CAMS 045: Classical Mythology
Brave New World
CAMS 045 (Classical Mythology) was the first class I taught online, starting in the summer intersession of 2001. The technologies available at the time were more rudimentary than today, and the first few semesters of the course were a learning experience. The course became much more user-friendly after Penn State adopted ANGEL as its Course Management System (click the screen shot above to see how I am able to organize my course content in ANGEL), and my redesign of the course in 2005 changed the interface, and streamlined the media files (see sample lecture for a look!). I have recently finished a new overhaul; I converted the lecture to Flash (see CAMS 025 page), updated the images, and added new interactive features. Beyond the obvious use of technology (it's an online course!), I am proud of the various interactive tools I have built into the course. In addition, this course relies heavily on art and other images (maps, diagrams, etc.) to elucidate lecture points, to show the relevance of the material to our own day, and to engage the student in as many ways as possible. To fight the potential problems of not having regular contact with my students, I hold online-chat office hours through the popular AIM interface. I use Flicker.com to allow my students viewing access to all photographs to which I hold copyright; I have played around with Twitter but have not come up with an effective strategy to use it; and I make extensive use of *.pdf files to create free and universal access to various course documents.
Message Boards
To replace traditional participation, this course employs message boards. Students are randomly assigned to teams, and throughout the semester, they discuss in an online forum those aspects of the readings, the lectures, course themes, or other germane topics that interest them. Sometimes conversations will last for several weeks, but students are responsible for weekly contributions (posts and replies). Click on the screen shot above for a closer look at one of our discussions. I am considering building a social networking site to make class discussion more interactive, and to bring Web 2.0 more fully into my courses. I am taking this slow, though, because it must not become gimmicky, and I must be able to monitor its use effectively and efficiently.
iTunes U
This course uses Penn State's iTunesU's podcasting feature. This is one of the latest and most successful additions to the course, and I am excited by the positive feedback I get from students. This is a free service that requires only the iTunes program (a free download). Through this service, students can download the lecture audio files, burn CDs, create playlists on their MP3 players or iPods, or listen on their computer. Many students report using this feature to review while they're at the gym, while commuting, or while cleaning their rooms. The screen shot above provides a look at the iTunes interface and how easy it is for students to obtain course material in various formats.
Art
One of the main objectives of this course is to communicate the lasting importance of the myths we read. To succeed in this, I rely heavily on art, both ancient and not ancient. As I made the transition from the HTML based class to Flash, I also replaced all lecture images with photos of art, architecture, and material culture that I have taken across the world. This change-over to my photos will completely sidestep the need to get copyright permission to show students educational images. The screen shot above nicely illustrates how I can use art in my online lectures. Click on the image for a larger view, or visit "The Gallery" in the Links tab.
Online Learning Aids
Because of my physical absence from the "classroom," I have created a variety of online learning aids for my students. These include charts, maps, Flash tutorials, lecture transcripts (click for sample transcript), and others. Students are welcome to ask me for further tools, and if I have the ability to create it, they know I will. I am currently working to create an interactive family tree to show the relationships between the gods, heroes, mortals, and monsters that we learn about in the course.
