The PDQ – a new journal bridging blogging and academia
The PDQ is rapidly shaping up to be something quite exciting. A first call for papers may be found here, and the official PDQ website is being built here. If you’ve got something of interest to say regarding the past, why not take this opportunity?
From the official website:
“PDQ is a journal designed to provide a bridge between blogging and academia. It will provide stable citeable references for selected weblog posts focussed upon or of interest to the pre-Renaissance past. It is compiled from articles submitted by bloggers on a quarterly basis. The journal is available in three formats. There is a PDF downloadable copy for free. There is a paper copy which can be ordered via Lulu, which is set to the cost of printing and delivery only. Finally we intend that the journal will also be placed in a repository for long-term curation. Until the details are finalised it will be available in XHTML format from a server based at NYU’s Institute for the Study of the Ancient World.
PDQ is released under a Creative Commons BY-NC-ND licence, making it freely copyable.
We are looking for submissions on any medieval / ancient / prehistoric topics from bloggers which fall into the categories below. Additionally each edition has a theme which we welcome submissions from historians and archaeologists of any period to contribute to. See the Calls for Papers for forthcoming topics. Submission deadlines are the ends of February, May, August, November.”
Electric Archaeology ‘Blook’
I have to thank Alun for coining the term ‘blook’ to describe my experiment with Lulu.com to create an archived version of this blog. It’s been about two weeks since I put it on Lulu and ordered a copy. My printed version arrived in the mail yesterday. I’m pleasantly surprised by the overall quality. The cover art is sharp, clear, and glossy. The feel of the book is ‘right’, too. I didn’t do any work to improve any of the images that made it between the covers, but for the most part, they’re quite good. I of course made a few mistakes – I think a few more interstitial pages would help in its readability (not so much an issue for the digital downloaded version though).
The contrast with my thesis, which was published in the BAR series (John Hedges inc, not Archaeopress), is interesting. Essentially, it was the same kind of work for me to get my thesis ready for publication with BAR as it was to get the blook ready for Lulu. BAR does of course have its own signature look, but in terms of the final product if I had to do it again, I might be persuaded that Lulu was the way to go. The big difference is that BAR is an established series of archaeological monographs, and so has a bit of authority. You know what you’re getting with BAR, not so much with Lulu.
Let’s think some blue-sky thoughts for a moment, and imagine that PD(Q) is wildly successful. If we can establish some authority and a reputation for a good product – ie we demonstrate that print-on-demand and digital publishing can be as academically rigorous as traditional publishing (but a good deal faster and cheaper) – why not publish theses, monographs, etc etc….
Ok. I’m getting ahead of myself. Let’s make PD(Q) a solid product, first. 
Piccolo for dynamic Harris Matrices (amongst other things)
Somewhere circa 1999 I came across something called ‘Jazz’, a zoomable user interface for browsing the web. As you can imagine, it had some issues since it was an early prototype. Essentially it organised a web page (or other information) literally in layers. Using the mouse, you zoomed down through it (which could induce a kind of vertigo, since it was easy to get lost in the empty spaces between things).
That tool is now called ‘Piccolo‘, and it comes from the University of Maryland. It is much more developed, open source, and can be used to devise the zoomable user interface of your dreams (should you dream about such things). I thought then, and I still think now, that this tool could be very useful for spatially organizing hierarchical levels of nested data – everything from Harris matrices to finds catalogues. This example of Piccolo in operation is called ‘the fish-eye calendar‘. Explore it. You’ll soon see what I mean… (the example of a presentation applet is particular neat, showing the versatility of the product.) To get started, visit this page. There are also tutorials and examples of how they made the showcase applications – more than enough material for an enterprising archaeologist to make an archaeological application. Maybe a project for a grad student… nb. Piccolo wouldn’t work in Firefox, but does in Explorer.
