Ever wonder how archaeologists re-create ancient worlds and determine what they might have looked like?
Last year, UBC students in a first year Classics course had a chance to find out through a student-led pilot project that used virtual models of Ancient Greek architecture to show what life might have been like in Athens in fifth century B.C.
But the students didn’t just take a virtual tour of models that someone else built. They re-created their own 3-D models of buildings in the Acropolis and the Agora based on their own research, using the same kind of technology used to create popular 3-D video games.
“What’s different about our project is that we are trying to get students to do that building as a pedagogical exercise from the ground up, so they learn the process by themselves – that’s unique,” said Michael Griffin, a recent UBC graduate of the Classics department.
Michael came together with two student colleagues, Jo McFetridge (M.A. student, Classical Archeology) and Dieter Buys (B.Sc. student, Computer Science), to develop a learning environment that engages students in a new way with academic content. The project, known as Ancient Spaces, provides students with a hands-on learning experience, introduces research skills and develops analytical thinking while appealing to a range of learning styles.
Hands-On Experiential Learning
Students researched images and articles through journals articles and applied their knowledge to re-construct the buildings. While they were building their models, the students were asked to focus on what the buildings might have been used for in antiquity, in addition to what they might have looked like.
Using technology to build the virtual structures “enables you to learn those principles for yourself in a direct and active way,” said Griffin. “It’s more effective than just looking at pictures and reading articles and learning passively.”
Students didn’t need a lot of technical expertise in order to complete the assignment. Professional 3-D modelers did the ground work and developed basic models before the course. Once these were in place, students were trained with the software and used them to create the Acropolis model.
“We wanted to develop a library of learning objects and create a series of pieces that students could use to put together Ancient Greek buildings,” said Griffin. “These were like Lego pieces the students could put together without needing a lot of technical expertise.”
For Griffin, this kind of assignment complements, rather than replaces, traditional learning methods and gives students the chance to walk a mile in the shoes of an architect in Ancient Greece.
“Students can make connections between artifacts and sculptures and the physical environment, such as religious and sacred objects, and understand why objects were placed in certain places in the buildings,” he said. “They get a cultural sense of what it was like, and also a sense of scale and why these buildings were considered sacred art.”
Learning About the Modern Process of Re-Construction
While the students gained an intimate knowledge of ancient worlds by re-creating them, they also learned about the very modern processes of how those worlds are reconstructed.
According to Jo McFetridge, most students don’t have the opportunity to take part in actual reconstructions or archaeological digs. Re-creating virtual buildings gives students the chance to develop an awareness of issues of interpretation that modern scholars face in their research.
“In text books, images of buildings are often presented as finished projects – it gives the impression this is fact,” she said. “We wanted people to realize these buildings are interpretations.”
Students also wrote a report explaining why the choices they made in reconstructing the buildings and presented this to the class.
“Writing effectively and justifying arguments are more important than producing a pretty model,” said McFetridge. “No matter what model you come up with, you have to be able to justify your choices.”
The project combines experiential learning, where students build models based on their own research, with developing analytical thinking skills. It “emphasizes critical thinking, rather than copying what scholars say,” she said.
Student-Driven and Learner-Centred: A Dynamic Experience for Everyone
Another unique aspect of the project is that it not only enables the students in the course to learn in a new way, it was also created and led by UBC students. Buys, Griffin, and McFetridge initiated the project with the support of Professor Shirley Sullivan, who was the head of the Classics department at that time. The three project leads brought unique discipline perspectives and interests and complementary skills to their work. Sullivan championed the project and supported a successful grant application through the Faculty of Arts Instructional Technology Fund with Arts ISIT providing further funding, lab equipment and technological infrastructure.
Although Griffin, a Commonwealth scholar, left for Oxford to begin his M.Phil part-way through the project, McFetridge and Buys continue to lead the project. Currently, Dietmar Neufeld, a professor in the Department of Classical, Near Eastern, and Religious Studies , is the faculty supervisor.
According to Neufeld, the project benefits the graduate students at the helm of the project as well as the undergrads who participate.
“It’s a living dynamic learning experience for the entire group, the grad students who are designing and delivering the course content and the students receiving the information in the course,” he said. “It’s one thing for the grad students to understand material themselves, it’s quite another to translate it to an understandable format for another student.”
Griffin describes the fact that students initiated and led the project as ‘ambitious’. “There aren’t that many resources for students to launch a project like this,” he said.
For Ulrich Rauch, the Director of Arts ISIT, Ancient Spaces is a “wonderful example” of an initiative that is both student-driven and learner-centred.
“What attracted us to this project in the beginning was recognizing that not just the concept was a great idea, but how and why it aligns with wider strategies of changing curriculum,” he said. “Having students take an active role in creating the environment that enables them to learn and understand best. It creates a way to encourage ownership from students, not spoon feeding them but in enabling them to actively create the environment in which they learn.”
Video Game Technology Bridges Ancient and Modern Worlds
The group plans to run the project again next year, and Griffin has begun a similar project at Oxford. All agree that the technology is opening up new ways of connecting the modern and ancient worlds.
McFetridge stresses that technology is the enabler, not the focus, of the project. “This should be about facilitating an exercise for learning, not about the technology,” she said.
The students’ models and research are posted online which offers potential new ways for delivering content and engaging students and the public in a traditional academic discipline such as Classics.
“Making ancient cultures and academic research accessible to the public and live is an important outcome of the social context of this project,” said Neufeld. “It enables ancient cultures to suddenly become living cultures again.”
According to Griffin, this kind of assignment can also extend to other disciplines, especially in humanities, or any discipline that incorporates archaeology and architecture and that examines or re-builds material culture of a society.
In the long term, he envisions creating an entire virtual environment, much like a video game, where future students can add on to the work of these students, by populating the buildings and cities with people and simulating historical events and how societies and cultures function.
With this kind of student energy and initiative, there is virtually no end to the possibilities for learning about the past with the technology of the future.
Article courtesy of UBC’s e-Strategy Update
