Journal of Academic Development and Education JADE Issue 11 Summer 2019 | Page 6

Highlight #1 Using Kolb's Learning Cycle as a basis for seminar structuring in English literature Abstract Using Kolb's Learning Cycle as a basis for seminar structuring in English literature This paper explores how Kolb’s experiential learning cycle can be used as a way of structuring seminars in English literature in order to bring students towards a greater understanding of literary texts. Using the example of teaching Lord Byron’s poem ‘The Island’, it explains how both students’ understanding of a specific text and their core skills can be developed through a series of structured activities that relate to specific stages of the learning cycle. Author: R. Yearling DOI: doi.org/10.21252/ eza9-7a41 Introduction Contact: [email protected] In this short paper, I wish to reflect on how I have used Kolb’s experiential learning cycle 1 as a way of structuring my seminars, in order to lead students towards a deeper understanding of literary texts. As an example, I will discuss a seminar I taught for the core Level 5 English module Reading Literature, which focused on Byron’s ‘The Island’: a long poem which tells a story based on the mutiny on the Bounty in 1789. This is a text that first year students often find challenging, and when I first taught it, shortly after I began working at Keele, I did not feel that they had really come to grips with it by the end of the session. I therefore decided to revise my approach and try to find new ways of helping students to engage with the material. Keywords: Kolb, Byron, Biggs, English Literature My Intended Learning Outcomes for this seminar were: - To give students practice in close reading texts - To get students to think about the way in which ideas taken from close reading can work as a way of illuminating larger thematic issues in texts. - To get students to reflect on the concepts of gender and heroism, as they relate to Byron’s ‘The Island’. Given the structure of Kolb’s experiential learning cycle, I decided that we would start from the students’ concrete experiences, which in this case were both their experiences of having read the text for that day, and also their experiences of having read or watched other literary or filmic texts in the past. At the start of the seminar, I asked them to tell me what their reactions to the poem were. Several reported that they had had difficulties in understanding the plot and structure of ‘The Island’. 6