More from their site:
“Piccolo is a toolkit that supports the development of 2D structured graphics programs, in general, and Zoomable User Interfaces (ZUIs), in particular. A ZUI is a new kind of interface that presents a huge canvas of information on a traditional computer display by letting the user smoothly zoom in, to get more detailed information, and zoom out for an overview. We use a “scene-graph” model that is common to 3D environments. Basically, this means that Piccolo maintains a hierarchal structure of objects and cameras, allowing the application developer to orient, group and manipulate objects in meaningful ways.
Why use Piccolo? It will allow you to build structured graphical applications without worrying so much about the low level details. The infrastructure provides efficient repainting of the screen, bounds management, event handling and dispatch, picking (determining which visual object the mouse is over), animation, layout, and more. Normally, you would have to write all of this code from scratch. Additionally, if you want to build an application with zooming, that’s built right into the framework too.”
“Speculum Fantasia” and thoughts on other Invented Worlds
Mark Hall has published an article, Speculum Fantasia – Middle Earth and Discworld as Mirrors of Medieval Europe on the European Journal of Archaeology blogsite. It’s an interesting exposition of how fictitious examples of what might perhaps be called ‘alternative’ histories intersect with what might be called’true’ history. I was especially taken with his example of a report stating that:
“Ashdown Forest was both the best surviving heathland forest in Britain and the setting for A A Milne’s Winnie the Pooh stories. As a result several million pounds of grant-aid had been allocated for conservation work to maintain the heathland and clear some of the trees – trees, it was noted, that Winnie the Pooh and friends would not have recognised and so they had to go.”
The point being that our narratives and stories reflect back and alter the ‘real’ world. For archaeologists, the lesson seems to be that archaeologically we’re going to find instances of these invented worlds, so we’d better know what to do with them:
“The question of what archaeology can learn from the popularity of these and other invented civilisations is a difficult one for me because of the paradox at its root. In the words of Terry Eagleton (2004, 4) ‘human existence is at least as much about fantasy and desire as it is about truth and reason’. Imagined realities have been an ever present part of the human drive to explain and adapt through narrative constructions. The same wellspring produced the creative drives for mythopoesis, invention, and material culture. Archaeological and historical explanations have grown and sought their own path, influenced mostly by an honestly meant desire to be objective. The paradox has grown as a consequence of the fantasy / truth split. On the one hand invention and mythopoesis are part of the human condition and so infuse the material culture / archaeological record. The cult of saints and the associated cult of heroes is a prime example: thus in the 12th century the abbey of Landevennec, Finistere, Brittany under the patronage of local secular potentates had a new chapel built dedicated to
King Gradlon, a fictitious first ancestor and king of Avalon. He was given a reality in stone, mortar and worship.9 On the other hand in a contemporary context we require an objective separation between archaeological, scientific, fact-centred analysis of reality and narrative desires. It can be hard to separate fact from fiction when fiction is a fact of existence.”
I found this article useful for thinking about other invented worlds, especially the online variety. I’ve argued elsewhere that virtual worlds can be amenable to archaeological study, and perhaps what Mark Hall’s article is suggesting is one way of approaching that virtual material culture. The key I think is that line, ‘invention and mythopoesis are part of the human condition and so infuse the material culture / archaeological record’. In Second Life, everyone is a god. Everyone can say ‘fiat lux’, and there will be light. The things we see in Second Life are the remnants of each user’s own personal myth-making. Studying an individual parcel of land then in Second Life requires knowing the myth. An archaeology of a virtual world on this reading is an exercise in cosmology then…
Text-based virtual worlds: an archaeological MOO
Who says immersive learning or virtual worlds have to be in 3D? Text-based worlds solve a lot of problems for the designer of a virtual world, since, as the old Infocom advertisement had it, your brain is the best graphics processor out there. From a few words, you can fill in the blanks, making the world as rich as you can imagine it. I mentioned the Like-a-Fishhook MOO in this post, but I didn’t explore it very much.
The Like-a-Fishhook MOO aims to be a representation of an archaeological excavation. You can browse the content without necessarily playing the game.
“This project aims to construct a virtual, immersive, multi-user, spatially oriented, exploratory, “to the inch” simulation of the Fort Berthold and Like-A-Fishhook Village site complex. The reconstruction is based on archeological data and records of the site’s excavation. The first version is text-based, with migration to a 3D graphical interface part of the project plan. Our goal is to create an active and educational space where visitors are engaged in goal-based tasks that promote exploration and problem-solving.
