I was the instructor of record for and also designed this course (HI 2211) for the Fall 2015 semester. During that semester, the course met for three days a week and had twelve students, who were a mix of history majors and non-majors. Over the course of the semester, we examined the history of the ancient Near East from the beginnings of human development to the death of Alexander the Great in 323 BC. To supplement the textbook readings, I created PowerPoints for forty lectures which were presented in class and posted primary source documents and images, as well as the occasional movie clip, on the class website for students to examine before each meeting. This ancient evidence was the basis for in-class discussion, which usually occupied the last ten to fifteen minutes of every class period. Other days, I devoted more time to discussion, particularly if examining something that required more explanation, like the political imagery in Egyptian art. Assignments consisted of weekly quizzes, a midterm, and a final paper on a topic the students developed in consultation with me. Below is the syllabus from this course and one of my favorite lectures. This lecture took place in week ten of the course, “The Dawn of the Iron Age.”
The Ancient Near East Syllabus (Fall 2015)
Lecture 25: The Wine Dark Sea
For the Spring 2016 semester, I converted the above course for teaching online through Canvas to thirty-three students. For this version of the class, I used Mediasite Desktop Recorder to record thirty-nine lectures over an equal number of PowerPoints and publish them to Carmen. These were supplemented by primary source readings, images, and movie clips also uploaded to Carmen and largely identical to the content of the live course. This course I feel was one of my best online courses, largely as a result of what I had learned teaching live students. Assignments were quizzes, an essay midterm, a choice of final essay (on a student-chosen topic) or exam, and online discussion. For the latter, I abandoned my usual practice of providing specific questions for students to answer and instead provided them with only a general topic such as “Aristophanes’ Wasps” or “Greek Temples.” The students responded very well to this change and provided a great diversity of responses, asking questions and making observations that even I had not considered. This change also made discussion flow far more organically and I adopted this method for all my future classes. Below is the syllabus, and hopefully soon, a recording of one of the lectures.
The Ancient Near East Syllabus (Spring 2016)