[Pre-U] 2020 A-Level Literature Symposium

Written by Vadiveloo Anandaratnam, Cheong Mei Xi, Stephanie Chua, & Kenneth Gwee

1. What was the event about?

The A-Level Literature Symposium is an annual professional learning platform for A-Level Literature teachers, featuring sharing sessions and book talks relevant to the subject.

The theme for the 2020 Symposium was 'What’s Past is Prologue: Examining Literary Legacies', which was inspired by Shakespeare’s The Tempest. It focused on the notion of literary legacies and traditions, and why these remain instrumental in the teaching and learning of Literature.

2. Why we innovated

The 2020 A-Level Literature Symposium marked an important milestone for our team, as we decided to conduct the event online due to Covid-19 restrictions. We proposed an e-symposium, comprising a plenary lecture on Shakespeare by Dr Walter Lim from NUS, as well as three concurrent online book talks on Zoom.

3. How we innovated

The Covid-19 situation and the online nature of the Symposium necessitated closer monitoring of processes and greater attention to detail. For instance, in view of safe distancing measures, the distribution of the Symposium packs (comprising reading materials, stationery, and a tote bag) had to be sent to all 82 participants in advance. Our team had to coordinate the punctual delivery of these packs to all the junior colleges and centralised institutes.

The concurrent online book talks also had to be organised with a clear awareness of the various timetabling constraints some schools had to contend with, especially in the lead-up to their respective preliminary exams. Some teacher participants could only attend the Symposium after they had completed their classroom or consultation obligations. Thus, in order to minimise disruptions, our team chose to set up breakout rooms with individual Zoom meeting IDs, which would allow these teachers easier access to their preferred book talks and eliminate the risk of having participants stranded in the virtual waiting room.

4. What we learnt

The move towards an e-symposium called for greater versatility and coordination amongst out team. More importantly, we had to work within a tighter time frame, since transiting to the online mode demanded the enactment of more rigorous and novel processes.