow down the scope of the class to one big idea for the week. To do this, I use concept mapping as my process. Then, I begin to match learning activities to particular essential questions this big idea raises.

As the class begins to take shape, I use post-it notes to colour code the variations in the kinds of activities I’ve chosen: active, independent, small group vs. large, discussion, writing prompt, movement, sitting still, etc., so I have a visualization of the rhythm of the session.

CONTENT

Process: Concept Maps

Determine the big idea or main concept for the week, e.g. “dialogue” “scene vs. summary” “diction” “original detail”
Begin to generate questions around this concept
Gather materials and resources around those questions (often, this is pre-work the student has engaged in before class)
Begin to consider the learning activities that give students the opportunity to engage with the concept

FORM

Process: Post-it notes

Determining what learning activities are best for your subject/concept/genre depends on timing and comfort level
Learners focus for 15 – 20 minute intervals, so aim to move between active and passive / independent and group activities, and vary your approaches
Colour-code activities and map it out so you can see the learning experience (as in the second photo below, my colour-coded lecture for CRWR 201)