Aims of the course:
- To explore a range of styles and techniques in writing about nature.
- To develop participants’ skills in observing and capturing nature in words.
- To increase participants’ awareness and appreciation of nature.
Course content overview:
- This course offers students fresh perspectives on producing creative nature writing.
- Students will learn how to sharpen their senses and heighten awareness and understanding of wildlife.
- The course will show how nature writing can be ‘enlivened’, making it real to the reader
Welcome week (Week 0)
By studying this week students should have:
- Become familiar with navigating around the VLE and from VLE to links and back
- Tested their ability to access files and sorted out any problems with the help of the Helpdesk
- Learnt how to look for, assess and reference internet resources
- Used forums to introduce themselves to other students
- Contributed to a discussion forum to introduce themselves to other students and discuss why they are interested in the course, what they hope to get out of their studies and also to respond to news sent out on behalf of the tutor
Week 1: What's the story?
By studying this week students should have:
- An understanding of the multiple possibilities in constructing narratives from observations of nature
Week 2: A feel for nature - how to harness your senses
By studying this week students should have:
- Used their senses to improve their descriptive powers, especially using the under-developed senses of touch and smell
Week 3: Facts are our friends
By studying this week students should have:
- An understanding that prior knowledge can help them with selection of subjects
- An ability to use facts to enhance their perception of what they have observed
- An understanding that background knowledge can contextualise natural history writing
Week 4: Landscapes, places and details: a question of scale
By studying this week students should have:
- Learned how to describe places from the very big to the very small
- Examined the descriptive language that goes into building images of locations
- Experimented with portraying such places
Week 5: Nature and the self
By studying this week students should have:
- Understood how writers can indicate their feelings and state of mind through nature
- Discovered how the narrator can - through humour and emotion - gain the reader's empathy
- Weigh up the pros and cons of projecting the self into nature writing
Week 6: What next?
- Assessment of student learning
- Assessment of student satisfaction
- Encouragement of further study
Schedule (this course is completed entirely online):
Orientation Week: 7-13 July 2025
Teaching Weeks: 14 July-17 August 2025
Feedback Week: 18-24 August 2025
Each week of an online course is roughly equivalent to 2-3 hours of classroom time. On top of this, participants should expect to spend roughly 2-3 hours reading material, etc., although this will vary from person to person.
While they have a specific start and end date and will follow a weekly schedule (for example, week 1 will cover topic A, week 2 will cover topic B), our tutor-led online courses are designed to be flexible and as such would normally not require participants to be online for a specific day of the week or time of the day (although some tutors may try to schedule times where participants can be online together for web seminars, which will be recorded so that those who are unable to be online at certain times are able to access material).
Unless otherwise stated, all course material will be posted on the Virtual Learning Environment (VLE) so that they can be accessed at any time throughout the duration of the course and interaction with your tutor and fellow participants will take place through a variety of different ways which will allow for both synchronous and asynchronous learning (discussion boards,etc).
A Certificate of Participation will be awarded to participants who contribute constructively to weekly discussions and exercises/assignments for the duration of the course.
Course textbook/required sources
- No textbook is required reading but students would be advised to use the great outdoors as a source of inspiration, ideas and as a writing laboratory.
- Students should read widely from nature writing – both historic and contemporary. A suggested reading list will be provided.
What our students say
“It was impressive how thoroughly the content could be fit into six short weeks! I learned quite a bit in that period of time, and I hope to continue with more courses.”
"One greatly appreciates a tutor that is highly sensitive and with high academic understanding of his field, beyond merely a knowledge of books. His inclusion of a section on Nature and the Self is a noteworthy tour de force which opened up many new avenues for me and, by comments made by other participants, for others."
“Derek’s very fast feedback on our exercises was much-appreciated (and spot-on). His personality also came across in his comments and the respect and care he showed for the students and their work was evident.”
