Abstract
Shakespeare classes within Australian universities are often filled with students who must take them as required units rather than through a genuine desire to learn about early modern theatre and its associated theoretical, historical, and textual contexts. Thus a challenge for university teachers is to engage students by creating innovative learning experiences that allow them to explore the content in ways they find interesting. Twinned with such engagement is the need to demonstrate how and why Shakespeare Studies retain critical import today through the plays’ themes, characters, aphorisms, significance in popular culture, etc. At Murdoch University, WA, we include three Shakespeare units in our English and Creative Writing major: Shakespeare and Contemporaries, Shakespeare’s Monsters and this year, a final year showcase production of Much Ado About Nothing in Acting and Producing for the Stage. Within these units, we have designed curricula, including topics, themes, texts, additional resources, learning activities, electronic resources, and student-centred assessments to meet the diverse needs of students from different majors (including English and Creative Writing, Theatre and Drama, and Education). In particular, we have introduced negotiated assessment as each unit’s final assignment. This paper thus comparatively examines the implementation of these strategies within these units. We focus on how negotiated assessments contribute to authentic learning, as well as how they fit within the Universal Design for Learning framework. To substantiate our specific strategies for Shakespeare Studies in our contemporary historical moment, our paper moreover shares examples of work produced by students, with their consent, from Shakespeare and Contemporaries Shakespeare’s Monsters and Acting and Producing for the Stage in a bid to elucidate how negotiated assessment can meet unit learning outcomes.