A few caveats: titles are different outside the US, and this is only meant for US use! Also, there are a range of instructors in colleges, not all of whom are professors and not all of whom have PhDs, but these are nonetheless fairly generally applicable guidelines.

Why does this matter? It’s not a big deal what title someone uses, is it?

When one discusses academic titles, one is contractually obligated to include this poem by Susan Harlan. I don’t make the rules. But also, it’s a great road into talking about why any of this matters.

Authority in the classroom is a tricky thing. People who look like society expects a professor to look have a much easier time gaining or maintaining the respect of students, because they easily accept that person as an authority. The less someone matches that imagined professor ideal, the more students tend to question their authority. Female professors are (in broad, general terms) far more likely to have their expertise questioned than their male counterparts. Anecdotally, I rarely hear from male colleagues that a student challenged their knowledge of a topic in class. It happens much more frequently for women, especially women in a field or a specialty that is traditionally male-dominated (military history, for example).

Gender is far from the only axis this happens along. Women of Color are significantly more likely to face this kind of push-back from students than white women are and we see similar phenomena across all different aspects of identity. So if you happen to be someone who steps into the classroom already equipped with a full helping of authority just by virtue of who you are and how you look, you may have some authority to burn. That’s a privilege certain people have, and it isn’t afforded to everyone equally.

If you have all this excess authority oozing out your ears, you can wear ratty jeans and flip-flops and have your students call you by your first name. There’s no risk that students will forget that you’re an authority figure. There’s no risk that your performance evaluations will reflect a perceived lack of qualification or expertise — after all, you look the part. But that’s not something everyone can do, so titles can matter a lot for people who look less like a professor is expected to look.

Guideline #1: Call people what they want to be called

This is a really good rule in all aspects of life. If someone asks you to call them Doctor or Professor, it’s a good idea to do that. If someone tells you the name they’d like to use, use it! If you’re a student, you can always ask someone if you aren’t sure how they would like to be addressed. If you’re an instructor, it’s a great idea to include a little blurb in your syllabus or a comment on the first day of class about how you would like to be addressed. A more subtle clue you might notice as a student is how your professor signs their emails or introduces themselves.

Guideline #2: If an instructor has a PhD, they are a doctor.

Whether someone prefers to be called Doctor or Professor is generally sort of a personal preference and there isn’t usually a difference. Technically, ‘Professor’ is a job title and ‘Doctor’ is signifying a degree someone holds, so there are a lot of doctors out there who aren’t working as professors. Most professors are doctors (there are some exceptions, especially in the fine/performing arts!), but not all doctors are professors. In the classroom context, either doctor or professor will generally work. In a research lab, you might want to lean toward ‘doctor’ since that’s the option most likely to apply to everyone.

In high school, you probably called most of your teachers Mr. or Mrs./Ms. (possibly Mx., a newer address for non-binary adults), but in college, all or most of your teachers hold doctorates and it took a lot of research and school and hard work to get that title. It also indicates a certain mastery of a discipline and the contribution of new scholarship to an academic discipline. People can get grouchy when all of that is (intentionally or not!) disregarded by omitting their title.

As a quick side note, Mrs. is used for a married woman, whereas Ms. doesn’t indicate anything about marital status. When in doubt, Ms. is a safer title for a woman you don’t know! Miss is a fairly outdated address for girls and unmarried women (weird that society decided that girls and unmarried women were one category, but that’s a side-rant) and I would stay away from that in general.

A last note on why the use of an official title matters: higher education has historically been inaccessible to people who were not elite, white men. It has been a political and social struggle to pry the door open for anyone outside that very particular demographic. For a Black woman, a PhD represents overcoming a lot of structural and institutional barriers. Conversely, discounting that accomplishment may be a deeper cut.

This is all to say, there are very real reasons that people care a lot about how they are addressed in the classroom. I would suggest you always err on the side of formality until you’re told that it’s ok to use some other form of address. Most professors will be fairly understanding of an honest mistake (I cannot tell you how many variations of my name and title I’ve seen over the years!), but when a professor has had to correct someone for the thousandth time that year, and this is compounding other microaggressions they’re dealing with all the time, they might (understandably) be somewhat annoyed or offended. If you default to “Professor Last Name,” you will never offend!

This is not at all an exhaustive list of rules for titles, and I’d like to include one small P.S. about names. My colleague, Dr. Dave Oosterhuis, tells students they can call him Dr. O (his last name is a bit of a doozy to pronounce and spell). Going back to Guideline 1, he’s said to call him that, so it’s a great idea to call him that! That is a very different thing than me looking at someone’s name and saying “well, I think that name’s hard to pronounce, so I will assign them a nickname.” It will perhaps not shock you to learn that names that native English speakers in this country think are ‘too hard to say’ tend to be ones from other cultures, and it’s rude and potentially racist to just give someone a name you like more. Names are important.