This is NOT intended to be a museum peice where people come to wander around and passively look at things. Visitors will be engaged in learning a) writing, or b) history, or c) anthroplogy, or d) archeology; later modules may incorporate elements of e) geology, or f) botany, or g) nutrition.”
The opening screen looks like this:
“Entrance to 32ML2
Room # 515
The pickup stops and you get out. You are on a road heading west from Fort Stevenson. You see a large, flat, grass-covered plain that extends for about 2000 feet.
To the south, you see that this terrace slopes down toward a body of water.
Far to the west, near the edge of the terrace, you see a some tiny specks that look tents, some even smaller specks that might be people, and several mounds of dirt.
To the north you see a grassy area and north of that a field.”
Now, I copied-and-pasted that description from the ‘Browse the MOO’ popup, since when I tried to create an account, there was mismatch between the domain name of my email, and the domain through which I connect to the net. Wiser minds than mine will have to explain what was going on. Anyway, the text version of this world – in which the player will conduct archaeological research – is supposed to migrate to a 3d world eventually. But having been made motion sick playing Oblivion recently, there’s something to be said for text…
One advantage of having this text-only world (which is of course similar to the text adventures that dominated computer gaming in the 1980s) is best put by the authors of the Wikipedia entry on MOOs:
“One of the most distinguishing features of a MOO is that its users can perform object oriented programming within the server, ultimately expanding and changing how the server behaves to everyone. Examples of such changes include authoring new rooms and objects, creating new generic objects for others to use, and changing the way the MOO interface operates. “
This enables the user, a la Second Life, to make the world around them (more or less) and differentiates a MOO from a straight-forward text adventure such as you’d create using Inform.
It would be interesting to have students work through both this text simulation of an excavation, and my 3d version in Second Life, and examine the kind of (and if!) learning occurs…
The Past Discussed (Quarterly)
Things have been quite exciting of late. The energy of Alun Salt has been playing out over on the Ancient World Bloggers Group, with a proposal for a new kind of journal :
“The Past Discussed Quarterly will be a journal published four times a year. There’s no intention to compete for the same market as any other journals, nor to replace weblogs. Instead the journal is a bridge between bloggers in the broadest sense and non-blogging academics. The journal will be available as a PDF for free under a CC licence and paper format at the minimum allowed cost via Lulu. The journal will reproduce articles and entries from weblogs, providing a citeable format for people uncomfortable with citing weblogs. Additionally it’s intended that an XHTML or TEI format will be archived, initially with Tom Elliott and hopefully later with ISAW. This will provide a permanent curated archive for webloggers’ work. Submission will be similar to a blog carnival, though the need for permissions to re-print entries adds a little more to the process of submitting.”
This is a very exciting project to be a part of, especially for someone like me who puts a lot of energy into this whole blog thing. I believe that academic blogs should be regarded by the rest of the academy as a legitimate scholarly pursuit, and there is potential here for a new kind of publishing that bridges blogs and journals.
Watch this space. Big things are happening!
Interviews with Digital Historians & Humanists
I was a participant at the First Digital Workshop held at the Centre for Digital Humanities, University of Nebraska Lincoln in the fall of 2006. I had forgotten that I – and others – had been interviewed for our thoughts on the Digital Humanities: what they were, what they were for, where the field was going, etc. So imagine my surprise when I found the video clips of those interviews today!
My clips are here:
The definition of “digital history” or “digital humanities”
His initial encounters with digital scholarship in the humanities
The atmosphere surrounding or reception of digital scholarship in the academy
Audiences for or community involvement with digital scholarship
The potential for “humanities in the digital age”
It’s a bit odd to watch oneself on video for the first time… I remember I was caught somewhat by surprise, so you can see the little wheels exploding in my head, as I try to sound reasonably intelligent.
