CAMS 025: Greek Civilization
What is CAMS 25 Web?
CAMS 25 Web has been designed to give students an overview of Greek cultural, political, and social history. Covering roughly the time from the earliest complex societies in Greece to Alexander the Great and Hellenism, this course focuses on such topics as women in ancient Greece, the origins of democracy, the city-state, literary achievements, sexuality, war and warfare, philosophy, and more. Students encounter these topics and others through lectures (click on the image at left for a larger view of a lecture screen shot) and through primary sources. During our study of the ancient Greeks, students see the importance of studying this fascinating and important culture, both as it relates to history and to our own day.
The screen shot above shows a typical lecture page from my CAMS 025 lectures. You can see the use of art, the interface of the lecture presentations, and the controls students use to navigate through a lesson. For a sample lecture, click here.
Technologies Used in CAMS 25 Web
Like my other online course, CAMS 45, CAMS 25 Web uses a variety of technologies to engage the student with the material, to show the relevance of studying ancient Greek civilization, to effectively achieve the course's goals, and to look and operate professionally. You can see in the screen shot to the left, that students can select various ways of viewing the outline of the lecture.
The lectures in CAMS 25 Web were created using Flash, which makes the lectures more compatible with more machines, which allows me to use a variety of teaching tools, and which further protects the course material from piracy. The benefits of this format for the student include:
Expanded Use of Images: I believe strongly in the importance of addressing all learners and learning types. Some students understand and retain material more effectively when given visual aids. Also, in a class such as Greek Civilization, the use of images helps make the distant past seem not so far away, highlights the similarities and disparities between our culture and that of the ancients, and it allows me to teach students about ancient art in more depth. With the Flash format, I can magnify images or highlight specific parts of an image to focus the students' attention on what I'm discussing at that moment. It's like having a laser-pointer in a lecture hall, but way cooler.
Animation: Animating my lectures is one of my favorite and most effective online teaching tools. I can set arrows to draw themselves during my lecture to call attention to a specific object; I can withhold certain bullet points until I provide necessary information or pose an important question (not unlike using a piece of paper to hide the next line on an overhead projector), giving students a chance to consider an answer even though we're not in the same room; and I can alternate between images to highlight, for example, different artists' representations of an event/story. The use of animation is especially powerful with maps. It is useful, for example, for students to trace the development of battles during the Persian Wars, or during the campaigns of Alexander, as these events unfold on their screen.
Seamless Audio: Unlike the use of an MP3 plug-in, the use of Flash makes the visual and audio teaching tools a single file, preventing students or other users from downloading the audio/video separately. This protects both my work and Penn State's claim to it. This also makes my lectures more compatible with more machines. As long as a computer has the Macromedia Flash feature (a free download), it doesn't matter which browser a student is using, what MP3 player they use, and whether they have a PC or a Mac is irrelevant.
Easy Navigation: The Flash files look very professional, of course, which is important, in my view, to an online class feeling like a legitimate learning environment, but this format also provides students with particularly easy navigation. Students can choose from a variety of views (outline, thumbnail, or slim (each of which is represented on the screen shots on this page)). The controls are familiar: buttons to advance between pages, to stop or play, and to adjust volume look like any number of other standard devices that are part of our daily lives (DVD players, MP3 players, car stereos, other media players on personal computers, etc.).
Search Function: Lecture text is fully searchable, permitting students to quickly locate key words, names, dates, etc.
You can see in this screen shot how I use animation. The purple arrows draw themselves across the screen as I explain Xerxes movements toward the Battle of Thermopylae. Click on the image for a larger view.