The post What’s In a Professional Name? appeared first on Amy Pistone.

Here’s the much higher production value part 1:

How to Drink Like a Hero

8 Epic Cocktail Recipes

And now, to part 2!

If you don’t much care for drinks based on epic poems, perhaps we can interest you in this second round of drinks. Start off in the Underworld with the Persephini, pray you do better than Eurydice as you (try) to leave the Underworld with Orpheus and the Corpse Not-Quite-Reviver. Then for more failed attempts at defying death, sip your way through the delicious flavors of Icarus and Memnon, and move on to savor the subtle and nuanced taste of Heracles, Danae, Jason, Medea, and Apuleius’ Metamorphoses.

Will these drinks teach you everything you could ever want to know about Greek myth? Well, probably not. They certainly won’t help you pass any sort of exam. But they will be a great conversation starter as you try to explain sordid Greek mythological stories to the bartender who really just wants to know why you can’t order a normal drink. Stories that end with gruesome deaths are a great way to whet the appetite!

Persephini

1 ½ oz pomegranate
1 oz ginger liqueur

Shake and serve in a martini glass Simple, elegant, delicious. Unclear how many of those apply to Persephone. But seriously, this drink is great.

Corpse Not-Quite Reviver

1 oz. lemon juice
1 oz. orange liqueur
1 oz. Lillet Blanc
1 oz. gin
Peychaud’s float

This drink is based on Corpse Reviver #2, but with a twist, since this is an Orpheus and Eurydice drink. The Peychaud’s float drips into the drink, creating a bloody stain on the corpse reviver. We tried it with the Peychaud’s floating on top (top picture) and then once it started to blend, we added 2 more little drops on top, to represent the snakebite that originally did Eurydice in. This is best drank while listening to some good music and getting a little nostalgic for things that might have been.

Icarus

1 ½ oz. gin
½ oz. maraschino
¼ oz. honey
¼ oz. crème de violette
Lemon garnish

This is an adaptation of a drink called the Aviation. We added some honey, as a nod to the wax in Icarus’ wings, and the lemon garnish is wing-shaped. This is best drank while making big plans – possibly too big plans. The garnish doesn’t stay balanced very well, which is sort of a metaphor for falling into the sea. If you’ve mediated upon crashing into the sea and you still like your big plans, go for it – you’ve done your due diligence!

This is best drank while making big plans – possibly too big plans. The garnish doesn’t stay balanced very well, which is sort of a metaphor for falling into the sea. If you’ve mediated upon crashing into the sea and you still like your big plans, go for it – you’ve done your due diligence!

Memnoni

1 oz. Cocchi Storico Vermouth di Torino
1 oz. Campari
1 oz. gin
Activated charcoal

Based on a Negroni, this combines the colors of rosy-fingered Dawn, the mother of Memnon, with some activated charcoal, as a nod to Memnon’s blackness, as the king of Ethiopia.

Drink this while hanging out with your classics friends and speculating about the content of lost and fragmentary works, starting with the Aethiopis.

Because Zeus makes Memnon immortal, at Eos’ urging (in the Aethiopis, according to Proclus), this is a good drink to drink while contemplating mortality and immortality. Ideal soundtrack: Who Wants to Live Forever (by Queen, featured prominently in Highlander)

Nemean Lion

2 oz. bourbon
½ oz. allspice dram
½ oz. lemon juice
1 tsp demerara syrup
3 dashes of angostura bitters
Egg white
Celery garnish

This is based on a drink called the Lion’s Tail, though with a few tweaks (more bitters, demerara syrup instead of simple syrup). The addition of egg whites are a nod to Heracles’ labor of the Stymphalian birds, and the celery garnish is in honor of the prize given to the winner at the Nemean Games (a crown of celery leaves).

In true ancient historian form, Chris Baron had a fun and incredibly obscure story to share about Timoleon and a celery omen. Cheers to fragmentary historians and the people who associate with them!

The Orestes

Combine, in a champagne flute:
A bar spoonful of sugar
1 dash of cardamom bitters
1 oz absinthe
Top off with sparkling wine

Hooboy, this was the only real failure of the bunch, though it was a mythologically apt failure. The thought here was something that tasted like revenge. And what tastes more like revenge than absinthe?

Problem is, we overshot a bit. It tasted not good. With an extra not-good aftertaste. So we tried adding another ½ oz of bar sugar and some amaretto to cut the nasty aftertaste. It was . . . less bad then, but still not particularly good. So, let’s call this an important lesson about cycles of vengeful killing. You can make it less awful, but it’s still awful and no one enjoys it. I would suggest that you do not try cycles of vengeful killing or this drink.