The people you should really listen to are:
Abdul Alkalimat, University of Toledo
September 22, 2006
Interview segments:
The definition of “digital history” or “digital humanities”
The atmosphere surrounding or reception of digital scholarship in the academy
Audiences for or community involvement with digital scholarship
The potential for “humanities in the digital age”
Edward L. Ayers, University of Virginia
September 22, 2006
Interview segments:
The definition of “digital history” or “digital humanities”
Ways that digital tools allow activity that traditional methodologies do not
His initial encounters with digital scholarship in the humanities
Teaching and student involvement with digital scholarship
Audiences for or community involvement with digital scholarship
The potential for “humanities in the digital age”
Peter Bol, Harvard University
September 22, 2006
Interview segments:
The definition of “digital history” or “digital humanities”
The atmosphere surrounding or reception of digital scholarship in the academy
Alan Liu, University of California, Santa Barbara
September 22, 2006
Interview segments:
His initial encounters with digital scholarship in the humanities
Teaching and student involvement with digital scholarship
The atmosphere surrounding or reception of digital scholarship in the academy
The potential for “humanities in the digital age”
John Lutz, University of Victoria
September 22, 2006
Interview segments:
The definition of “digital history” or “digital humanities”
Audiences for or community involvement with digital scholarship
His initial encounters with digital scholarship in the humanities
Ways that digital tools allow activity that traditional methodologies do not
The potential for “humanities in the digital age”
Patrick Manning, University of Pittsburgh
September 22, 2006
Interview segments:
The definition of “digital history” or “digital humanities”
Ways that digital tools allow activity that traditional methodologies do not
His initial encounters with digital scholarship in the humanities
Audiences for or community involvement with digital scholarship
The potential for “humanities in the digital age”
The influence of the Newberry Library on digital scholarship
Mary Beth Norton, Cornell University
September 22, 2006
Interview segments:
The definition of “digital history” or “digital humanities”
Ways that digital tools allow activity that traditional methodologies do not
Her initial encounters with digital scholarship in the humanities
Teaching and student involvement with digital scholarship
Janice Reiff, University of California, Los Angeles
September 22, 2006
Interview segments:
The definition of “digital history” or “digital humanities”
Audiences for or community involvement with digital scholarship
The influence of the Newberry Library on digital scholarship
The potential for “humanities in the digital age”
Robert Schwartz, Mount Holyoke College
September 22, 2006
Interview segments:
The definition of “digital history” or “digital humanities”
Ways that digital tools allow activity that traditional methodologies do not
Audiences for or community involvement with digital scholarship
His initial encounters with digital scholarship in the humanities
The potential for “humanities in the digital age”
Andrew Torget, University of Virginia
October 6, 2007
Interview segments:
The definition of “digital history” or “digital humanities”
Ways that digital tools allow activity that traditional methodologies do not
His initial encounters with digital scholarship in the humanities
How do you use digital history projects in your research and teaching
Does digital history reach the same or different audiences than “traditional” history
The potential for “humanities in the digital age”
Vika Zafrin, Brown University
September 22, 2006
Interview segments:
The definition of “digital history” or “digital humanities”
Ways that digital tools allow activity that traditional methodologies do not
Her initial encounters with digital scholarship in the humanities
Teaching and student involvement with digital scholarship
The atmosphere surrounding or reception of digital scholarship in the academy
Audiences for or community involvement with digital scholarship
Bridging weblogs and the unwebbed
Alun Salt has touched off a very interesting discussion over on the Ancient World Bloggers Group on ‘blog carnivals’ and self-publishing via services like Lulu. He writes,
“The exciting thing about these books is that they provide material in a form that’s citable in front of a technophobic audience. You can simply cite Author, date, Title, and Lulu.com as the publisher. This may get sniffs from people who would call this vanity publishing, but would be happy supplying camera-ready copy and their own referees to a ‘respectable’ publisher. You can’t have everything and for everyone else it provides a canonical reference to cite. Importantly to the reader this e-book can be provided at zero-cost, and for the publisher it is lo-cost or no-cost. If this approach were applied to blog carnivals, it would be possible to create a periodical available as a CC licenced e-book and a hardcopy with ISSNs. This would provide canonical citations for blog posts which for various reasons haven’t been re-written for academic journals. Could this be used to create a bridge between weblogs and the unwebbed?”
