Teaching in a Virtual Community

Dr. Holly Sypniewski

Millsaps College

Since Fall 2000 Sunoikisis has offered inter-campus collaborative courses (ICCs), in upper level Greek and Latin language.  The Sunoikisis upper level language ICCs allow advanced students of classical languages to study with a larger group of peers and learn from a wide range of faculty.  Students participate in a weekly online live common session with lecture, an online discussion moderated by faculty members from participating institutions, and weekly tutorials with faculty members at their home institutions.  The tutorials focus on issues of reading and translation, while the common session focuses more on interpretive and contextual issues for the texts in question.

Faculty and students have adapted their teaching and learning for the Course Delivery System designed and built by the ACS Technology Center for inter-campus courses.  In particular, the most successful live sessions consist of interactive lecture and discussion rather than a one-way lecture broadcast.  Faculty break up shorter periods of lecture and encourage discussion of the material by the students.  Some classes feature calls to local campuses so that students can report orally on group projects, either prepared in advance or the result of small group work during class time.  This practice builds on the institutional cohesion typical of small liberal arts colleges while encouraging interaction with other campuses.  The presence of faculty other than the lecturer in the class models a richer, more intellectual discussion for the students.  Finally, course directors take an active role in introducing the week’s featured faculty member and explaining how the material to be covered fits in with the trajectory of the course so that the whole course feels more unified despite the many different participating faculty members.

The inter-campus collaborative course model allows faculty to leverage courses that are offered at individual institutions into one larger team-taught course, with the benefits of faculty-student dialogue, wider range of expertise, and integrative thinking brought by team-teaching.  Although these courses require faculty to commit to the workload for a full course, participation in a team redistributes that work since teaching duties and curriculum design are shared among the team.  The Sunoikisis Language ICCs are offered on both the 200 and 300 level, with students at the 200 level reading 75% of texts in the target language and the remaining texts in English.  Courses are credited on individual campuses, e.g., through a course approval process, under a Topics in Classical Studies course or as an independent study.

The curriculum for upper-level language courses represents a notable example of collaborative planning.  Sunoikisis has established a five-year cycle of upper level Greek and Latin courses so that participating institutions can align their curriculums with that of the virtual department.  The five-year cycle allows the curriculum to merge into both high school and graduate school curriculums.  This cycle tries to fill in the gaps between commonly taught courses, while ensuring coverage of graduate school reading lists.  Latin courses include Literature from the Early Republic, Literature from the Late Republic, Literature of the Neronian Period, Literature of the Roman Empire, 70-180 CE, and Literature from Late Antiquity and the Medieval Period.  Greek courses include Homeric Poetry, Greek Lyric Poetry, Greek Comedy, Literature from the 4th Century, and Hellenistic Poetry.  Sunoikisis has also offered an Archaeology ICC and hopes to expand its curriculum in the future.  This experience has taught Sunoikisis faculty important lessons about planning a joint curriculum and interactive teaching via technology.

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