Golden Danae

¼ oz. Strega
½ oz. St. George Spiced Pear Liqueur
1 ½ oz. gin

I refuse to call this a golden shower, because I’m an adult. And this drink is delicious, and Danae’s memory deserves better than golden shower jokes. This is best drank when it seems like no matter how hard you try, you can NOT avoid annoying people – especially if those people are men who are trying to sleep with you. Ask the bartender to smell the cork-thing in the bottle of St. George Pear Liqueur. It smells delicious, like warmth and joy. The perfect antidote for persistent annoyances.

Corinthian Long Island

½ oz vodka
½ oz gin
½ oz white rum
½ oz tequila,
½ oz ginger liqueur
A hearty squeeze of lemon
Float hibiscus
Serve in a short (6 oz) glass

If there’s one thing that classicists of all stripes can agree on, it’s that Jason is a real douchebag. So, I started with your basic Long Island (it seems like that would be his go-to drink, along with vodka and Red Bull, natch). We added a little ginger liqueur, since ginger (assuming ζιγγίβερις is in fact ginger) is, per LSJ, “an Arabian spice-plant, the root of which was used in medicine.” Something imported from somewhere to the east, with healing powers but also with a spicy (dare I say, hot?) flavor . . . sounds like Medea! We “floated” a hibiscus liqueur, though it sunk right to the bottom, giving this a pleasingly red tinge, as if the drink itself is saying “hey, Jason, don’t get comfy bro. This ends bloody.” (Side note – I originally imagined this with elderflower liqueur, but hibiscus worked in a pinch)

Medea

A shot of Malört

Malört is the Swedish word for wormwood – it tastes like trees and death and angry vengeance. Particularly the aftertaste. VERY bitter aftertaste. This makes sense, because Malört is a type of bask, which is the Swedish word for bitter.

Deep dive on wormwood! The scientific name is Artemisia absinthium, and the angry vengeance of Artemis feels right for a Medea shot. This should probably be drank with female friends who are seething with anger. So, maybe try to order a bottle of it – you might need a lot of it!

Golden Ass

½ oz. lime
2 oz. gin
Top with ginger beer
5 dashes of Angostura bitters

This is a variation (as you might have noticed from the cup) on a Moscow Mule, but with more Apuleius. We added in Angostura bitters because the herbal flavor felt appropriately witchy – that’s what turns it from a Mule to an Ass! If you make it with vodka instead of gin, the flavors of the bitters don’t come out as well. Still tasty, but not as good – that’s called a Lucian’s Ass.

The post How to Drink Like a Hero (Part 2) appeared first on Amy Pistone.

I took several possible options for a test-run, with the help of Britta Ager as a demo-student (she gets a demo-A+!). I’m ranking these options in order of how well they work as information delivery systems, knowing that some of these require technology that not everyone necessarily has access to.

Best option — Zoom with a tablet

I did this with an iPad and Zoom. The “share content” function in Zoom doesn’t share just any old app that you have open on an iPad (can’t speak to other tablets), but you can use a whiteboard, which allows you to essentially replicate whatever you would have written on the board in an in-person classroom. Cool, right?

You can also scan a page of a textbook and select “photos” when you share content. Then you can edit the picture while you’re talking through the sentences, marking what goes where. This is a great way to still be able to go through sentences from afar. My students are much better when they can see what I’m talking about as I’m talking about it, rather than just hearing me say a Greek word. In class, I usually either write the sentence on the board or copy the page out of the textbook and use the doc-cam to mark things up as we go through the sentence together. Using the option to share and edit photos will allow me to continue my same methods of instruction despite the shift to online teaching, minimizing the disruption to my students in an already stressful time!

The other cool thing about this is that your students can also edit the image displayed on the screen, either using their mouse or using a touchscreen. In theory, a student could mark up a sentence and bracket off clauses while classmates watched and helped them if they got stuck. You can also, Britta and I learned, both contribute stamp shapes and add text.

I have not yet tried this out with Skype or other video-chat platforms, but I will report back once I have!

Workable option – video chat with a dry erase board

If you don’t have a tablet, or if you don’t have access to a Zoom account, there is a perfectly workable option available to you! I bought a $6 dry erase board at the store and — while backlit and sitting on my couch is far from the ideal configuration — this will absolutely get the job done in a pinch. A little more time spent erasing and arranging things, but very doable.

I usually like to use multiple colors on the dry erase board in my classroom, but some of the colors weren’t visible at all over Zoom. Case in point, orange was not at all visible.

The post Teaching Ancient Greek Remotely appeared first on Amy Pistone.

If you are relieved and thrilled not to have to write your conference paper, that’s ok too! You were accepted, and you can put that on your CV as “Accepted — canceled due to COVID-19”. As a caveat though (thanks to Ruth Scodel for this insight), if you put it on your CV as accepted, a job interviewer is fully within their rights to ask what you were going to say (so make sure that you know what your argument really was before you put it on a CV!)

