1
CETL Final Self-Evaluation
The CAPITAL Centre, University of Warwick
Creativity and Performance in Teaching and Learning
EVALUATIVE REFLECTION
Question 1 : Please reflect on how effective your CETL has been in contributing to the objectives set out for the CETL initiative when it started. Be concise and do not exceed 1,000 words for the whole of the question
1.1 To reward practice that demonstrates excellent learning outcomes for students.
See 2.8 below on Creative Fellowships.
1.2 To enable practitioners to lead and embed change by implementing approaches that
address the diversity of learners’ needs, the requirements of different learning contexts, the possibilities for innovation and the expectations of employers and others concerned with the quality of student learning.
a. CAPITAL has applied, embedded and disseminated practices, methods and modes that address these approaches (see 7 below for further details). CAPITAL’s ‘workshop’ model of teaching and learning enables students to develop their subject expertise rapidly and thoroughly, but the social constructivist nature of the work means that students also acquire and enhance ‘soft’ and transferable skills in areas such as collaboration, teamwork, dialogue, self-management, and self-direction.
b. Practice-based workshops allow students to work on the content of their disciplines but in different ways to the standard lecture and seminar format, promoting diversity of approach. Warwick’s MA in Creative and Media Enterprises (Centre for Cultural Policy Studies) offers a module entitled ‘Cultural Entrepreneurship’ and CAPITAL’s task was to replicate the difficulties associated with pitching a business idea. We were asked to suggest ways in which participants could be taken out of their ‘comfort zone’ and forced to confront difficult situations. The purpose was to prepare participants for difficult situations they might encounter in the workplace while pitching a challenging, unusual or complex idea/product/service. The group of 21 students participating this year (there were 24 last year) represented 14 different nationalities and a range of learning styles. Feedback was almost universally positive with 80% of participating students over two years saying in their evaluations that the sessions had improved confidence and forced them to address the notion of ‘risk’.
c. Similar practice-based workshops have been devised and/or delivered for the Graduate School Skills Programme (GSSP) and the University’s Learning and Development Centre (LDC) on ‘Networking’ and ‘Performing Expertise’. Both sessions are designed to offer postgraduates, researchers, and early-career academics the opportunity to develop confidence, communication skills, and self-management skills by confronting them with a simulation of an academic conference then working through their responses. The sessions are supported by CAPITAL’s student ensemble (see 12.2 for further details). 500 individuals have taken part in these generic vocational sessions.
d. For the Warwick Business School MBA programme, CAPITAL has devised sessions on ‘Presence’ to develop in participants the skills they require to command attention and present themselves with confidence in the workplace.
1.3 To enable institutions to support and develop practice that encourages deeper
understanding across the sector of ways of addressing students’ learning effectively.
CAPITAL has disseminated its findings across the sector in three ways:
a. Exemplar sessions: to demonstrate developing models of good practice, conducted at the University of Hull, the University of Central Lancashire, Oxford Brookes University, the University of Liverpool, the University of Sheffield, the University of Strathclyde, University of Newcastle, University of Teesside.
b. Conferences and colloquia: A major dissemination event in September 2009, ‘Creativity and Performance in Teaching and Learning’, brought together high level players in innovative practice from diverse institutions from Russell Group members to post-1990 Universities: Kings College London, The University of Wolverhampton, University of Chester, Nottingham University, York St. John University, Northumbria University, Queens University Belfast, and the University of Surrey, the HEA, National Union of Students, English and Media Centre, English Subject Centre and UKLE. As a result workshop events were requested by Queen’s Belfast, Hull, York St John. A tour of Warwick partner universities in the USA is planned in spring 2010 to include Vanderbilt, University of North Carolina Chapel Hill, Loyola (Baltimore) and San Francisco State.
c. Work with the English Subject Centre: co-organisers of ‘Devise Wit; Write Pen’: Teaching Shakespeare conference (Stratford-upon-Avon, 2006); contributing to Renewals: Reconfiguring English in the 21st Century (Royal Holloway London, 2007) and to Sounding it Out (Leeds Metropolitan, 2009).
