Busting Shakespeare: the TEL way

Abstract

'Today’s generation Y and generation Z need education that is interactive, student-centred, authentic, collaborative and on-demand.' Associate Professor Jane Summers USQ News July 2009. Each year more than 40 million secondary students worldwide grapple to understand, disassemble and analyse the works of William Shakespeare. This number, of course, increases significantly if one were to include students from non-English speaking education systems. For the secondary school curriculum, Shakespeare is core business. And yet, for the vast proportion of those 40 million students, their enduring memory of the Shakespeare experience is one of frustration, confusion and resentment. Limited class time, text-heavy content, complex poetic devices, unfamiliar language and the gap between historical and contemporary contexts all provide for a difficult learning experience. Generation Z are characterised by their need for instant information, for ego-centric contexts, visual responsiveness and multimedia information sharing. With less than 30% of this generation being identified as structured auditory learners, teaching Shakespeare needs to make the shift into Technology-Enhanced Learning (TEL). The Shakespeare Room is an innovative response to that need. Featuring video-based content structured around an interactive framework, The Shakespeare Room utilises cutting edge multimedia technology and variable bit rate streaming (based on Flash technology) to deliver a discovery-led learning experience driven by young people. The Shakespeare Room depicts people of secondary school age actively scrutinising and interpreting the text; enacting relevant scenes and situations; debating different points of interpretation and exploring historical and contemporary contexts. With a range of capabilities for interactivity and collaboration (incorporating flash-based video learning, integrated social networking tools, a video remixing engine, and most importantly, a highly visual set of tutor-level planning and management tools), The Shakespeare Room is a user-friendly facility that enables ongoing learning and information sharing from middle high school through to post-graduate education levels. This paper details the pedagogical underpinnings and technologies that enable this bold new approach to TEL, so that best practice in the online delivery of Shakespeare content can be shared simultaneously around the globe.