JISC

Final report

Overview

Teaching poetry is an acknowledged area of difficulty at both secondary and tertiary levels in English Literature. The central problem is how to convey the importance of poetic techniques with a minimum of numbing repetition, and with a maximum of interaction and engagement. Poetiks is an attractive, highly-functional web application that supports users in marking up poems, helping them to understand key aspects of poetry such as scansion and phonemic patterning, and sharing responses in class or online. Alongside worked examples, Poetiks delivers instant feedback, minimises basic errors and guides students towards deeper understanding of poetry.

Aims and objectives

The central aim of Poetiks was to promote interest in, and love of, poetic technique in the Web 2.0 generation.

The aims were:

• to highlight the generic distinctiveness of poetic as a verbal art.
• to support the learning, teaching and assessment of specific poetic techniques such as metre, phonemic patterning and lineation.
• to provide pedagogical and functional elements that can be scaled up and grown over time.
• to allow customisation by users, enabling them to add, remove and alter layers.
• to promote rich annotation of the poem by individuals or groups for use in lectures, groupwork and assessment.

Project methodology

The project manager Greg Garrard consulted with lecturers, teachers, students and poetry fanatics in order to establish a broad-based and comprehensive user needs analysis. From that, a hierarchical and prioritised software specification was developed, which identified immediate and longer-term objectives.

Anthony Head led the design of the Poetiks graphic user interface and functions.

Lorna Smith advised on pedagogical enhancements and secondary level user needs.

Andy Bevan undertook software development in accordance with the specification, and amended and enhanced it during the evaluation phases.

Mark Hayward facilitated gathering of student feedback.

Anticipated outputs and outcomes

Tangible deliverables were:

1. Poetiks web application, including (at minimum) Rhythm, Phonemic Pattern, Lineation, Rhetoric layers.
2. Two interim reports and a final report.
3. JISC-hosted project webpage.
4. BSU-hosted project website.
5. Three worked examples of annotated poems.
6. Interim and final project evaluations.
7. Technical and pedagogical documentation.

Technology / Standards used

• UML 2.0
• HTML XHTML 1.1
• CSS 2.1
• Adobe Flash CS4
• ActionScript 3.0
• Adobe Flash Player 10.0
• PHP 5.0
• MySQL 5.1