But if you do want to present online, I’ve done a lot of Zoom-based stuff lately and I would love to help you present (and publicize your talk). There are several podcasters who have made their services available as well, if you would prefer to do something in an audio-only format. Fill out this Google Form and I’ll be in touch!

Schedule of Talks

March 20, 2020: “Fate, Achilles, and Counterfactuals” by Joseph Bringman (University of Washington)

2pm PT — https://gonzaga.zoom.us/j/169264286

The post DIY Online Conference appeared first on Amy Pistone.

Number 1: Talk to your students!

Explain what’s happening and how you’re adapting and that you’re also in uncharted territory here. Establish lines of communication. I’m noticing that my students have concerns and anxieties that aren’t entirely about our class, but just about what’s happening in their world, and they aren’t getting the information they need from other sources.

When you communicate with them, check what kinds of internet access they have at home or if campus is closed. Do they have personal computers? Reliable wi-fi? Will they be using their phones? Don’t assume that the answer is yes.

Here’s what I sent my students, and here’s a list of questions Daniel Libatique sent his:

I sent a survey to my students today after receiving notice that we’re transitioning to distance learning in order to assess their needs and resources. Q’s in thread, adapted from and w/ thanks to surveys or tweets by Laura Clagey, @kataplexis, @quidamabo, and others 1/7

— Daniel Libatique (@DLibatique10) March 12, 2020

Set Reasonable Expectations

First, expectations for yourself. If you have a few days to transition to an online format, it’s not going to be on par with classes that were designed for distance learning and fully online delivery. That’s ok. This is no one’s ideal scenario — do what you can, focus on what’s most important (the students, your own well-being). I’m bracing myself to have to scrap some things I wanted to do this term, because I don’t always like change and I think if I start preparing myself for needing to be flexible, it will help me be less petulant and upset when I have to cut things that I wanted to do.

I found this to be a really useful read on this topic: Please do a bad job of putting your courses online by Rebecca Barrett-Fox

For students, think about how to build in flexibility. Can you make your deadlines more like guidelines? There’s about to be a lot of physical and mental stress on a lot of people, including our students. Work with them on deadlines that accommodate unexpected stressors (protip: flexible deadlines are a best practice anyway, for accessibility!).

It’s still about TEACHING

Here are some slides I put together for a talk on critical digital pedagogy a few years ago. My main point was that digital pedagogy is still about pedagogy. The technological tools are there to promote and facilitate your teaching. Don’t get too bogged down in the digital side of things.

If you have time, read An Urgency of Teachers (by Morris and Stommel), an excellent book on digital pedagogy.

Lecture delivery

Here are some options. I’m leaning toward asynchronous instruction when possible (recording things and letting students access them on their own schedule) but I also don’t lecture a lot in general, so replicating interactive classes is going to be a challenge. In terms of recordings though, there are a couple options for video and audio recordings (make sure you’re providing transcripts when at all possible — Otter is a great option to help with transcripts!)

YouTube/Recorded videos

I’m not very experienced with this area, but even someone with no real expertise here can put together some entirely passable educational content. Here are a few of my very amateurish offerings — they don’t have to be GREAT to help your students and get the job done! I’ve used screencasting software as well as just a webcam to make these, and upload them to YouTube.

Vocab videos to accompany our Greek textbook

Walking students through a passage of Greek we didn’t get to in class

Accent tutorial

Here’s some far higher quality video instruction:

Amy Cohen’s Hansen and Quinn videos

Alliterative videos

Justin Slocum Bailey’s videos on teaching

Hannah Čulík-Baird’s remote teaching sample

Podcasting

Quick Note on Creating a Podcast Lecture by Bill Caraher

Invasion of the Podcasters: Podcasting 101 by Alison Innes

Podcaster/teachers to follow on Twitter for tips and tricks: Aven McMaster, Mark Sundaram, Scott Lepisto, Curtis Dozier, Barry Lam and Hi-Phi Nation, Ryan Stitt and the History of Ancient Greece, Alison Innes and Darrin Sunstrum

Tools and Platforms

Starting a place to consolidate everything I’m reading about and seeing people talk about online. I’ll try to update and annotate this as best I can

Emma Vanderpool’s Technology: Distance Learning Tools

Education Companies Offering Free Subscriptions due to School Closings

Teaching in Higher Ed (podcast) – her blog has a lot of great information about educational technology. I would highly recommend taking a look!

Flipgrid – if you want to play around with using Flipgrid, here’s a demo grid I set up. And here’s a podcast about using FlipGrid in higher education.

Hypothes.is – here are some slides I put together for a presentation a while ago, with demos of what Hypothes.is can be used for. Their support people are also very good and can help out if you run into trouble!