I especially like his thought, later on, that weblogs represent a sort of on-going conference than a kind of journalism. Anyway, scroll down and read the comments on Alun’s posting. His idea seems to have really caught on!
Most viewed Electric Archaeology posts
The statistics function of the wordpress interface is quite useful. Here, for curiosity’s sake, are the all-time most viewed posts in this blog, with > 50 views. Clearly, games & simulations attract the most attention. The single most-viewed was my ‘about page’, and ‘publications’ ranked up there too, but I expunged them from this list (for no better reason than I felt they didn’t really belong here). January 08 has been my best month to date, with nearly 2200 distinct views; each month has been better than the previous one. This heartens my soul and makes me feel like I’m a contributing member to the discipline 
. Thanks!
From the vault – reflections of a first time lecturer
A few years ago (2003, actually), I was a Visiting Lecturer in Roman Archaeology. This was my first experience of teaching a regular undergraduate class (my prior experience being in continuing education and with mature students). I was hired one week prior to the start of term, to teach a class designed by somebody else. This person had designed into the class an oral examination for the final assessment exercise. I had never conducted an oral examination before – or prepped anyone to take one – so that was really going to be difficult…
At the time, I was also enrolled in a post-graduate certificate in learning & teaching in higher education at the same institution. As part of the course work, I had to keep a reflective diary on my teaching (if I were doing it today I guess I would have kept the diary as a blog). I found that diary this morning while I was searching for something else, and it occurred to me that it might be of interest to others.
A lot has changed since then, so it is useful to have reminders of how things went down. I wrote the diary before the students took my oral exam…
Reflective Diary
The Reflective Diary is based on my experience teaching the ‘Cities of the Roman Empire: History, Architecture, Planning and Society’ class. The class was conducted over 12 sessions, between two to fours hours each in length. The following entries cover at least 20 hours’ worth of lectures.
October 14
Do my students understand what they are doing in my class? Do they see the point of what we are trying to accomplish?
Last week’s class felt like an overall flop – stony, unresponsive faces, no flicker of life anywhere. Part of the problem I think is that I tried to fit too much into one class. The contract says ‘four hours of teaching per week’, but that’s quite a tall order for just one meeting.
This week I tried to structure my lecture (‘Republican Africa and Other Urban Traditions’) around two or three themes. I kept coming back to these themes, hammering them again and again, over two hours with a fifteen minute break in between. The last two hours I kept open for anybody to come in and talk to me privately (not that anybody did – but the walk back to main campus was productive, as those fifteen minutes are filled with chit-chat about the class, and questions were asked that I think they felt would have been ‘too stupid’ to ask in front of their peers).
In today’s class, there was much more dialogue, with a backwards and forwards discussion of the ideas, with students bringing some of their own experiences to bear. One or two have some formal archaeological experience, which helps, and others have traveled. The Romans are not ‘just like us’, so experience of foreign cities/cultures helps get people into the right mindset. One fellow – V – doesn’t speak much at all, which might be trouble (English is not his first language – does he understand what’s going on? He’s in his second year, so presumably yes). I had assumed that all students had a prior background in Classical Civilisation if they were taking my course. One student, E, informed me that she has no idea what I am alluding to half the time, which I should have found out on day one. On the plus side, she is one of those students who has no fear of saying ‘I don’t know’ or ‘I don’t get it’, which I think the rest of the class is secretly pleased about, because it forces me to slow down and rethink what I’m trying to say. When she says ‘whoa!’ I have to concentrate on ‘connecting-the-dots’, which is a difficulty I’ve always had in my academic work. I tend to assume that everybody else sees the same connections that I do.
