How you design your course is so open and flexible that it becomes simultaneously freeing and constraining.  The key is to find an approach that works for you and the people you collaborate with on a daily basis. 

There are many right ways to design a Language and Literature course.  Right now, I’ve posted two course outlines on the site.  You can find them here.  They are much more traditional in nature, but will give you an excellent starting point for thinking about how to design your new course. 

This first approach is perhaps the simplest.  It focuses on the areas of exploration in a very straightforward manner.  It’s a clean plan of action and easy to implement.  The cons include the lack of choice and the lack of integration or fluidity between the areas of exploration.  In essence, you begin with “Readers, writers and texts,” move to “Time and space” and end on “Intertextuality” over the two year course syllabus.

The second course outline follows the seven guiding concepts in the course and use them to frame the units of study.  In this course design, two or three of the concepts interact with each other and provide a focus for study.  Of course, what I’ve written implies that the concepts are divorced from the areas of exploration (and they aren’t).  But at some point, you have to get your head around it all, and this should help.      

Two weeks from now, I’ll post one or two more course outlines that are much more creative, flexible and open in nature.  There’s a lot of freedom, but that can be daunting.  I’ll hopefully show how you can deal with this tension and still get the balance right.