Edpuzzle – you can make videos into interactive quizzes! Here’s one I made about ancient Greek, if you want a demo

Wakelet — (per Alison Innes) “It’s super easy to use and combine blocks of texts with links and videos (easier than building a webpage, imho).” From their website, “Unlock the power of curation: Wakelet is the easiest way to capture, organize and share multi-media resources with students, teachers, and learning communities.”

More reading (haven’t read these yet, can’t vouch for them, but I’ve seen folks sharing them)

Coursera’s Foundations of Virtual Instruction

Preparing to Teach Online from CMU

NYU’s Digital Teaching Toolkit Case Studies

Excellent Twitter Threads

#ClassicsTwitter: are you expecting to teach remotely because of the spread of coronavirus? Can we discuss our strategies and collect some resources?

— Dr Hannah Čulík-Baird (@opietasanimi) March 10, 2020

As someone who teaches entirely online, I would like to note that:
– adapting lectures, assignments, activities, etc, for online is A LOT OF WORK
– teaching to a camera is a different skill set that takes practice
– online classes are not a second-rate alternative to IRL classes

— Dr. Paige Social Distancing Harden (@kph3k) March 10, 2020

My university just announced that we are shifting all courses #online for several weeks due to #coronavirus. I spent the last month on jury duty & as a result had to unexpectedly move my class online with no notice. I’ve got some thoughts (thread): #AcademicTwitter #CovidCampus

— Bill Harder (@wlharder) March 10, 2020

Grateful for the online teaching resources folks are sharing. Many have been focused on using the needed tools (platforms, discussion boards, recordings) to deliver instruction. But what we are delivering & what our students are meant to do with the learning is also crucial…

— Django Paris (@django_paris) March 11, 2020

If you are interested in moving lecture courses online for the next few weeks and are able to use Zoom…

here is a cheat sheet:

— Dr. Danna Young (@dannagal) March 10, 2020

The post Resources for Teaching Remotely appeared first on Amy Pistone.

BONUS CONTENT: Stephen Colbert on Lupercalia

The post Happy Lupercalia! appeared first on Amy Pistone.

I used the GradeCraft platform, something I’d learned about when I was a grad student at Michigan (where it was developed and also). The platform can be its own LMS (Learning Management System) but it can also integrate with other systems. I don’t know if it’s necessarily better than other options, though I did think the support for GradeCraft was really exceptional. They were responsive and very receptive to feedback about what would improve the platform in the future.

In Spring 2019, I was assigned to teach The Greek and Latin Roots of Medical Terminology, a class I’d never taught before, nor had I ever given much thought to teaching. As I shared with my students (aggressive transparency is going to be a theme here), I honestly wasn’t that sure why someone would take a class that was mostly about memorizing word parts — they could just buy a book or Google a list of terms, and they didn’t really need me for that. Given that I hadn’t taken a biology class since the year 2000, I was nothing close to an expert on the things described by these Greek- and Latin-derived roots, but I also didn’t think I could spend 150 minutes a week helping them memorize word parts, so I was at a bit of a loss.

With that in mind, I wanted to try some new and different things with the class, both pedagogically and in terms of course content. Part of the changes I wanted to make to the course content involved adding in more ancient medicine and bits of medical humanities. At the same time, I knew that wasn’t what the students signed up for. This tension was part of reason I thought a gamified class structure would be a good option, because of the element of student choice it introduces into a class structure. No one would be required to do all the assignments or readings, and students could focus on the things that were most important to them and what they wanted to get out of the class.

Also, I wasn’t sure how many students would be taking the class for a grade, as opposed to pass/fail, and another nice element of this class structure is that it’s similar to contract grading and students can do the amount of work they need to do for the grade they want to get. If they want an A, they know what they have to do. If they want a C, they know what they have to do.

The Platform

Definitely check out GradeCraft more, because there’s a lot there, but there are a few elements that were extra useful. This was the information I gave my students about how the points worked:

This would have been an incredible amount of work to manage and limit manually, but GradeCraft allowed me to just put in the details, and it managed it all for me.

Finally, it also includes a grade predictor (though some students struggled to get it to work well for them) and it let me award fun badges to give students extra recognition for doing great work!

What Went Well

Overall, this was a success! I asked my students if they would recommend that I use the GradeCraft platform for another class, and the results were pretty positive! 62.5% said Yes, 37.5% said “Yes but with some changes,” and 0% said No.

After the course was basically over, I asked my students for feedback on what they thought about the platform (not my execution of it) and it seems like this design met my goals for my students and the class really well. Earning points instead of losing points seems to have really helped a lot of them think differently about trying things and taking chances. The element of choice that was built into the class allowed students to put their energy into the parts of the class that they were most interested in. This student really summarized it nicely: “I think this type of grading system would be difficult in more straightforward classes, but for how broad this class was and the amount of material we covered I think it was the perfect way to go about doing it for each student to be able to individualize the type of class they wanted from this. If someone wanted more of a ‘memorize the terms’ class they could mainly just do quizzes and exams and be fine, but other students may be more interested in the creative writing of the essays or explorations of the reading responses each week.”

