Go to Course Information for Greek and Roman Studies 221: History of Greece
Perseus directly influenced the design of Greek and Roman Studies 221: History of Greece in the following ways:
1. I did not order a history text for the students but had them read selections from the Martin's Overview.
2. I switched from papers to laboratory projects that required students to use Perseus and other computer-based materials available over the network.
Indirectly, the availability of on-line materials has made it more and more reasonable to distribute and collect all materials over the network. This year, for the first time in my career, I distributed all course materials over the network in the form of web pages, with the exception of examinations. Because the web does not offer adequate authoring tools at this point (at least for less-experienced users), I placed the exams as WordPerfect documents on the file server. When they became available, students were able to copy the exams to their own disks, complete them and turn them in through a dropbox on the file server.
I spent considerable time incorporating Perseus, primarily in reviewing materials and designing the lab assignments. My original intention was to design assignments that students would fulfill by working in teams. We started with teams of four and five students for the first two assignments, but the size of the teams proved problematic, because they found scheduling time to meet difficult if not impossible. We then switched to labs designed for students to work as individuals or in pairs.
It was my intention to change the way we spent time in class. I had received funding from the College to purchase an LCD panel and PowerBook 5300c; however, I was unable to obtain the laptop until late in the semester when it was impractical to make the transition both because I lacked the time to rework the class meetings and because we had established a routine. I did, however, occasionally use the computer in class, for example when we discussed the coins and urban design in the Hellenistic period.
I found evaluation the most difficult part of the course because I had to devote so much energy into designing materials. I have yet to develop a satisfactory way of evaluating laboratory assignments, particularly for teams.
I am unsure about how Perseus affected learning in this particular course. I am certain, however, that nearly every student learned to do something on the computer that they had never done before. I am confident in that regard because of the range of questions I received and the help most needed from time to time. I have the impression that students feel more comfortable using computer-based resources. I believe that this may be the first course I have taught using Perseus that students could do a few things that could not have been done before because some of the resources we used are simply not available in printed sources. In theory, most of the work could have been done by students who had access to a large research library and museum collection, but for students at a college such as Rhodes, the assignments as designed would have been impossible without Perseus and the network.
I had students view sites through a set of photographs (both from Perseus and from those we collected last summer) that were not available, to my knowledge, in any printed sources--at least in the number of views we were able to use. Second, they accessed through the web site at Michigan Jeremy Rutter's notes from his Bronze Age archaeology class. I also had students communicate with him to thank him for making his material available. Although there are a number of books on the Bronze Age, I do not believe that these notes or similar summaries and views are available in printed sources, and although it is possible for students to communicate with authors and faculty members at other institutions, the ease and immediacy of the network make such interaction far more likely to take place than if we were to rely on more conventional channels of communication.
The point I should stress in that question is access for students who do not live and work next door to a large research library. We simply do not have the range of resources in our modest library to support similar approaches using printed resources. This is particularly true for the work we did on vase paintings. Our library and our slide collection is not comprehensive enough to even begin to do what we did.
The use of computer technology in the curriculum is starting to increase quite rapidly at Rhodes. For example, last year faculty members submitted five proposals to the Hill-Mellon President's Discretionary Fund for support to incorporate computer technology into the curriculum. This year they received fifteen. My colleague in Greek and Roman Studies does not use computer-based materials in her courses, although she is favorably disposed to technology and plans to become more fluent with the resources.
I should also note that changes are underway in Humanities 101: the Search for Values in the Light of Western History and Religion, the interdisciplinary course in which Greek and Roman Studies participates. Now that the other main text, the New Oxford Annotated Bible, is available on CD, we will now consider implementing sections that rely exclusively on the network and computer-based textual and visual materials. Without Perseus, this would not be feasible.
Perseus has certainly affected my research by taking up time I would have devoted to more conventional and traditional forms of research. However, I use Perseus as a source of textual and visual information regularly when I am doing my own research and would feel impoverished without it.
We have a program of Greek and Roman Studies with two people. We have designed a program that two people can staff, but it will rely, particularly in future years as it becomes more established, on computer-based materials. Perseus will become the primary source of textual and visual materials our students will use.
I fully expect to create materials both for use and class and as scholarly contributions that rely or use information in the Perseus database. I don't believe there are any other barriers other than time and some minor infrastructural issues, which the web is quickly overcoming.
I am now in my seventh year as a college professor, and for three of those years (perhaps more) Perseus has played a central role in at least one course. I used Perseus more ambitiously this year than in the past, particularly with respect to the range of materials I used and had students use.
I have to say that my experience with Perseus was mixed this year primarily due to infrastructural problems caused by the inability of Apple to fill orders last summer. If I had had the equipment sooner, I might have been able to make better use of Perseus. This course was also challenging because I had not taught a history course before that covered such an extensive period of time ranging all the way from the Bronze Age to the end of the Hellenistic Period. Perseus is much stronger on the Classical Period and to certain extent the Bronze age, but it is less satisfactory for the period after Alexander. Consequently, I struggled with the normal problems associated with teaching a course for the first time as well as problems with the infrastructure and certain limitations in the database. I do, however, look forward to the next iteration because I will have a much better sense of the pacing and the types of projects to try.