1.4 To recognize and give greater prominence to clusters of excellence that are capable of
influencing practice and raising the profile of teaching excellence within and beyond their institutions.
a. Exploiting the work of award-winning teachers: working with Warwick’s National Teaching Fellows (Professors David Morley, Jonothan Neelands and Ed Peile, Paul Raffield, and Robert O’Toole), and holders of Warwick Awards for Teaching Excellence (Professors Carol Rutter, Gary Watt, Tony Howard and Drs Nick Monk and Jane Kidd), to produce innovative teaching and learning.
b. Recognising good practice in other departments: Warwick’s School of Law offered innovative performance-based learning in two of its modules: Law and Literature and Origins, Images, and Cultures of English Law. CAPITAL provided the module leaders with open teaching spaces and collaborative support from the RSC\Warwick Playwright in Residence, Adriano Shaplin who offered a professional perspective on theatre practice. From this emerged an interdisciplinary module available to English and Law students, ‘Shakespeare and the Law: On Trial’ which is recruiting successfully (18 in 2009/10; 6 in 2008/9). Both module leaders subsequently received Warwick Awards for Teaching Excellence (WATEs); one has a been awarded National Teaching Fellowship that was based on this work and one has been promoted to full professor.
c. Forming special interest groups: CAPITAL’s Space, Performance and Pedagogy termly seminar brings together innovative teachers from across the University to discuss and demonstrate new methods in teaching and learning. The SPP group has 65 members, working alongside the Faculty Teaching and Learning Fora, and includes academics from heads of department to postgraduate tutors from all faculties. Collaborations with the Medical School on the ‘Sleep Special Study’ module (60 trainee GPs over two years) have emerged from these sessions, as well as work with the University’s commercial managers (30 individuals).
d. Work with other CETLs: Collaborations have included work with Reinvention Centre, CILASS and QUB’s Centre for Excellence in the Performing Arts.
1.5 To demonstrate collaboration and sharing of good practice and so enhance the
standard of teaching and effective learning throughout the sector.
See 1.3 a-c above; 4; 8.5 and 10.
1.6 To raise student awareness of effectiveness in teaching and learning in order to inform
student choice and maximize student performance.
a. Over 10,400 FTEs have now experienced the practical teaching and learning methods developed at CAPITAL, and special events, word of mouth and internal advertising ensure regular contact with students pass. CAPITAL has excellent links with the Students’ Union through the University’s four student drama societies. The SU Educational Officer is ex officio a member of the Advisory Board.
b. There have been 9 student performance projects. Students are invited to propose projects which support and demonstrate an active connection between student drama and the curriculum engaging with learning through performance. Projects should emphasise learning experiences and be interdisciplinary: e.g. a continuation of an idea coming out of an academic course; performance of a set text or course-related text; new writing connected to academic work; collaborative work exploring the process of learning through performance.
c. A longitudinal study of the compulsory 3rd year Shakespeare module in the Department of English, begun in 2007, has shown a 10% increase 1st class degrees among students who selected the performative seminars that use CAPITAL’s methods.
d. An annual survey of prospective students in the Department of English, begun in 2010/11, seeks to measure CAPITAL’s impact on students’ choice of university. Based on a sample of 20% of those attending interviews for places on the courses offered by the Department, 18% said that the existence of CAPITAL would/had influence/d their decision to attend.
e. CAPITAL 's collaboration with the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust and English Speaking Union on The Great Shakespeare Debate is in its fourth year. Thisevent for UK schools was inaugurated in 2006. Encouraging students to embody and perform their ideas in debate, toparticipate actively with Shakespeare andto work together as a team, is central to the CAPITAL ethos. AS and A2 students are supported and mentoredby students from Warwick, Birmingham, Oxford, Exeter and other universities. Since 2007, 23 students (15 from Warwick) have served as mentors and36 schools have participated in the finals in Stratford-upon-Avon. In 2009 Warwick hosted the regional heats involving 120 school students.
Question 2: Please set out the aims and objectives specific to your CETL at the start; and for each one reflect how well these have been achieved. Be concise and do not exceed 1,000 words for the whole of the question.
Please See Appendix 3 for CAPITAL’s two-year aims and objectives (2005-2007) and 13 below, and Appendix 4 for CAPITAL’s Five-Year objectives. Please see, also, Appendix 5 for a list of all CAPITAL events and activities.
Reflection:
2.1 The CAPITAL Centre was originally conceptualised on the double foundations of ‘Shakespeare’ and ‘performance’. Under the motto ‘Good teaching is like good rehearsal’, it set up a partnership between the Royal Shakespeare Company and the University of Warwick to bring the creative and working practices of each organisation into play in the partner’s domain.
2.2 While CAPITAL’s initial focus was on English and Theatre Studies, one of its key objectives was to draw in expertise and excellence across the University to share experience and disseminate creative practice. The Space, Performance and Pedagogy Group set up by CAPITAL has achieved this and has gone on to set the agenda for interdisciplinary collaboration across the University. CAPITAL currently works with the Warwick Writing Programme, the Institute of Education, Philosophy, Chemistry, Medicine, Law, Warwick Business School, Cultural Policy Studies, the Institute of Health, the Learning and Development Centre, the Graduate Skills programme, Warwick Arts Centre and ELab, and is in discussion with Psychology about future collaborations.
