Classics at the Hamburg Open Online University : Three Examples of eLearning (original) (raw)
Related papers
Journal of Archaeology and Education, 2022
In this paper we present an overview of the Ancient Cities project’s outcomes and experiences with producing and testing digital educational material in the field of archaeology. In the first part, the Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) Discovering Greek & Roman Cities is introduced with respect to its target audiences and learning objectives, the ways in which it was disseminated to the target audiences, and how its structure and learning material were developed. Based on several questionnaires answered by the participants and user data from the MOOC platform itself, we were able to collect comprehensive information on the demography of the participants, their expectations, and their experiences. These data allow us to draw conclusions about the opportunities and difficulties of open education in the historical humanities. In the second part, we show how the course’s materials were successfully implemented in academic teaching at the Panthéon-Sorbonne University, the University of Paris-Saclay (UVSQ), and the University of Pennsylvania. These examples highlight how smaller academic fields in the humanities can design and enhance their respective teaching environments in the digital age.
Using and Sharing Online Resources in History, Classics and Archaeology
This publication marks a significant moment in the commitment of our Subject Centre to help colleagues who seek to extend, in a challenging, rigorous and imaginative way, the use of e-learning in their academic activities. It enables us not only to look back over the work which has gone on in our Subject Centre during the first Phase of the Joint Information Systems Committee Distributed e-Learning Programme, but also to harness that experience and the manifest enthusiasm of colleagues in order to plan our activities for Phase 2 of the DeL Programme. The Subject Centre is enormously grateful to the staff of the Projects for the energy and commitment which they have shown during Phase 1, and to the JISC and the Higher Education Academy for their funding and for their nurturing of our work.
An e-Learning platform for self-paced learning for Greek Paleography
… on Advances in …, 2005
Today all around the world are taking place efforts for the preservation of antique documents and valuable manuscripts, which constitute a part of our vast artistic and cultural heritage. Could such an effort contribute to the preservation of manuscripts and simultaneously be used for educational purposes? That is the goal of the e-learning system that is presented in this paper. The content of this e-learning system is a meeting point of the past and the future, providing historic content, taking advantage of the new technologies with an original and interactive educational way. The system aims to provide fundamental knowledge to scholars in the Greek Paleography of the Byzantine era, through the processed presentation of authentic manuscripts taken from "The Book of Jove", and through interactive and multiform lessons. This paper has been supported by Net Media Lab.
Shaking Off the Dust: Creating Engaging Methods for Online Ancient Language Teaching
Shaking Off the Dust: Creating Engaging Methods for Online Ancient Language Teaching, 2021
This paper was given at Menntavika 2021. The unprecedented Covid-19 pandemic situation during the academic year 2020 forced many schools and universities to transition to online teaching in a short time. As a result, many students and teachers who spend a significant time in daily virtual meetings experience symptoms of exhaustion and stress. Due to the technological advantages made possible by web conferencing services teachers worldwide were enabled to think creatively and use various strategies and methods than would be applied in a classroom. The experience gained from this so-called emergency remote teaching has shown that virtual language classes present themselves with new, unanticipated challenges which need to be addressed in order to make online language teaching viable not only as a response to a crisis but to fit the future needs of an increasingly digital world. The transition of ancient language teaching online proves particularly more difficult than the teaching of modern languages, as traditional methods often focus on grammar and translation exercises rather than an interactive exchange. As opposed to the teaching of modern languages which offers a variety of interactive teaching methods, classical languages are most often taught using structural approaches. Although it proves per se effective for the study of written languages, the nature of this method makes it difficult to be used in online classes. The missing face-to-face interaction in online classrooms makes it even more difficult for the passive nature of classes which rely heavily on grammar and reading exercises, as is the case in ancient language teaching. Yet, the most commonly practiced methods in the teaching of classical languages have at its core not been changed for decades. The immediate need for the teaching of ancient languages in the digital age calls for a solid framework and active, engaging, and reliable methods that make online teaching sustainable for the long term. These issues naturally lead to the following questions: 1. What methods keep students engaged in online classes? 2. What methods prove to be useful in the teaching of classical languages? 3. How can approaches to the teaching of classical languages be transitioned successfully to online teaching? As such, this paper seeks to fill the gap by combining two relevant current issues and explore both interactive methods in the teaching of ancient languages and engaging teaching methods.
HISTORICAL EDUCATION RENEWED: THE CASE OF HELLENIC OPEN UNIVERSITY
In the following article the authors explore the possibilities for the history courses offered by the Hellenic Open University’s (HOU) Faculty of Humanities to make use of new technological tools and collaborative methods in teaching and learning. The history courses offered by the Faculty realise rather traditional methods of distance learning, apart from communication between instructors and students by email and in some cases uploading learning material. Other than that, distance historical learning remains traditional, through the sole use of printed books as learning material. Interactive and multimedia material and tools are not introduced, disregarding the issues technological advancement is currently raising for historical research and learning. On the other hand, the teaching method still does not utilise forms of collaborative group learning, with the students working more than often alone, without any interaction with peers. After reviewing the new needs and applications in historical instruction and the current practices in the Faculty’s history modules, the authors look on the potentials for a renewal of undergraduate historical instruction in accordance with current trends in distance education as well as history teaching, focusing especially on the realization of teaching strategies that incorporate technological innovations, new forms of historical learning and the development of social groups. Potential tools for Computer Supported Collaborative Learning (CSCL) will be proposed and the possibilities for their future application in history education will be discussed.
Laptops in the Auditorium: Facing Educational Challenges in Classics by Teaching Digital Tools
Digital Presentation and Preservation of Cultural and Scientific Heritage, 2020
Higher education in the Arts and Humanities nowadays faces global challenges. By its very nature, Classics is among the disciplines which experience the harshest consequences of the large economic and cultural shifts we are witnessing. In the last decades, the students graduating from the BA curriculum of the Department of Classics to the University of Sofia have decreased in number, their profiles, motivation and interests have gone through various changes, their devotion to reclusive, slow and thorough acquisition of knowledge-so characteristic of the typical figure of the classicist a century ago-has significantly diminished. On the other hand, new technologies not only became ubiquitous in the lives of students and teachers alike but also gave rise to the multidisciplinary field of Digital Humanities, and Digital Classics in particular. Several such initiatives have been developing at the Department of Classics to the University of Sofia and, as of late, have also been introduced to the BA curriculum in Classics. The paper will discuss how getting involved in activities such as encoding ancient Greek inscriptions or working on parallel text alignment can serve as a quick and efficient introduction to more complex research problems and approaches in advanced fields like epigraphy. The general request of policy-makers and public alike for practically oriented higher education yielding quick and relevant results often leads to shallower educational results of lesser quality. Solving research issues through working on ancient sources with digital tools can be a way of acquiring deeper knowledge of the subject matter of Classics more quickly. Examples from different courses and project activities will be examined in order to observe how digitally-aided research works in practice.
An e-learning platform for multiform and interactive education of scholars in Greek Paleography
Proceedings of the 5th …, 2005
The new technologies and the Internet constitute the tools of the future, but they can also be the tools that will link us with the past and our cultural inheritance. In this spirit the D-scribe program was born, a complete program for the recording, manipulation and management of valuable Greek manuscripts. The elearning system presented in this paper is a part of the D-scribe program and aims to provide fundamental knowledge of paleography to the users, in an interactive and multiform educational way and it's the first elearning system for Greek paleography.