VERGILIUS

Vincenzo Capozzoli presents VERGILIUS, a collaborative platform for studying and promoting the heritage of the University of Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne, which consists in Greek antiquities, a model of the ancient city of Rome, a collection of pottery sherds from the Near East, a corpus of stamp seals from ancient Iran, several thousands of slides and photographs, the archives of former professors, a collection of plaster casts and a film library. Since October 2011, these collections have been digitized and organised into archives and virtual exhibitions. This work has proved a valuable training instrument for students, who learn about the objects and their history but also significantly improve their IT skills.

Success Factors for Teaching Museum Studies in the Digital Age

Dorthe Hutz-Nierhoff and Antje-Sophie Menschner present ‘Success Factors for Teaching Museum Studies in the Digital Age: Insights into museOn | weiterbildung & netzwerk`. By demonstrating the key factors of the blended learning program museOn, the authors suggest that these factors be transferred to the basic teaching of Classics. While there may be obstacles such as the unfamiliarity of teaching staff with digital methods and traditional forms of examination, the digital format presents many benefits for a shift from teaching to learning and for fostering highly relevant skills such as digital interaction and collaborative working.

Practicing Science Communication in Digital Media

Katharina Meinecke describes a form of ‘Practicing Science Communication in Digital Media: A Course to Write the “Antike in Wien” Blog and Distribute it in Social Media at the University of Vienna in 2017’. In order to make students familiar with research communication to a general public and to enable them to practice both analogue and digital outreach activities, Meinecke had students write a blog and share their work in social media. An additional aim of the course was to enhance the visibility of Classical Archaeology in Vienna by highlighting the relevance of Classical antiquity in the city until today through content created by the participants.

Ancient Languages and the Modern Learner

Ian Colvin and Lisa Hay present the 'University of Cambridge School Classics' Project which has been developed to support school-level teaching. From humble beginnings like simple vocabulary testers, the program has since evolved to a large range of resources including schemes of work for civilisation topics, documentaries on aspects of ancient life, and support for reading authentic literature. By removing some of the 'performance' elements of a traditional classroom, these interactive resources can support positive learning habits, risk taking, and creativity. The core aim of the project remains to help make the classical world accessible to as many students as possible'.

Introduction

The papers and videos presented here are the result of the international conference 'Teaching Classics in the Digital Age' held online on the 15 and 16 June 2020. As digital media provide new possibilities for teaching and outreach in Classics, the conference 'Teaching Classics in the Digital Age' aimed at presenting current approaches to digital teaching and sharing best practices by bringing together different projects and practitioners from all fields of Classics (including Classical Archaeology, Greek and Latin Studies and Ancient History). Furthermore, it aimed at starting a discussion about principles, problems and the future of teaching Classics in the 21st century within and beyond its single fields.

Ancient Cities

The paper presents the international, multilingual teaching project 'Ancient Cities'. The contributors explain the production of the Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) 'Discovering Greek & Roman Cities', its structure and learning material (such as videos, introductory texts, and quizzes), the participants’ varied demographics and their feedback. Furthermore, they show how the course’s materials were successfully implemented in academic teaching at the Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne and at the University of Pennsylvania.

Simulating Digital Classics in Classical Teaching

In the 21st century, Classical Archaeology is making more and more use of digital tools and methods. This tendency towards a future field of “Digital Classics” requires participation not only as users, but also as developers. For this reason, the required qualification profile for a student of Classical Archaeology is changing and academic teaching at universities is confronted with new challenges. Our presentation tackles this issue by suggesting a new teaching concept that focuses especially on the pivotal skills that are needed to use and develop digital methods within an interdisciplinary team. It is based on the didactic model of a simulation game. This simulation is attached to a (real) interdisciplinary research project. In this way it offers the possibility of a structured process model and challenges the participants’ skills of interaction and complex decision-making. The result is a realistic environment whose demands, means and conditions of action support the assessment and evaluation of academic expectations in multidisciplinary professional situations

Classics at the Hamburg Open Online University

Justine Diemke, Nadine Leisner and Alexandra Trachsel present three examples of e-Learning from the Hamburg Open Online University (HOOU). Each Classics department has developed multimedia applications and playful learning scenarios like quizzes: the eManual of Ancient History, the online presence Ariadne which provides basic archaeological information about the ancient Mediterranean, and Antike Heute in Hamburg, an online quiz focusing on Greco-Roman mythology.

Mapping Ancient Rome andTeaching 3D Technologies

Nikolaos Arvanitis explains the process of ‘Mapping ancient Rome and teaching 3D technologies’ using Paul Bigot’s bronze model at the Institute d’art et d’archéologie in Paris to build a pedagogical project. The aim is to digitize Bigot’s model in 3D and study it on a multi-folded perspective, for example in view of its use as teaching material both for students and scholars through an in-depth analysis of its construction and its methodological procedures, but also for further familiarisation of younger children with the ancient city. A 3D model visualised on a simple interactive web-GIS will be elaborated for the disclosure of the ancient city monuments on a global level, used by schools and teaching specialists through the net.

Classical Studies for the New Millennium

In her contribution ‘Classical Studies for the new millennium: traditional material through new methods and perspectives’, Eleni Bozia presents a variety of digital teaching examples that also address contemporary problems, such as identity politics from antiquity to contemporary time, the symbiotic relationship between humanities and technology, and the significance of language learning. Students are taught to work on ancient representations of ethnicity, race, and citizenship and their modern equivalents, engage with the significance of technology for the humanities and vice versa, and appreciate the politics of language in all disciplines and areas of research, by engaging in digital storytelling, using digital resources in sociolinguistic analysis of ancient and modern texts, and pursuing interdisciplinary projects.