Teacher Rating, Master of Creative Writing

Hi all,

I completed a Master Of Creative Writing in June this year at the University of Canberra. I very much enjoyed the challenge and my writing improved. Some of the teachers were very good, some not so good, and I rate them below.

Belle Alderman (Writing For Young People).

	Rating
Feedback	Excellent
Communication	Excellent
Written Materials	Excellent
Subject Knowledge	Excellent

Belle was always quick to offer quality feedback to my questions and posts. She constructed a wonderful website for the course.

Belle Alderman was appointed Member of the Order of Australia in 2007 for her services to children’s literature as a researcher and mentor to emerging writers and illustrators. Her course of Writing for Young People won an award for an online course the year I completed it. Belle is a children’s book editor and publisher. I thoroughly enjoyed Writing for Young People.

Overall Rating: Excellent.

Greg Battye (Interactive Writing).

	Rating
Feedback	Very Poor
Communication	Very Poor
Written Materials	Poor
Subject Knowledge	Poor

Greg gave very little feedback because for much of the course he was absent or ill, which seems to be a reoccurring problem for the years after I did the subject. His feedback on my final major project gave me little clue as to what I had done right or wrong.

The main text book for the course “Hot Text: Web Writing That Works” by Jonathon and Lisa Price, New Riders 2002, consisted of advice on how a website should be formatted, but it had the irritating habit of saying that creative writers could ignore their advice. Greg’s written notes for the course were sparse and mostly repeated the text.

We used Dreamweaver which is very frustrating Web Design software, it is very limited in what it can do.

http://www.canberra.edu.au/schools/creative-communication/staff-
profiles/docs/greg-battye

The url above gives no indication of Greg’s experience writing fiction or interactive stories. I could find no fiction or fiction credits of his on the web.

I think I would probably have been better off forgetting about the content of my website for this subject and just gone for an interactive look: in other words style over substance.

Master of Communication students were also taking this subject, so we had a choice of doing a business webpage or an interactive story. I would probably have been better off trashing my creativeness and doing a webpage for a phantom business instead of the interactive story at www.grahamclements.com.

I think Greg looks forward to the day when academics no longer have to interact with students.

Overall Rating: Poor.

Alaine Chanter (Cultural Theory and Practice)

	Rating
Feedback	Very Good
Communication	Passable
Written Materials	Passable
Subject Knowledge	Good

Cultural Theory and Practice was a subject that had nothing much to do with the writing process. I felt it was just included in the Master of Creative Writing to make up the numbers.

Miscommunication between Alaine and myself reduced the effectiveness of my first assignment.

A lot of the materials we read were very hard to understand, coming from French philosophers who have no idea on how to write a simple sentence. On radio national a tutor in creative writing at the Lismore campus of a university said that if these writers handed in essays written in the same impenetrable style as their books, he would hand them back and tell them to rewrite them. Fortunately, I am left wing – being one of only six students out of 300 to complete Marxian Economics in my third year of an economics degree – so I more or less already thought what these writers were trying to say.

http://www.canberra.edu.au/schools/creative-communication/staff-profiles/docs/alaine-chanter

See the above url for more information.

Overall Rating: Good.

Moya Costello (Creative Writing).

	Rating
Feedback	Very Good
Communication	Very Good
Written Materials	Good
Subject Knowledge	Very Good

A lot was going on in my life during this subject and I was lucky to survive it and get a good mark.

I found Moya’s feedback thoughtful and therefore useful, especially her comments on my major assignment.

I think the subject’s materials contained too many examples of feminist writing. I found myself thinking that if I was teaching the subject I might be tempted to load it up with science-fiction, but then my sense of equality to other genres, and my awareness that not all people are into science-fiction, would have stopped me.

http://home.iprimus.com.au/jeffwill/moya/

Moya has two short story collections and a novel published by major publishers, as well as short stories published in reputable publications like Meanjin and Heat.

Overall rating: very good.

Susan Thwaites (Scriptwriting).

	Rating
Feedback	Very Good
Communication	Good
Written Materials	Very Good
Subject Knowledge	Good

I feel I was very lucky to come up with a great idea for a ten minute film script that made up the major portion of the marks for this subject, so I ended up having a stress free, enjoyable time during this subject.

Susan sometimes took a while to respond to posts.

I am still yet to finish one of the four recommended texts, but I have found them all very useful, and not just for scriptwriting.

http://www.canberra.edu.au/divisions/comedu/online-distance-courses/creative-writing/staff-profiles

The above url has information on her qualifications, but none on any scripts which have been produced on film or television.

Overall rating: very good

Jennifer Webb (Freelance Writing Project).

	Rating
Feedback	Poor
Communication	Very Poor
Written Materials	Very Poor
Subject Knowledge	Passable

This subject was only included in the Master of Creative Writing for 2007 because of changes the university was making to the course (more about that later).

My judgement of this subject and J Webb are heavily influenced by her comments and grade on my major assignment for this subject. When I rang her seeking clarification of her comments, she behaved condescendingly towards me, and then failed to answer the majority of questions I emailed to her. She then decided to hide behind the Communication Department’s policy of not remarking an assignment unless the student was at risk of failing the subject. As I was in no danger of failing, I took the issue of her failure to clarify her comments to the Head of the School Greg Battye and then the Deputy Vice Chancellor, Sharon Bell. Both failed to get clarification from J Webb, and failed to answer some additional concerns I then had. I have since contacted the ACT Ombudsman and hope they will get some answers out of the university.

I have said all along that I could take the mark, a high credit, if J Webb’s comments made sense. They don’t, and they indicate to me someone who has rushed the reading of my major assignment for this subject.

One of the questions I wanted answered was why the assignment was only marked by one person: a person who could have been ill, tired, rushed for time or affected by drugs when marking it; and a person who could have limited knowledge of short fiction and genre writing.

I asked the university what J Webb’s fiction writing experience is. They didn’t answer, so I went searching and here is what I found:

http://www.griffith.edu.au/school/art/text/april04/webb.htm

This url contains a piece of fictocriticism about J Webb struggling for time to complete all her life activities, including her university commitments.

www.xcp.bfn.org/contributors.html

The above contributors note in Streetnotes says that before 2001 J Webb had published short fiction and poems in literary journals such as Imago: New Writing, LiNQ and Refractory Girl (Australia), New England Review and The Amethyst Review .

http://xcp.bfn.org/webb.html

The above url contains an okay short story, “The Petty Pace”. The way J Webb changes character pov mid-paragraph during the story is clever.

http://www.griffith.edu.au/school/art/text/april07/costello_rev.htm

The above url contains an underwhelming review of J Webb’s short story collection, Ways of Getting By, and her poetry collection. The review comments on the poor presentation of the collection by its “small press publisher”. Moya Costello was the reviewer and it was printed in Text, a magazine co-edited by Jen Webb.

Finally, the written materials for the subject often contradicted J Webb’s posts and seemed hastily put together.

Overall Rating: Poor

Conclusion

I have rated one instructor excellent, two very good, one good, and two poor.

Note: The Master of Creative has a different format now. There are seven subjects. As stated above, Freelance Writing Project was only a temporary addition to it. J Webb now instructs on two subjects, Creative Writing (replacing the much better instructor Moya Costello), and a new subject called Reading Media (it appears to be another fill in subject concerning the history of media). Independent Study, the subject replacing Freelance Writing Project is to be taken by Sally Burford. Unfortunately Moya Costello seems to have disappeared from the course.