This is the third class, and it is now dawning on me that I’ve pitched things at slightly the wrong level. But as I get to know these students, I’m starting to make things ‘click’. My discussion about how built space affects society (and vice versa) was happily corroborated today. I asked them to think about the fact that there is only one small passageway connecting D College to F College. What did that suggest about the relationship between the two. ‘A’ said that the students at the two colleges compete fiercely against each other in all endeavors (and other students chimed in with their own experiences), which proved my point (built space is a reflection of social space).
They are quite nervous about the seminar presentations. I promised to do a model seminar for them next week, so that they could see what is expected.
October 20
I wanted to find out if the students were with me, following on from last week’s reflection (during the first few meetings my main concern was simply to get the class rolling. I think I was in panic mode, more worried about what I knew than on what my students were there for). I also wanted to get them thinking about what I might ask them on the written exam (because there is an oral exam scheduled for this class, I think we are getting too fixated on the oral side. The written is worth more to the final mark after all!). After the main lecture and break, I asked the students to imagine the sort of question they might find on an exam for this class. I had in mind the mid-term examinations I used to do as an undergraduate in North America. We’re at the point in the calendar where a mid-term would’ve taken place there, although the academic year is shorter here. We spent a few minutes doing this. Then I asked them to exchange their question with their neighbour, and in point form indicate the kinds of things that would go towards answering that question. Then I got them to read their question and answer points out to the class, and we discussed each question in turn to work out what a good answer to that question would involve.
Most of the questions all touched on the same two or three points from last week, so I know that that much of the lessons has got through – but the earlier ones did not (reasons for which see October 14!). V, whom I was worried about, came up with quite an excellent question, so it would seem that he is with me. About half the class (mostly the third year students) are ‘getting it’, but the other half is not so switched on. Is it because they are simply that much less experienced?
Moving on, they were worried about doing the seminar presentations, about why they are doing it, and the terror of filling 20 minutes with their own work. I explained again that the concept is to provide case studies of the different issues I bring out in the lectures, and that 20 minutes, if you know your stuff, is not that difficult to fill. It is also training for the oral examination. I began the model seminar, giving them a handout to critique for style and content. I was pleased that the major criticism was the lack of a structure or main points I was to cover. At the end, they were surprised by how fast the time went. I also want them to mark each other’s seminar presentations, using the same criteria as I use, so that when it comes time for the oral exam, they will have a good understanding of what constitutes an excellent presentation, and what the examiners are looking for. In that spirit, I asked them to mark my performance so far in the class (anonymously).
I found out some hard truths. They liked the interaction between myself and them, the back-and-forth, but thought that everything went on for far too long. They also found my lectures hard to follow, and would like more illustrative material. What I found very interesting was that they wanted more of the ‘nuts-and-bolts’ of classical archaeology: architectural orders, building types, straight history, etc. So much for my anthropological slant on the growth of cities!
What Kind of Teacher am I?
It can be difficult to stand back, and consider ‘objectively’ what kind of teaching style one employs. I used the Prosser and Trigwell (1999) ‘Approaches to Teaching Inventory’ to evaluate my teaching style, with reference to my course, ‘Cities of the Roman Empire’. The course was already a month underway when I completed the inventory.
On the ‘sub-scale: conceptual change/student-focused approach’, my ‘intention items’ score was 17/20. I was pleased with this score, given what I think to be my philosophy of teaching. However, I wonder to what degree my high concurrence with the statement ‘I feel that it is better for students in this subject to generate their own notes rather that always copy mine’, reflects a certain amount of laziness on my part, rather than a ‘student-focussed’ approach to note-taking? While I believe that the action of note-taking, where the notes generated by the students themselves, creates a better chance of becoming lodged in the brain, perhaps it would be better to at least provide a note-framework for the students, to guide their note-taking?
With regard to the ‘strategy items’ in the student-focussed section, I scored 12/20. My lowest scores centred on making teaching time available for the students to discuss the difficulties they have with the subject, and their changing understanding of the subject. Given that I believed myself to be a student-focused teacher, this might be an avenue to explore.
