Collaborative Teaching and Creative Assignments Using Contemporary Adaptation

Abstract

In this article, we share our perspectives (as teacher and student) on the role of modern adaptations of Chaucer in teaching and assessment, with a particular focus on the role such adaptations play in supporting the use of creative writing-based assignments in a medieval literature course. We describe our experience of an assessment composed of a creative exercise combined with a critical commentary, and discuss how the incorporation of modern adaptations of medieval texts into the medieval literature curriculum underpins and supports this assessment type. Our account demonstrates that the process by which the meaning of literary texts is generated is iterative and collaborative, a point we hope to underscore through our collaboration on this piece. We hope the experience we describe will foreground the value of dialogue in the processes of teaching, assessment, and feedback, and also highlight the role of modern adaptations in supporting students to recognise and articulate the value of their own creative and critical work within a longer tradition of literary and scholarly responses to medieval literature.