Pandemic pivoting and online outreach: how ‘Classical Conversations’ helped Oxford reach new pre-university audiences
By Arlene Holmes-Henderson (Oxford University)
In the UK, Classics fails to be inclusive of all students: the majority of students studying Classical subjects attend fee-paying schools (Hunt and Holmes-Henderson, 2021). This paper summarises the impact of an innovative online outreach initiative offered by the University of Oxford between January and July 2021 which successfully reached students traditionally underrepresented in Classics. Pre-pandemic, Classics outreach was predominantly delivered face-to-face in university buildings or in museums (Hackett et al., 2020, Holmes-Henderson et al., 2018).
Teaching Oedipus Remotely with a Comprehensive Commentary: Capitalizing on Collaboration
By Christopher Blackwell (Furman University)
Entirely fortuitously, in November and December of 2019, in preparation for teaching the Oedipus Tyrannos with undergraduates, in a mixed class of 4th- through 6th-semester Greek students, we undertook to build an experimental comprehensive commentary on the play, based on pre-existing collaborative work.
From Background to Foreground: Librarianship and Instruction during the Pandemic
By Michael Kicey (University at Buffalo, SUNY)
When systems are in crisis, they reveal how they work: what, under ordinary circumstances, remained in the background suddenly emerges into the foreground.
The Pandemic and Undergraduate Greek: Crisis and Opportunity
By William Owens (Ohio University)
This paper describes how Ohio, Bowling Green, Kent State, Miami, and Marshall University organized in January 2020 to address the common problem of declining enrollments in undergraduate ancient Greek. Our goal was to make the teaching of ancient Greek sustainable by sharing our students and pooling our teaching resources in a comprehensive undergraduate curriculum. We planned to deliver a real-time curriculum using Zoom conferencing software. Miami and Ohio University were already sharing advanced Latin and Greek classes.