The other thing that came through in student feedback was how much they appreciated the schedule flexibility that the element of choice introduced. Students could choose to do assignments based on what they were most interested in, but they could also make choices based on the deadlines. If they had a busy week in their other classes or had other commitments outside of school, they could skip an assignment without it hurting their grade. This seemed to have a really positive effect on their general stress as well. Here are a few more things from the student feedback:

• “I love the idea of having students choose what they do to earn points because some weeks are crazier than others. Also it’s very positive and that outlook of not being punished or losing points but also gaining them is so much better for stress and our mental health.”
• “It made the class feel much more laid back. Didn’t feel stressed about every assignment but did them anyways out of habit.”
• “I really liked the GradeCraft format and being able to earn points instead of feeling “punished” for losing points on assignments. With the normal grading system, you are required to do all the various types of assignments fully – having the option to choose which assignments to do that work best with your learning style (and fits how much effort one wishes to put into a class), made learning seem more fun and more tailored to what I as the student wanted to do. I think it made me more willing to do the assignments that I knew helped me learn instead of them feeling like a chore or another ‘to do’ thing just to get the completion points.”
• “I think it is a great idea. Every little thing I had the mindset it was helping me and was worth it rather than that it hardly mattered or would bring my grade down.”
• “I really liked it and I thought you taught well, and I enjoyed this class design very much overall. I liked the freedom of being able to choose which assignments to do; I’ve never had that in a class before. (I mean, I’ve chosen not to do assignments before, but not with the professor’s permission.)”

What Went Not-So-Well

This sort of class design would really go more smoothly if the class was fully scheduled and planned in advance. Because this was the first time I’d taught this class, and because I wanted to tailor the class to what the students needed and wanted, I was adding weekly readings and responses throughout the semester. This meant that I could give students guarantees about the points I would make available, but they didn’t really have the full roadmap for the class in advance. This is really something I would do a better job of the next time around. I wasn’t prepared for some of the scheduling elements of this class and it meant that students had less of an idea what to expect, though I did try to make up for this by being very transparent with communication.

Student comments were almost all variations of “I really wish we’d known all the available assignments and points in advance,” which I completely understand. There were some concerns about the speed of the platform (the integration with our LMS wasn’t as smooth as it might have been) and responses were about 50-50 in terms of whether the Grade Predictor function worked well for people.

• “I definitely think there was a fear as we went on in the semester and many of us were still in the ‘F’ range. If there was somehow a way to change that rhetoric, that would be nice.”
• “I think the biggest challenge was to figure out what I could and could not do to still get the grade I wanted. Like in the beginning, I was afraid not to do an assignment because I may need the points later.”

Other Student Feedback

A lot of student comments were variations of this one (and yes, I’m vain enough not to cut out that first exclamation): “I love how you taught! Just maybe put all the opportunities to get points up ahead of time so that the grade predictor could be more accurate (I know that’s more work for you upfront though) and I really appreciate you adjusting the points at the end and reassuring us throughout.” This seems imminently fair on all fronts, and I do think that my students were more willing to put up with what was a very trial-and-error process specifically because I spent a lot of time trying to reassure them that they were not going to fail. Another very common sentiment (echoing some of the comments above) was “It would have been nice to have had all of the weekly assignments uploaded at the beginning of the semester. That way, it would have been easier to pick and choose which ones to do. I felt like I had to do each one because I wasn’t sure how many more would be left to be able to get the number of points I wanted to.” Again, I think my students were more understanding of this because I made it very clear that I was trying something new and I appreciated them trying this out with me.

Last Thoughts

Originally, I was thinking about using this kind of design for my Greek 1 class this coming semester, and I ultimately opted not to. While I loved a lot of the things that GradeCraft and a gamified class offered, I didn’t that this particular model/platform was a good fit for my learning objectives in a beginning language class. While I think that giving students choice and flexibility is a great thing to do, my learning objectives for a language class are very different than for a class like a Medical Etymology class. A beginning language class involves a lot of “lower level” learning objectives (Learning and Comprehension in Bloom’s Taxonomy), in that there are a lot of things students need to memorize in order to succeed in later language classes. In terms of content, I want my students to have a full toolbox of Greek skills, which means that they can’t opt out of certain elements of the class.

That being said, a lot of the strengths of this particular class designs are things that I try to do in all my classes. Low stakes assignments and schedule and assignment flexibility are things I build into all my syllabi, regardless of what sort of platform I’m using. There are also a lot of ways that a gameified philosophy, so to speak, can help shape my pedagogy more generally.