The most significant of the items under the teacher-focused approach inventory I believe concerned the assumptions I bring to my course design. Except in the case of first year classes (‘Cities of the Roman Empire’ is an upper years course), I have tended to make assumptions on what the students already know. While this makes planning and writing lectures simpler in the sense that I can ‘cut to the chase’ and discuss the aspects most interesting to myself, it usually back-fires in that I have to spend time on lengthy asides, filling in the details I had assumed the students already knew. However, I have already started to adapt, and my students only have to yell ‘whoa!’ three or four times a class now.
In general, my scores for the teacher-focused approach intention and strategy items were much lower than my scores for the student-focused approach. The inventory has highlighted aspects that I need to develop and change.
October 27
Today was the first of the seminar presentations. I have designed the seminars to act as preparation for the oral examination. This university has a defined set of criteria for oral presentation assessments. What I wanted to do was to use self and peer assessment to guide the students towards what an acceptable presentation during the exam would be like. I prepared a handout two weeks ago called ‘Points to Ponder’. I directed the students to remember the learning outcomes for this class, and to structure their presentations around those outcomes. I also asked the students to write and hand in a brief synopsis of what they intended to accomplish during the seminar; after the seminar, they were to write a synopsis of what they did accomplish, and to indicate where they felt they could have made improvements. For students listening and participating in the discussion, I prepared an anonymous marking sheet to hand in afterwards. My idea was that these marking sheets would help the other students stay engaged, and would help them become familiar with what I as the tutor was looking for in a presentation. The following week I intended to discuss with the student how the seminar went, how the other students felt it went, and areas for improvement for the oral examination.
Three students presented. It soon became obvious that although the stronger students had understood what I intended for the presentations, the weaker student did not. Her information was solid, but her presentation did not convey the information to the rest of the class particularly well. Her presentation did however stimulate discussion in a way the stronger presentations did not. This I think is partly explained by the class dynamic. The weaker student is usually very garrulous, and her sudden shyness elicited a sympathetic response from the class. The other two students were so confident in their material, that discussion was limited to technical points. I need to spend some more time on the basics of presentations and public speaking. I did not penalize her as harshly as I might have, realizing that to a degree I did not adequately prepare her and that public speaking for the shy can be torture.
I was disappointed that the class on the whole did not take the peer-assessment exercise overly seriously. I had expected the marks on the peer-assessment sheets to tend towards the high side, but where a student circled all the ‘5’s I think it is fair to say that he or she was simply in a hurry to get out of the class-room.
Now that the course is moving into the seminar presentations, my former style of lecturing and discussion is not going to be appropriate. I have designed the seminar series to cover the learning outcomes in the course handbook, and I am relying on the students to give good presentations. I have explained to them that this phase of the class is no longer about me giving them information, but rather about them guiding all of us into new areas. I’m trying to foster in them a sense of responsibility for their own learning by adopting an ‘all-for-one and one-for-all’ approach. I’m trying to harness peer-pressure for the greater good of the class, and create co-dependencies. If one of them does a good presentation, they will all gain; if one of them does a poor presentation, then they will all lose. If that happens, then it will be up to me to guide the discussion and cover the relevant information. I have told them that there will be questions on the final exam based on their presentations.
In a sense, what I am trying to do has a basis in Game Theory. I have in mind the Prisoner’s Dilemma. In the classic Prisoner’s Dilemma, two individuals have been arrested and are held in separate cells. The police ask them to inform on each other. If they both remain silent, then the police can only arrest them for a lesser crime, and they only receive one year in prison. If one informs and one remains silent, the one who informs goes free and the one who remains silent receives a three year sentence. If they both inform, they will share the blame and receive a two year sentence. If this game is played only once, the rational thing to do would be to inform because otherwise the prisoner could end with the very worst possible result. In this case, an equilibrium is reached with both prisoners informing. However, if they had both kept silent, they would have received the best possible outcome (Shennan 2002: 214).
In my version, by making the ‘pay-offs’ clear, I hope that the incentives to cooperate (and do the necessary work for a good presentation) will prove greater than the selfish desire to be lazy. Game Theory suggests that the best pay-offs for everybody will be to cooperate, but we shall see.
