Peer Review

Modern Poetry

Material Detail page

Reviewed:: Feb 7, 2019 by English

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Ratings

Overall Rating:

Content Quality:

Effectiveness:

Ease of Use:

Overview:

This course from Open Yale University and taught by Langdom Hemmer covers the body of modern poetry, its characteristic techniques, concerns, and major practitioners. The authors discussed range from Yeats, Eliot, and Pound, to Stevens, Moore, Bishop, and Frost with additional lectures on the poetry of World War One, Imagism, and the Harlem Renaissance. Diverse methods of literary criticism are employed, such as historical, biographical, and gender criticism.

Type of Material:

inactive online Course

Recommended Uses:

Lectures and course materials are Creative Commons 3.0 licensed and could be shown in class or assigned as part of homework.

Users must have a high level of English language skills to fully understand the literary works assigned to this course takers and to understand the terminology of the professor.

Technical Requirements:

video files are available in as mp3 or mov files or transcripts in html

Identify Major Learning Goals:

The online course takers will gain knowledge about modern poetry. Professor Hammer includes in his course materials from Yeats, Eliot, and Pound, to Stevens, Moore, Bishop, and Frost with additional lectures on the poetry of World War One, Imagism, and the Harlem Renaissance. Several fashions of literary criticism are provided with the course materials, such as historical, biographical, and gender criticism.

Target Student Population:

College General Ed, College Lower Division

Prerequisite Knowledge or Skills:

College level reading skills and basic knowledge of poetry are required.

Content Quality

Rating:
Strengths:: Individual lectures by Dr. Langdom Hammer are provided along with some handouts and sample assignments
Concerns:: The course does not include any literary works of femal poets and primarily focuses on cannonical poets from Western traditions.

Potential Effectiveness as a Teaching Tool

Rating:
Strengths:: Professor Hammer exerts efforts to utilize uncomplicated terms in his lectures. He even explains the principal poetic and literary terms, so all the course takers may not get discouraged from comprehending the deep and far-fetched dimensions of the literary works.
Concerns:: Non-English speakers may encounter difficulties in interpreting the significance of the poetic devices of the literary works of the course. This might be aroused due to the cultural differences between the English-speaking cultures and the non-English-speaking cultures. The videos contain references to visual aids which cannot be seen due to the placement of the camera during filming.

Ease of Use for Both Students and Faculty

Rating:

Strengths:

All the elements of success to make this course useful for its takers. For instance, the videos of professor Hammer's lectures are annexed with transcripts. These videos are offered on the website with different quality for those who have a weak internet connection. The lectures can also be accessed as MP3 recordings just in case some users could not play the videos. The handouts of each lecture are provided as PDF documents on the course webpages, so all the information of the course is complete.

Concerns:

The Copyright at the bottom of page indicates that "most of the lectures and course material are licensed under a CC 3.0 license"; however, there is no indication on individual lectures as to whether each one is CC 3.0 licensed. All handouts are clearly indicated as CC 3.0 licensed.

The link on the homepage which allows all of the course materials to be downloaded at once does not work properly, and the materials are invalid through it. They are advised to refer to the materials on each webpage, because they can accessed on any browser painlessly.

Other Issues and Comments:: This is video of an instructor's lectures and includes the slides that he shows to his class; however, those slides cannot be seen in the video as the camera is focused solely on the instructor.
Creative Commons: