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Uncanny Encounters in Experiential Learning: Designing Residential Study Trips for Students. Dr Anne-Marie Evans & D r Kaley Kramer York ST John University @ Dramevans @ drkaleykramer.
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Uncanny Encounters in Experiential Learning: Designing Residential Study Trips for Students Dr Anne-Marie Evans & Dr Kaley Kramer York ST John University @Dramevans @drkaleykramer
‘If you are lucky enough to have lived in Paris as a young man, then wherever you go for the rest of your life it stays with you, for Paris is a moveable feast’. Ernest Hemingway
The Brief: • To explore connections between internationalisation, employability and enhancement • To consider recent dramatic changes within the sector • To examine ways of reinvigorating literary study
The Grand Tour in the 21st Century • Level 3 student enhancement excursion to Paris • 6 days away: 18th – 23rd January 2014 • Opportunity to engage with literary research in a broader context • Literature as engaging with reality as opposed to merely representation; students can recover the embodied experience produced by and through the acts of writing and reading • Research-based: • Reading Pack to prepare • Meetings to attend • Research tasks to design and carry out
Practicalities: • Finance • Subsidised through departmental budget • Student contribution is less than £200 (travel and accommodation included) • Student selection • Application and interview process • Meetings and Orientation Day • Preparation • Reading Pack • Resourcing • Staff hours captured in AWPM • VLE Site • Risk assessments • Actual planning
The timeline: • August: Staff book rooms for information meetings, interviews, etc. • September: The trip is advertised to all Level Three Literature and Creative Writing students. Application forms are made available online. • October: Information meeting for students. • November. Application deadline, interviews, and allocation of places. Students informed and invited to first group meeting. • December: Reading Pack made available for students. • January: Orientation Day and the Grand Tour. • March: Deadline for students to complete their Research Tasks • May: Selected work is displayed to the public as part of the YSJ Arts and Humanities showcase, Create.
The Research Task: A ‘research activity’ might involve: • Visiting a specific site, museum or gallery that is not already part of the itinerary and writing a short reflective piece on the experience • Writing a creative piece (poem, short story, experimental writing) that explores the experience of being in Paris, or an aspect of Parisian culture • Taking a series of photographs that offer a form of comment on contemporary and/or literary Paris • Writing a travel blog or news article about the trip • Becoming a ‘flaneur’ for the day and writing a reflective piece on the experience of being in another city • Producing a piece of artwork (or a piece of music) about the city • Close-reading any part of the set reading and reflecting on the experience of having visited the site. • This work is not assessed but is included as a requirement of the trip.
Student Responses: • ‘Literature in its natural environment’ • ‘Something has just clicked’ • ‘The highlight of my degree’ • ‘It has inspired me and helped me to realise how important literature and culture is to the world’ • ‘This trip was amazingly educational and I feel that this trip will truly inspire me throughout my studies’ • ‘The reading pack put the city into perspective’