Distance Learning

Bard Gets Online Treatment in U Colorado Boulder Hybrid Course

• By Dian Schaffhauser
• 08/23/16

Just in time to honor the 400th anniversary of the death of the Bard, a new hybrid certificate at the University of Colorado Boulder tackles the topic of William Shakespeare in an immersive experience. The first course, a three-credit graduate-level survey class, can be taken online or on campus.

Then everybody will come together for two weeks during a university-hosted Shakespeare festival, where they'll participate in small group activities to learn from cast members and English, theater and dance faculty and earn an additional six credits. Those on-site days will immerse students in acting, directing, stage combat, script reading, Elizabethan culture, rehearsal visits, classes on how to teach Shakespeare and related topics.

Within two months of attending that, students will be required to write a 15- to 20-page project that analyzes a single play from a teaching, acting, reading or directing perspective.

According to the university, this is the first "applied" Shakespeare program in the country. The credits earned here can be applied to a master's degree in applied Shakespeare currently under development.

"This will be an incredible, immersive and action-packed dive into the Bard of Avon's work," said Tim Orr, an instructor in the program and producing artistic director of the Colorado Shakespeare Festival, in an article about the certificate.

Registration is open until Nov. 15, 2016.