The post My Adventures with Gameful Course Design appeared first on Amy Pistone.

Gameful learning is a pedagogical approach that takes inspiration from how good games function, and applies that to the design of learning environments. Gameful design operates in a self-deterministic framework–we want to apply what self-determination theory says about how intrinsic motivation works to build motivating classroom experiences.

This concept of intrinsic motivation is something that undergirds a lot of good course and assignment design. I first read about it in Cheating Lessons, where James Lang talks about how intrinsic motivation drastically decreases cheating (I live-tweeted reading the book, in case you’re interested). As he points out, a grade (or at least a grade alone) is external motivation. If the grade is the only motivation they have for doing your assignment, the learning is more likely to be shallow and short-term. They aren’t invested in what they’re doing. Maybe this comes from the fact that they’re taking a class for a requirement or taking it pass/fail. Sometimes (hopefully less commonly, though this is what Lang is most concerned with) it comes from a sense that we aren’t invested in the class and so why should they bother caring if we don’t?

So how does this tie into gameful pedagogy? Why thank you for asking! These are three principles of gameful pedagogy that I stole from Professor Tim McKay’s course, offered at the University of Michigan, that really encapsulate what I saw in this sort of class design:

Leveling up

We start classes with an implicit assumption that everyone has a 100% before the class starts. The unfortunate implication of this is that each assignment is a chance for students to lose points. The longer the course goes on (and, by extension, the more the students learn) the more points the students can lose. That’s a terrible way for students to approach learning, in constant fear that their next assignment will be the one that drops their grade out of the A range. By contrast, a gameful design means that students start with zero points and each assignment is an opportunity to earn positive points. Which leads nicely to the next principle…

The Principle of Safe Failures

Since students start with no points, they have nothing to lose by trying something, even if they aren’t necessarily good at it. A failure isn’t catastrophic and — perhaps more importantly — it’s clear to students that it isn’t catastrophic.

A test where a student gets 60% of the questions right is, traditionally, an F. Seeing a big F on a test is going to be traumatic for most students, and rightly so. They’ve been trained for 12+ years of school that an F is the worst thing they can do. It’s failure, and no one wants to be a failure.

An assignment where a student receives 21 out of an available 35 points is still 60%, but it’s substantially less shocking and scary for our students. It still tells us as instructors (and the students) that they have some more work to do on that material. But it makes the experience less discouraging for students and (I think) helps remind them that a temporary failure isn’t the end of the world.

The Principle of Multiple Paths and Optionality

In part, this gets back to the idea of intrinsic motivation. If students have choices about which assignments they’ll do, they feel more a sense of ownership about the work they’re doing. It minimizes the amount of times students will be doing work they hate doing (it’s not going to eliminate it — no one likes memorizing irregular verb forms), which also means that students will by and large be doing better work.

The other great perk of this is that it gives students a lot more control over their schedules and workload. If they don’t have to do every single assignment, they can skip an assignment when they have a lot of other stuff going on, either in life or in other classes. This codifies the sort of flexibility that a lot of us want to be able to give our students.

So, what does it mean to actually design and run a class like this? I’ve only done it once (you can read about that here), so I’m far from an expert, but as I’m preparing to try it a second time, I’m struck by how different this class can look from the one I taught before. The idea of a gamified course doesn’t limit what you can assign and what you can require. There are platforms that can help with the logistical work (GradeCraft is the one that I’ve used, but there are a lot of other options out there), or you can just add elements that are drawn from this kind of an approach to a more traditionally designed class. I’m still planning to play around with this idea (and document my process), but thus far I am a big fan and proponent of the mindset and pedagogical approaches that gamification promotes!

The post What is gameful course design? appeared first on Amy Pistone.

Why did no one ever share this with me when I was learning #Ancient #Greek? The 65 words which, according to Nick Lowe ⁦@RoyalHolloway⁩, constitute the 50% most commonly occurring words. Magical. ⁦@Hellenic_Soc⁩ ⁦@Fieca2019⁩ #FIECCA2019 ⁦@Classical_Assoc⁩ pic.twitter.com/J6UxkwsyU5

— Dr Arlene H-H (@DrArleneHH) July 6, 2019

#1: Rachael Clark, The 80% Rule: Greek Vocabulary In Popular Textbooks

I love this article. It’s been incredibly useful for me when trying to prioritize vocab for students in a textbook. Clark goes through Wilfred Major’s “It’s Not the Size, It’s the Frequency: The Value of Using a Core Vocabulary in Beginning and Intermediate Greek,” which includes a list of the words that make up 80% of the Greek database in the Perseus Project. Major’s list is already a super useful tool, but what Clark does is go through popular textbooks and include which chapters introduce which words. It’s not perfect (there are some words that are duplicated) but it’s an amazing resource that can save teachers (and students!) a lot of time. Clark goes through From Alpha to Omega and Athenaze, and provides a list of the top 50% and 80% of vocab. Highly recommend if you’re using either of these textbooks!