2.3 From the first, CAPITAL aimed to build on Artistic Director Michael Boyd’s vision of the RSC as ‘a learning organisation’, to enhance the company’s education programme, and to effect a rich knowledge transfer, both for students and actors. Its ambition was to take Warwick’s internationally-recognised Shakespeare scholarship, most significantly, Shakespeare performance studies, into the heart of the acting company while, in the university, establishing a notional ‘third room’. This space would certainly not be a classroom but not, exactly, a rehearsal room either. Rather, it would be a space that, inventing a rigorously academic HE workshop model of learning, would put students on their feet, working practically on Shakespeare’s scripts, testing the claim (that shifts literary studies from passive to active learning) that ‘all writing is performance’; that ‘until the writing is performed, it isn’t really read’.
2.4 The CAPITAL team has achieved all but one of its 2-year objectives and all but three of its 5-year objectives (see Appendices 3 and 4). It has re-formalised its partnership with the RSC (the company having made the strategic decision, two years into the CAPITAL project, not to develop an HE programme but to concentrate its education initiative on under-19s). CAPITAL continues to contribute informally to the RSC’s Artists’ Development programme. The RSC at CAPITAL now comprises the RSC/Warwick International Playwright in Residence, a number of Fellowships in Creativity, the RSC Learning and Performance Network, Post-Graduate Certificates in Teaching Shakespeare for Teachers of Drama and English and Postgraduate Awards in Teaching Shakespeare for Actors. By 2010 over 120 teachers and artists will have graduated from the CAPITAL/RSC postgraduate programme that is based in the Institute of Education. When the new Royal Shakespeare Theatre opens in 2010 over a quarter of the actors on stage will have gained a PG Award from Warwick. In addition, the success of the CAPITAL-funded and inspired relationship between the RSC and the Institute of Education has attracted external research funding (see Section 1.7).
2.5 CAPITAL has introduced own-brand modules that develop open-space teaching and learning (‘Shakespeare without Chairs’; ‘Teaching Shakespeare: A Practical Approach’; ‘Shakespeare and the Law’; ‘Drama, Performance and Identity Post 1945’), introducing innovative forms of assessment, examination, and evaluation (creative projects; commonplace books; group projects; practical demonstrations). It has appointed Creative Fellows from within the University and outside whose practice-led research feeds back into curriculum development and training: e.g. Tom Abbott (Communications) on digital communication; Claudette Bryanston (Institute of Health) on the cost of dying; Tony Howard (English) on Paul Robeson and black theatre history; Rob Clare on verse-speaking; Perry Mills on boy players. It is contributing to the development of IGGY (which replaced NAGTY).
2.6 CAPITAL is collaborating across the university, delivering innovation in teaching and learning impacting every faculty, and CAPITAL staff have disseminated its practice across Britain and beyond, delivering conference papers and workshops. In the last year it has organised a major dissemination event, presented at the British Shakespeare Association, the Shakespeare Association of America, the Renaissance Society of America, the International University Theatre Association and at pedagogy conferences in the UK. The Director has by invitation given Shakespeare workshops and high-profile public lectures in the USA and the CAPITAL team will tour five US universities in the spring.
2.7 But more than meeting its targets, CAPITAL has exceeded the bid’s original vision in ambitious ways to develop practical research into performance and curriculum. It has supported novice and experienced teachers in new creative methodologies of teaching and learning by contributing to the Learning and Development Centre, especially to PCAPP and to the Graduate Skills programmes. Through the “Re-Performing Performance” project, it has explored new pedagogies for digital archives (including re-formulating the MA ‘Shakespeare and Performance’ module) and is developing auto-intuitive search strategies for digital resources through the AILAS project, a collaboration with STPCPS, Computer Science and the University Library. It has created a diverse programme of content-rich webcasts (now available on iTunesU); has embedded a theatre company – Fail Better – in CAPITAL to deliver a range of performance-based learning experiences, producing high-profile theatre projects with students as collaborators and developing an ensemble to contribute to inter-disciplinary teaching and events; and has appointed an Artist in Residence who is also CAPITAL’s first research student (which means that CAPITAL is now operating across BA, MA, and PhD programmes). It has established new collaborations with theatres and theatre companies like Cheek by Jowl, Northern Broadsides, Footsbarn and Shakespeare’s Globe. It is sustaining conversations about future work with the V&A, Advantage West Midlands and Stratford upon Avon District Council; collaborating on projects and grant applications with The Shakespeare Birthplace Trust (including student involvement as mentors and specialist advisers for the annual schools Great Shakespeare Debate); has scoped an International Shakespeare Summer School in Venice and is developing new MA modules.