Katherine Wright

A brave new world

NIU expert on Shakespeare creates award-winning online course

by Tom Parisi

Learning Shakespeare in cyberspace? Katherine Wright says there's method to the madness.

The veteran NIU instructor of English will teach an online Shakespeare course next spring geared for both traditional students and adult learners interested in boning up on the Bard. The course will cover nine of his plays.

"My hope is that students will leave the course with a lifelong interest in Shakespeare and the theater," says Wright, whose specialization is Shakespeare in performance.

"Putting the course online makes Shakespeare more accessible to the layperson," Wright adds. "Online visual and audio aids demystify the language and connect Shakespearean themes to our times."

Wright and her teaching assistant, recent NIU graduate Mark Burke, developed the award-winning interactive Web site for the general education, three-credit course, which was piloted in 2001. It received rave reviews and attracted an eclectic mix of learners from on and off campus, including teachers, homemakers, traditional students, business executives and even an Air Force veteran.

"The rich mix of students is a great advantage because you get lots of different perspectives during online discussions," Wright says. "It's really a different experience to read Shakespeare when you're 45, compared to when you're 20."

The password-protected Web site for the course integrates text with audio, photos, video clips and interactive graphics. The site won top honors in NIU's Best of the Web contest earlier this year. "Shakespeare was the winner," Wright insists. "It's hard to go wrong when you're working with arguably the best literature in the English language."

Shakespeare is right at home in cyberspace, she said.

"The works of Shakespeare were meant to be performed, to be seen and to be heard," she says. "Learning about the Bard online might be likened to old wine in new bottles."

Students who aren't computer gurus need not be fearful of the technology. "If they can do e-mail," Wright says, "they can do anything in this course."

Wright introduces students to plays that span the Bard's early, middle and late career.

The selections also provide a mixture of comedy, tragedy, history and romance - the four genres in which Shakespeare wrote. The course is almost entirely online, but students will meet on three Saturday mornings at the NIU-Hoffman Estates campus and again to attend a production of "The Winter's Tale" in Chicago.

"It's important to meet students in person," Wright says. "If you never meet people, they don't feel as committed to the course. On the other hand, when students feel comfortable with who's around them, it's easy to build a community of learners."

While there are no exams, Wright says the online course is every bit as rigorous as a traditional class. A typical week includes a play reading, online discussion, online group work and an assignment consisting of a two-page, reader-response paper. Wright also challenges students with Shakespeare trivia each week. During the final class meeting, small groups of students perform scenes from the plays they've studied.

Wright, of DeKalb, joined the NIU faculty in 1986 and teaches courses in Shakespeare. She also taught an online course on literary classics this past spring and is planning a future online course on Illinois authors, such as Carl Sandburg, Gwendolyn Brooks and Ernest Hemingway.

Online Shakespeare can be found in the NIU course catalogue in the section for "Off Campus Classes" under English 315. It is sponsored by the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences' External Programming office. Registration is ongoing through Dec. 10, with late registration beginning on Dec. 16. The course begins Saturday, Feb. 1.

For more information, call 753-6642 or email Wright at kwright@niu.edu.

11/18/2002