It’s a bit ironic, but I keep having ideas about teaching while I’m on research leave from teaching. I suppose it’s the new perspective I’ve acquired, and will make the most of these thoughts by putting them down in blog posts from time to time.

The one that came to me most recently concerned assessment. I’m very happy with my current third-year module’s assessment structure, with a typical academic essay at the module’s end and the more innovative requirement to create a website introducing a Restoration play falling halfway through the term. But I’ve been quietly designing an alternative third-year module to teach one day, one which runs from 1737 to 1830 or so, and would thus allow me, through a yearly alternation to regularly teach the full range of my research from Restoration theatre to the stages of the early nineteenth century.

I’ve begun sketching out ideas for that course elsewhere on this blog, but, while I don’t lack material, I do lack a sense of what the assessment should be. I think I’d like to keep the end-of-term essay, as it tests so many skills of the students while offering them a lot of choice, but I don’t want something too similar early on when their knowledge of the topic is limited and what I’m really trying to do is see how well they can work with what they have.

This was a conundrum, but then I had my idea. Why not ask the students to submit a plan for a week’s worth of teaching, along with a rationale, for the mid-module assignment? The course as planned already follows a fairly solid weekly structure of:

• Actor (e.g. Mary Robinson)
• Theme (e.g. Celebrity)
• Set work (e.g. Garrick and Shakespeare, Florizel and Perdita / Winter’s Tale)
• Set criticism (e.g. Fawcett, Spectacular Disappearances)
• Painting (e.g. John Hoppner, oils)

And they could fill out such a structure however they see fit. Better yet, they would be able to use their own experience of previous weeks to guide them, while also being obliged to undertake further research. To make the task a little easier, I could provide a list of performers each year. And to reward those who really made an effort, I could offer to incorporate the highest-scoring submission into the teaching plan for the next repetition of the module.

The main issue with this idea is that the kind of work submitted may be difficult to mark, as there is no agreed mark scheme for teaching plans. That said, the rationale could be evaluated on the existing criteria for essays, and those criteria could be adapted slightly to incorporate the other parts of the submission too.

After all, there’s quite a prize here: students would be able to shape the teaching of this module in the future, in so doing they would provide me with a clear sense of how students themselves feel that they would learn such material best, and, at the same time, acquire a bunch of skills that will serve them well whether they go on to become teachers (as many do) or not.