Author: Ian Ruffell, i.ruffell@classics.arts.gla.ac.uk
JISC e-Learning Activity Area: Technology-enhanced Learning Environments
Higher Education Academy Subject Centre: History, Classics and Archaeology
This case study illustrates...an effect on learning, an effect on exam results, an effect on student personal development, innovation in learning and teaching, staff satisfaction with e-learning, an influence on policy, an effect on social equality
Lessons Learned
Summary and Reflection
Compared to the course which I taught in a similar vein last year on Greek comedy, also taught using 'blended learning', this course developed less strong discussion and argument. This may not necessarily be due to the teaching methodology, but partly because the issues in this course were less clearly identified and far less contentious. The course was particularly asking students to consider the concept of parody and the texts involved arguably had far less at stake than some of the big issues in Greek comedy.
As part of this, there was also less sense of community, in both positive and negative terms. The previous group had some very strong personalities (although that brought attendant issues of moderation). There may also be issues around online community-building: last year we had a twice-weekly seminar (plus online discussion) and this year only the single weekly seminar. This did not create the same community and in retrospect I did far too little to establish the online community. It was a deliberate policy on this outing to keep my presence in the forums to a minimum in order to give the students more room and to avoid the discussion turning into a series of individual dialogues. On reflection, I think this went too far.
For a heavily textual course, the use of texts in many ways was in general poorer on this outing. Some of this was unrelated to e-learning (e.g. a lot of texts required closer familiarity with Homer than was the baseline for the course). There was, however, some very good work relating texts to material culture. There was also some spontaneous creative writing by some members of the group, although the incorporation of this into a final project was disappointingly unreflective.
If I run this course again, then I think there are a number of elements that need to be looked at:
- earlier and fuller text provision
- samples of engagement with texts (use of wiki, commentary, hypertext, etc.)
- new background reading and reference provided online
- some online modules introducing more of Homer to the students
- specific training and more direction for end-of-module projects
- more engagement in the forums
