The activities in this collection provide opportunities for English lecturers (and others) to experiment and think creatively about the modules you currently teach or ones you may teach in the future. Some activities utilise videos of colleagues who have successfully designed whole programmes and individual modules. There are also worksheets and documents that you can download and modify.

There are three types of activities, appropriate for English lecturers working in groups or as individuals, in this resource. Their topics are employability, transition from A level, and getting the ‘delicate balance’ right between literature, language and Creative Writing when designing an English programme for today’s students. These activities rely in part on an interview with Professor Marion Wynne-Davies (University of Surrey). As Head of Department, Wynne-Davies shares the ideas and strategies she followed to launch the Surrey English degree programme in 2008.

The activities in this resource are focused around an interview with Dr Hannah Crawforth (King's College London) about her design and launch of an innovative English Literature module, 'Shakespeare's London'. The activities, which are appropriate for individuals or groups, encourage you to think about how you might re-design and run old modules in new ways or launch new modules which draw students in with new features. The activities cover how one might take advantage of the location of your university (e.g. the local landscape or historic sites); how one might develop students’ research skills, and how one might ask relevant reflective questions about an existing module with a view towards revising and improving it.

The premise of the activities in this resource (appropriate for an individual or a group) is that the time that students spend between lectures, seminars and workshops is as important as the time they spend in class sessions because this is how and where students develop the critical ability to work independently. However, students, especially first-years, need to be taught these skills and these activities provide guidance on how you might go about that work with methods that that push beyond the well-worn phrase, ‘read the book and think about it.’

There are three different types activities in this resource each of which are drawn from literature teaching but which are adaptable to other subjects. In one you are provided with a full module description and asked how it might need to be modified for particular teaching contexts, such as whether it is a final year ‘option’ course, or a compulsory first year course. In the next activity, ‘Pacing it out’ you are challenged to halve the number of texts studied on a module and adapt your teaching approach accordingly. The third type of activity addresses ‘Curriculum Framing’ and asks you to consider the pedagogical contexts for teaching particular texts.

These activities are for English lecturers interested in developing their pedagogical skills in accord with the skills they would like their students to acquire. Both the individual and group activity are focused on the use of a stimulating list of 'desirable student attributes' such as having the patience to read long novels. How exactly are you hoping to affect your students' behaviour when you teach them? Obviously, you want them to attend classes and submit assessments, but what of more interesting, subtle practices? What intellectual, organisational, aesthetic qualities would you like your teaching to encourage? The argument of the activities in this resource is that thinking about possible answers to these questions is an excellent first step towards a reconceptualisation of your role as a lecturer.

The activities in this resource are built around an audio-recording in which English lecturers Dr Chris Thurgar-Dawson (University of Teesside) and Professor Ben Knights (English Subject Centre) discuss a module they launched and taught on ‘creative criticism.’ The activities provide examples and contexts for re-thinking and designing new modules by experimenting with varying emphases on 'creative' and 'critical' content and teaching methods. Even if you do not adopt the ideas presented, they might stimulate you to think about module planning from a different angle.

A factsheet designed to introduce the UK Professional Standards Framework (PSF) and explain how it relates to the teaching resources developed for the professional development resources in the collection.