November 24
While some of the presentations have been very good indeed, others have been simply deplorable. I have made myself available after class, by appointment, and set up a dedicated email address for them to reach me, and no one has contacted me or come to me for extra help or guidance. This shows in the quality of their presentations. They cite their sources but rarely, and when they do, the source is not tremendously reliable. Most of the poor presentations have relied on the internet exclusively, and I get the impression that they were cobbled together immediately prior to class. On the other hand, the peer-assessment marks are beginning to converge with how I’ve been marking the presentations, so some of the message is getting through. I had to spend a good portion of today’s lecture by discussing with them the potentials and perils of websites, how to cite them properly, and what ‘peer-reviewed journal’ actually means for them as students. I had done this a few sessions ago, but not in as great a depth as (evidently) I needed to.
Last week was our museum trip to the London Museum, to see its display on Roman Londinium. This was during the reading week, but I understood that many classes conducted field trips during this week. We had spent quite some time the week before arranging a day and time to meet that was convenient for everyone. On the agreed day, it rained quite hard. Although the museum is only 30 to 45 minutes from the University, only one student showed up. This was extremely disappointing, to say the least. After a forty minute wait, another student arrived. I had intended the visit to be fairly unstructured and allow students to follow their own interests and I would act as an extra resource for them during the visit. I had also envisioned a ‘treasure hunt’, with the students divided into two teams, searching for displays and artifacts which tied into the learning outcomes.
Today therefore I expressed my unhappiness with these recent developments. It is all well and good to try and structure my teaching around the needs and foci of the students, but if they do not participate… Which leads to the question, did they not come because they are not engaging with the class? Or did they not come because they are simply lazy? When I put the question to them directly, there was an embarrassed silence, and no response. Interestingly, each of them approached me individually afterwards with an excuse. Given that we had agreed a day and time and place, and that they all had ample opportunity to warn me ahead of time that they couldn’t make it for whatever reason, I’m inclined to think that our field trip fell victim to laziness. I really don’t know what else I can do to engage these students.
December 15
When I started this course, I relied quite heavily on my lecture notes, and worked from the idea that ‘lecturers lecture’. This was not a particularly good strategy for a number of reasons. Formal lectures are a cost-effective way of delivering a large amount of information to a large number of people, but not necessarily for those people to retain that information. For the number of students in the Roman Cities class, it was in fact faintly ridiculous to be lecturing to them from a prepared text. Asking ‘any questions?’ at the end did not achieve anything but a quiet stare. I soon changed my style, abandoning formal lectures and lecture notes. I started to extemporize, actually talking with the students about the topic, rather than speaking at them. This frequently touched off fierce discussion amongst the students themselves, with me needing only to speak now and again to guide the discussion around the learning outcomes. My handouts became clearer and more structured as I began to rely on them to structure my lectures, rather than using pre-written lectures.
Looking back at the material that I have given to them, I think that the biggest mistake that I made was at the outset with the course handout. I did not divide up the bibliography into logical coherent sections, leaving them to decide which articles/books to read and to guess which would probably be relevant to the scheduled topic. If I were to do this again, I would be more careful about clearly indicating what should be read when, what was absolutely crucial, and so on. I did in fact provide the students each week with photocopies of crucial articles and book excerpts (to forestall the inevitable ‘I tried the library, but the book/journal wasn’t there…’ whine) once I realized the mistake.
As for the seminars, after my quiet discussion with them about their responsibilities as students (and the fact that their success on the oral exam and the final exam depended to a certain extent on everybody doing their part in the presentations), the quality picked up again, and there was a marked improvement in attendance. I think perhaps that when they thought I wouldn’t care about them attending, or doing well, they themselves cared little; when it became obvious that I was extremely disappointed in them, it helped re-kindle their own commitment to the class. I think by the end of the twelve weeks we had established a compact of sorts. At the end of class today, ‘A’ told me I was a ‘right jammy geezer’, which I assume is a good thing.
Over the last two weeks, my marks and their assessments of the seminars have coincided almost perfectly, so I am confident that they now know what to expect in an oral examination, and what constitutes a good presentation.
