Shakespeare 101: Romeo and Juliet - A Critical Reading
The biggest challenge for teachers teaching Shakespeare is to keep the students engaged and not ‘hate’ the experience, and this becomes more difficult in an online learning environment. The design structure of this course is centered around Keller’s strategies of Attention, Relevance, Confidence, and Satisfaction (ARCS), which will ensure that the novice learners are not overwhelmed, and they find value and relevance in the content, thus making their learning meaningful. Each module in the course incorporates a variety of media to teach content – podcasts, video, and screencast lessons. The lessons and activities also adhere to UDL principles which stress the importance of multiple means of representation, engagement, and action and expression.
Core Competencies
This course enabled me to use what I learned in the various courses In the program. My background in Curriculum Design and English Literature guided me on the content creation and pedagogical practices that I used, but these were strengthened by the structured knowledge of theory application that the program provided me. In addition, this was my first experience designing an asynchronous course, and I was able to create rich technology-mediated learning content for the course.
Module Images
Home page of live Canvas course with an image of the Balcony scene
Syllabus Page of Canvas course with an image that spells Syllabus
Final project page on Canvas course
Home page of live Canvas course with an image of the Balcony scene
Reflections
The most daunting task for me in designing this course is that all the Shakespeare classes that I taught were face-to-face. Over the years, I did incorporate media lessons into my course plans, but even those had some form of in-person interaction with the students in a classroom. The play was read aloud in class, annotations were made, themes and characters discussed, and activities were planned around those interactions. Translating all this into a purely online format was the most challenging aspect of this course for me. As I planned and designed this course, the biggest takeaway for me was that while the online learning environment has real benefits with reference to addressing learner variability and accessibility of learning, if not done properly, it can easily degenerate into a meaningless, and often times an overwhelming exercise for learners. Sustaining student engagement and motivation becomes even more important and perhaps more difficult in an online learning environment, where the role of the instructor becomes that of a facilitator. Therefore, ensuring that proper scaffolds are in place in lieu of the instructor being physically present to help the students is crucial.