Clarifying creative nonfiction through the personal essay

In a recent issue of TEXT, Matthew Ricketson sought to clarify the &lsquo;boundaries between fiction and nonfiction&rsquo;.&nbsp;In his capacity as a teacher of the creative nonfiction form he writes, &lsquo;I have lost count of the number of times, in classes and in submitted work, that students have described a piece of nonfiction as a novel&rsquo;. The confusion thus highlighted is not restricted to Ricketson&rsquo;s journalism students. In our own university&rsquo;s creative writing cohort, students also struggle with difficulties in melding the research methodology of the journalist with the language and form of creative writing required to produce nonfiction stories for a 21st century readership.Currently in Australia creative nonfiction is enthusiastically embraced by publishers and teaching institutions. Works of memoir proliferate in the lists of mainstream publishers, as do anthologies of the essay form. During a time of increasing competition and desire for differentiation between institutions, when graduate outcomes form a basis for marketing university degrees, it is hardly surprising that, increasingly, tertiary writing teachers focus on this genre in their writing programs. A second tension has arisen in higher education more generally, which affects our writing students&rsquo; approaches to tertiary study. The student writers of the 21st century emerge from a digitally literate and socially collaborative generation: the NetGen(eration). From a learner-centric viewpoint, they could be described as time-poor, and motivated by work-integrated learning with its perceived close links to workplace contexts and to writing genres. They seek just-in-time learning to meet their immediate employment needs, which inhibits the development of their capacity to adapt their researching and writing to various genres and audiences. This article examines issues related to moving these NetGen student writers into the demanding and rapidly expanding creative nonfiction market. It is form rather than genre that denotes creative nonfiction and, we argue, it is the unique features of the personal essay, based as it is on doubt, discovery and the writer&rsquo;s personal voice that can be instrumental in teaching creative nonfiction writing to our digitally and socially literate cohort of students.<br /

Designing collaborative e-learning for the net generation

The designer of higher education programs is on the cusp of some very exciting resource development particularly in the area of postgraduate coursework. Part of this is because of the new learner, a millennial or net generation learner who is time-poor, a networker with strong inclinations towards social or community knowledge pooling and a multiple media literacy which is comfortable in virtual worlds and with visual emphasis. The other element is the perceived changing role of the university or higher education in the transfer of knowledge, moving from a transmission or narrative model to learner-centred and performative approaches. This has been highlighted by greater emphasis on experiential learning methodologies, and the development of action learning practices. The nexus of these two influences, the new learner and the higher education response to delivering learning, may be elaborated further from learning theory which seems to be moving beyond social constructivist approaches, or certainly encompassing what is referred to as connectivism.This may be a new theoretical approach, or it could simply be an organic growth in meeting the needs of large numbers of higher education student participants who perceive a degree as a skills-based workplace preparation. Whatever the theoretical underpinning may be, the large numbers of learners moving to postgraduate coursework or more workplace oriented programs and subjects has thrown out the challenge to instructional designers to provide just-in-time, relevant and socially transferred learning with strong creative and imaginative engagement.The case studies incorporated in this paper provide two separate approaches to these challenges - one is a workplace oriented postgraduate team project in a Masters in Communication, the other provides a virtual simulation for developing creative and professional writing skills at postgraduate levels. They both provide perspectives on the net generation learner and collaborative and connected learning models.<br /

Designing blended learning in higher education : the neomillenial learner and mediated immersion

Blended learning as a term and a learning approach is still being refined, at times debated as a legitimate area of research, at times seen as the answer to the conundrum and challenges of the digital learner. Is it the Emperor&rsquo;s new clothes? As Morrison (2003) suggests, blended learning could be seen as an uncertain or unsure strategy, or alternatively a way to find a solution to promises given for e-learning. Three case studies within this paper explore the possibilities of e-learning within a work-based framework. Elements of &lsquo;neomillenial learning styles&rsquo; (Dede in Educause Quarterly vol 28 No 1 2005) reflected by students in postgraduate coursework programs provided the challenge and stimulation of designing and facilitating e-learning components, incorporating experiential or action learning with &lsquo;associational&rsquo; approaches rather than linear ones. The journey to virtual simulations such as the postgraduate Newlandia incorporates the learner perspective, or how to activate neomillenial learning styles; blended learning with online and face-to-face community activist groups working for solutions to a water problem; and a virtual scenario which can appeal to and engage an internationalised user group. Do Dede&rsquo;s neomillenial learners synthesise and process experiences rather than (or as well as) information? Is this mediated immersion a part of Newlandia&rsquo;s applicability to the modern learner? The student teams of community activists and project managers described in the case studies incorporate a potent mix of learning styles, nationalities and backgrounds, expectations, interpersonal and technical skills and indicate a trend in millennial learners towards a community of knowledge which is collaborative, mobile and group-focused.<br /

