A Classical Perspective on Distance Education

Greek Literature Goes Live

Professor Gregory Nagy lectures "live" on the Internet.

When Professor Gregory Nagy talks about Herodotus in his Extension School course on Greek literature, he explains that Herodotus traveled throughout the ancient world gathering information on human events. The learning collected by Herodotus was mostly in the form of oral histories, but they were subsequently put together in his monumental written work, The Histories of Herodotus, establishing his reputation as the "father of history."

Nagy explains that this transformation from oral history to written history meant that knowledge could be conveyed to people at a distance. Readers could be distant from the source of the knowledge, from the culture where the knowledge was created, and of course, from the author. Given his deep appreciation of transforming knowledge from one form to another, and from one place to another, it should not be surprising that Nagy's spring course, CLAS E-115/W Introduction to Greek Literature: Concepts of the Hero in the Classical Period, is the first Extension School humanities course to be offered by distance education.

When an Extension School course is offered by distance education, registered students can attend lectures or they can view the lectures later on their computers via the Internet. By means of a high-tech process, the "live" lectures are recorded on digital videotape. After a number of computerized encoding and compression steps, the recorded video is made available to students using standard internet browser software.

An integral part of Nagy's course, and a significant difference between this course and the computer science courses that the Extension School has been offering on the Internet, is the extensive dialogues among the professor, the teaching fellows, and the students that take place during the lectures. These discussions allow the students to understand better the development of the central themes of the course. The dialogues need to be captured and made available on the Internet for distance students, and this requirement is a unique aspect of bringing this course to the Internet. This is accomplished through the use of professional video production capabilities. These recorded dialogues are then complemented by online internet chat and discussion groups between the distance students and the teaching fellows for the course: Casey Due, Mary Ebbott, and Kevin McGrath.

Professor Nagy has taught courses on the classics at the Extension School for many years. He is currently chair of the department of the classics, and he served as the elected president of the American Philological Association during the academic year 1990-91. He has just been appointed the director of the center for Hellenic studies in Washington beginning July 2000.

While his special research interests are archaic Greek literature and oral poetics, it is also clear that he has a serious interest in the use of new technology to foster and promote the exchange of ideas and knowledge. The Extension School is pleased that it has been able to bring his course to the Internet as the first humanities course. When Nagy talks about his creative use of technology and the Internet to promote distance education, he explains that this is not new. The creation of books was the quintessential form of distance education dating from antiquity, he says.