#2: The Bridge from Haverford

Oh man, I just learned about this on Twitter and it’s great! As noted here, the Bridge is magic! You can generate lists based on all sorts of texts (including and excluding things) and I am very excited to use it going forward!

#3: The Dickinson College Commentary (DCC) Greek Core Vocabulary database

This resource (which I think is the good work of Christopher Francese, though I’m not sure if others have been contributing too) isn’t paired with textbooks, but this is a really great database that you can use to sort by parts of speech and topic. PLUS, you can export it to an Excel file, and sort by different things, which can sometimes be a real help in compiling targeted vocab lists for students.

#4: Perseus Weighted Frequency Lists

If you’re looking at a text (or a portion of it) in Perseus, you can click on the “Vocabulary Tool” link on the right and it will give you a list of words but then you can click on the “Study all vocabulary in this passage” link and it will open out into a more elaborate vocab page.

Here’s an example from Herodotus Book 1 — you can refine your search by all kinds of parameters, and then you can export the words into a file that you can use to format and sort and give to students!

The downside here is that this only works for texts that are in Perseus, which means that the more common texts are here, but if you’re reading a more obscure text, you’re probably out of luck.

#5: Logeion Frequency and Textbook list

This excellent vocabulary tool provides frequency lists and references to a range of popular textbooks, so students and teachers can see where a word is first introduced!

#6: Thesaurus Linguae Graecae (TLG) Vocab Tools

I linked to the PDF of instructions about the TLG vocab tools, because access to TLG tools is going to vary depending on what sort of institutional access you have. If you don’t have institutional access, you still have access to a limited amount of the TLG (an abridged canon), but there will be texts you can’t access. If you do have full access though, the real perk of the TLG is that you can get stats and things for any text, not just the ones that exist in Perseus!

Full disclosure, if you haven’t used the TLG before, it can be a bit overwhelming. But it’s an incredibly useful tool and worth the time to learn how to navigate it.

And more!

Several people recommended Malcolm Campbell’s Classical Greek Prose: A Basic Vocabulary

Plus principal parts!

Regular dictionaries and lexica (LSJ, for example) don’t give you a nice, handy list of principal parts. If you’ve ever tried to wade through a lexicon entry to find the 6th principal part of a verb, you know there really needs to be a better way. You can hope it’s in your Greek textbook, but if not, ugh.

• Logeion is generally the best spot for principal parts. Definitely my first stop!
• I stumbled on this resource (Die Stammfomen der griechischen Verben) by Dr. Gottwein which is really helpful and exhaustive, AND the definitions are in German, so you can practice your German at the same time! Or just snag the principal parts you need.
• Also, here’s an online and fairly exhaustive list from Donald Mastronarde.

The post Trimming down Greek Vocab appeared first on Amy Pistone.

Sonia Sabnis (Reed College, USA), The Metamorphoses in the Maghreb: Owning Apuleius in Algeria

The paper explores an Algerian “reclamation” of Apuleius in the country where his hometown, Madauros (M’Daorouch), is now located. The paper highlights how inhabitants of the Maghreb have begun to invoke Apuleius in the process of defending their own indigenous languages and traditions against outside forces. The paper takes begins with Algerian writer Assia Djebar’s praise of Apuleius’ Metamorphoses as “a picaresque novel whose spirit, freedom, and iconoclastic humor show a surprising modernity…What a revolution it would be to translate it into popular or literary Arabic, no matter, surely as a health-bringing vaccination against all the fundamentalisms of all of today’s borders.” By looking at Algerian receptions of Apuleius, the paper concludes that, by claiming Apuleius as their own, locals not only bolster their defense of their indigenous languages against Arabic and French but they also protect their indigenous traditions against powerful new currents of Islamic fundamentalism.

Clara Bosak-Schroeder (University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, USA), Cripping Classics: Disability Studies and Realities

Kiran Mansukhani and Nicole Nowbahar (CUNY and Rutgers, USA), “γυμνοὺς κριτέον ἁπάντων τούτων”: A Recap of The Sportula’s Naked Soul Conference 2019

The Sportula: general information and Go Fund Me donation details and Patreon information for recurring donations. You can also donate via Paypal at s.dixon@berkeley.edu and Venmo with the username @thesportula.

Naked Soul conference website (don’t miss the featured submissions!)

Asian and Asian American Classical Caucus (AAACC)

#nakedsoul2019 on Twitter

Sportula Free (Text)Book Exchange

My write-up of the conference

Contact info: nicolenowbahar@gmail.com and kiran.p.man@gmail.com
Sportula email: libertinopatrenatus@gmail.com

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