Social entrepreneurship and experiential learning

Social entrepreneurship is a growing, but currently ill-defined area of innovation and business development. It is about accountability not just to commercial imperatives but to the wide range of stakeholders in a social enterprise, potentially an area of great tension. Social responsibility is about a commitment to society, entrepreneurship is usually understood to provide a business outlook on the enterprise &ndash; it needs to be sustainable commercially.To educate the modern or millennial learner (born after about 1980 and grappling with burgeoning youth needs for creative employment development) into developing a small to medium enterprise with a social responsibility, modern postgraduate coursework programs have looked closely at experiential learning. This provides a performative learning through transforming theory into applied situations. The workplace based projects used for the postgraduate programs are effective immersive learning. This paper will include a case study of two postgraduate coursework units New Ventures in Creative Enterprise, and Building Creative Teams, part of a Masters in Communication/Creative Enterprise. These provide experiential learning about strategic planning for startup creative businesses, and work-based projects which build on interpersonal skills for ongoing success. </div

Taking risks- experiential learning and the writing student

The role of a professional and creative writing degree is to provide resources, structured workshops, professional interactions - and the potential for creative risk. Opportunities for risk, within the structured environment of the university, challenge the individual\u27s perspectives and judgements, as well as their ability to analyse and to reflect on their writing and creative practices.From this starting point the authors, both writing industry practitioners and academics, have developed experiential projects with the aim of transforming their teaching practice from a model of narrative hierarchies of knowledge to learning through performativity, social correctedness and immersive workplace learning.As the case studies illustrate, this transitional approach has enabled our millennial learners more confidently to take risks, accept challenges and transform their understanding of their own knowledge, skills and identities.<br /

Writer-as-narrator: engaging the debate around the (un)reliable narrator in memoir and the personal essay

Subjective and personal forms of nonfiction writing are enjoying exponential popularity in English language publishing currently, as an interested public engages with &lsquo;true&rsquo; stories of society and culture. Yet a paradox exists at the centre of this form of writing. As readers, we want to know who the writer is and what she has to tell us. Yet as writers we use a persona, a constructed character, a narrator who is only partially the writer, to deliver the narrative. How is a writer able to convey &lsquo;true&rsquo; stories that are inherently reliant on memory, within a constructed narrative persona?We find a &lsquo;gap&rsquo; between the writer and the narrator/protagonist on the page, an empowered creative space in which composition occurs, facilitating a balance between the facts and lived experiences from which &lsquo;true&rsquo; stories are crafted, and the acknowledged fallibility of human memory. While the gap between writer and writer-as-narrator provides an enabling space for creative composition, it also creates space for the perception of unreliability. The width of this gap, we argue, is crucial. Only if the gap is small, if writer and writer-as-narrator share a set of passionately held values, can the writer-as-narrator become a believable entity, satisfying the reader with the &lsquo;truth&rsquo; of their story

Timescales of dynamic stall development on a vertical-axis wind turbine blade

Vertical-axis wind turbines are great candidates to diversify wind energy technology, but their aerodynamic complexity limits industrial deployment. To improve the efficiency and lifespan of vertical axis wind turbines, we desire data-driven models and control strategies that take into account the timing and duration of subsequent events in the unsteady flow development. Here, we aim to characterise the chain of events that leads to dynamic stall on a vertical-axis wind turbine blade and to quantify the influence of the turbine operation conditions on the duration of the individual flow development stages. We present time-resolved flow and unsteady load measurements of a wind turbine model undergoing dynamic stall for a wide range of tip-speed ratios. Proper orthogonal decomposition is used to identify dominant flow structures and to distinguish six characteristic stall stages: the attached flow, shear-layer growth, vortex formation, upwind stall, downwind stall, and flow reattachment stage. The timing and duration of the individual stages are best characterised by the non-dimensional convective time. Dynamic stall stages are also identified based on aerodynamic force measurements. Most of the aerodynamic work is done during the shear-layer growth and the vortex formation stage which underlines the importance of managing dynamic stall on vertical-axis wind turbines