Sunoikisis: Computer-Mediated Communication in the Creation of a ...

Sunoikisis: Creation of a Virtual Department
ACS Technology Center, which also automatically archived lectures for
later review. (For more information on the archaeology course, including
the archived audio files, see www.colleges.org/~turkey.)
PHASE III: EXPANDING THE ON-LINE EXPERIENCES
In the fall of 2000, the project adapted and expanded Garrison’s model
to launch a three-hour course on the literature of the Neronian period for
advanced students of Latin. The readings for the course included selections
from the Epistulae morales by Seneca, De bello civile by Lucan, and
the Satyricon by Petronius. Following the structure of conventional courses
with three hours of classroom instruction each week, this course consisted
of three components: an hour-long synchronous webcast lecture for
all of the participants, an asynchronous threaded discussion among the
students, and tutorials offered by the participating faculty members on
each campus. 4 As in the archaeology practicum, the professors took responsibility
for at least one week of the programming which included designing
and posting the study questions for the on-line discussion, presenting
the lecture, and evaluating their responses and their comments on
the contributions of their peers. With funding from the Mellon Foundation,
the course also featured the lectures of three scholars from institutions
outside of ACS. Each traveled to one of the participating institutions,
met with the students on that campus, and offered a lecture on a
topic germane to the course but that was also suitable for more general
audiences. An additional technical goal of these lectures was to webcast
the lecture to the students and faculty at other locations in the consortium
without altering the experience of those who attended the lectures in person.
To the students at remote locations, the lectures were not unlike the
other lectures in the course. They had access to a set of notes published
through the WebBoard, and they could pose questions in the chatroom
which a faculty member at the host institution forwarded to the speaker
during the question and answer session. Students did note, however, that
having a live audience at the location from which the lecture originated
contributed to their experience.
The course differed from the archaeological practicum in additional ways.
First, the faculty members who offered the practicum had all had direct
experience in the field at the excavation site and had opportunities for
working on the details of the practicum and planning the field school
while they were in Turkey. In contrast, few—if any—of the faculty members
who participated in the Latin course considered themselves experts
in the field of Neronian literature, and some had never met the course
participants in person before. Consequently, the project held a workshop
in June 2000 to provide the participants with an opportunity to study and
228 CALICO Journal