Project Background
Massive Fiction is a podcast and creative writing learning community developed by our client, Marion Jensen.
Client Problem
Marion wants to get his Massive Fiction project into schools, but he currently lacks ways for teachers to be able to use his content in a practical way. The current layout of content is difficult to implement into a typical classroom. Two particular reasons for this issue is that the content is too long and teachers are expected to design their own lessons.
Client Needs
Marion’s goal is to support budding writers by providing instruction to help them increase confidence and practice creative writing skills. Marion has asked us to package the instructional content on his website in a way which is easily usable for creative writing teachers to implement in the classroom, leading more widespread usage.
Design Challenge
Our first challenge was to decide who our target audience would be – creative writing teachers or their students? After much back-and-forth, the team agreed we would need to target both. We began to design a system to pull content from http://www.massivefiction.com and present it as multiple learning modules.
This project also challenged us to provide an explanation to both creative writing teachers and their students on how fan fiction can provide opportunities for learning, practicing, and mastering creative writing skills.
Our aim was to excite, and instruct our learners on the benefits of using fan fiction, and more specifically Massive Fiction, as a creative writing tool. Our design challenge involves selecting and packaging instructional content from http://www.massivefiction.com so it can be easily accessed by classroom teachers and their students.
Instructional Approach
Massive Fiction learning modules employ an approach in which users build background knowledge through explicit instruction about writing strategies, engage in guided practice opportunities to clarify confusion, and apply newly learned knowledge in structured writing experiences. The instructional content will include examples of how fan fiction can provide a scaffolded approach to creative writing.
Our goal is to use the information from Massive Fiction to package and create instructional content that English Language Arts teachers can easily implement into their curriculum. The pre-packaged modular format allows learners to access skills they need on-demand without having to jump through hoops of learning information that doesn’t apply to their needs. Skills and strategies are presented upfront, and the instructional sequence is always the same, so users are aware of what they are getting into before they even begin. This sequence of explicit instruction, guided practice, and application are strategically sequenced to ultimately create a “toolbox” for learners to draw from when engaging in their own creative writing endeavors
Jeremy Tarshis 