Sessions become available on Monday morning each week. While there are set deadlines for posting your work and giving feedback to fellow classmates, our 24/7 digital campus means you can work through the course materials at your own pace. This course is flexible, with no pre-recordings or live classes. All the interaction is via the online forums, so you can dip in and out, fitting study around your work or family commitments, and making it easy to participate from anywhere in the world. See our FAQs for more information on the learning journey and how we teach.
Session 1: Introduction – What is therapeutic and reflective writing and how can it be used? This session will introduce you to the genre, the course and to one another through a series of practical assignments, readings and writing exercises.
Session 2: Journal Writing – What are journals and how can they be used creatively and therapeutically? We will explore this question and how to use expressive writing effectively through a series of tutor-led writing exercises and reflections.
Session 3: Biblio-Poetry Therapy – The practice of biblio-poetry therapy includes reading and responding to texts as a way of exploring our lives. This session will introduce some of the theory of biblio-poetry therapy and how it has developed into a distinct practice, and explore a number of classic poetry therapy texts and exercises.
Session 4: Writing Your Self – We will focus on how the material of our personal experience can be transformed into fiction, drama and memoir. We will look at how shaping expressive writing into something more formal can increase a sense of mastery and enable transformation.
Session 5: Reflective Writing and Practice – We’ll consider what we mean by reflective writing and its relationship with reflective practice and other forms of therapeutic writing for educational or professional development as well as transformation in our personal lives.
Session 6: Writing, Metaphor and Coaching – Metaphor has the power to transform our thinking through coaching and writing. You will be invited to engage in a series of exercises and reflections using a range of methods including the ‘clean language’ coaching model.
Session 7: Writing in Groups – We will focus on therapeutic writing in groups and how it offers such a rich and nuanced opportunity for personal growth. We will explore the reasons for this through some key texts and theories. There will be opportunities to discuss facilitation skills as well as the process of being in writing groups.
Session 8: Creating Your Future – We will draw the course to a close with some final writing and reflections on your personal writing journeys and individual portfolios. We’ll look at the many ways you can take your learning and reflective-writing experience forward.
At the end of the course, you will be well prepared to move onto our follow-on course Running Writing Workshops.
