Sage Journals: Discover world-class research

Abstract

In 2013, Brown University launched Archaeology’s Dirty Little Secrets, a Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) that, in its two iterations to date, has reached a global audience of some 30,000 people. We first discuss course design, content, assessment practices, and metrics of success within the context provided by other digital archaeological endeavors, as well as reviewing the composition of the online audience. Drawing on this experience, in the second part of the article we explore various opportunities for public outreach and engagement made possible by this platform, not least the potential participatory role of a new online community in archaeological activity and advocacy.

Keywords

Archaeological advocacy Coursera digital pedagogy global audience MOOC public archaeology public outreach

Get full access to this article

View all access options for this article.

References

Alcock

Dufton

Durusu-Tanrıöver

(2015) Who are the people? In: Cherry

Rojas

(eds) Archaeology for the People: Perspectives from the Joukowsky Institute, Oxford: Oxbow.

Anders G (2013) Coursera’s online insight: Short classes are education’s future. In: Forbes. Available at: http://www.forbes.com/sites/georgeanders/2013/10/10/courseras-online-insight-short-classes-are-educations-future/ (accessed 3 April 2015).

Atici

Kansa

Lev-Tov

(2013) Other people’s data: A demonstration of the imperative of publishing primary data. Journal of Archaeological Method and Theory 20(4): 663–681.

Bali

(2014) MOOC pedagogy: Gleaning good practice from existing MOOCs. MERLOT Journal of Online Teaching and Learning 10(1): 44–56.

Berggren

Dell’Unto

Forte

(2015) Revisiting reflexive archaeology at Çatalhöyük: Integrating digital and 3D technologies at the Trowel’s edge. Antiquity 89(344): 433–448.

Bevan

Pett

Bonacchi

(2014) Citizen archaeologists. Online collaborative research about the human past. Human Computation 1(2): 185–199.

Brock

Goldstein

(2015) Blogging the field school: Teaching digital public archaeology. Internet Archaeology, conventions. 39. Available at: http://dx.doi.org/10.11141/ia.39.8.

Brown JS and Adler RP (2008) Minds on fire. Open education, the long tail, and learning 2.0. Educause Review, January/February, 16–32.

Carey K (2013) Pay no attention to supposedly low MOOC completion rates. In: New America EdCentral. Available at: http://www.edcentral.org/pay-attention-supposedly-low-mooc-completion-rates/ (accessed 3 April 2015).

10.

Cherry JF and Rojas F (eds) (2015) Archaeology for the People: Perspectives from the Joukowsky Institute. Oxford: Oxbow.

11.

Comer

Clark

Canelas

(2014) Writing to learn and learning to write across the disciplines: Peer-to-peer writing in introductory-level MOOCs. The International Review of Research in Open and Distributed Learning 15(5): 26–82.

12.

Day of Archaeology (2015) Day of archaeology: Find out what archaeologists really do. Available at: www.dayofarchaeology.com (accessed 15 April 2015).

13.

Downes S (2013) The quality of massive open online courses. In: European Foundation for Quality in e-Learning. Available at: http://mooc.efquel.org/week-2-the-quality-of-massive-open-online-courses-by-stephen-downes/ (accessed 31 August 2015).

14.

Emanuel

(2013) Online education: MOOCs taken by educated few. Nature 503: 342–342.

15.

Emanuel

(2015) Massive open online opportunity: MOOCs and internet-based communities of archaeological practice. In: Giligny

Djindjian

Costa

(eds) 21st Century Archaeology. Concepts, Methods and Tools. Proceedings of the 42nd Annual Conference on Computer Applications and Quantitative Methods in Archaeology, Oxford: Archaeopress, pp. 265–270.

16.

Fischhoff B and Scheufele D (2013) The Science of Science Communication. Arthur M. Sackler Colloquium, held May 21-22, 2012, at the AAAS Auditorium in Washington DC. Washington, DC: National Academy of the Sciences.

17.

Friedman TL (2013) The professors’ big stage. The New York Times, March 6, A23.

18.

Gütl

Rizzardini

Chang

(2014) Attrition in MOOC: Lessons learned from drop-out students. In: Uden

Sinclair

Tao

Y-H

(eds) Learning Technology for Education in Cloud. MOOC and Big Data, New York, NY: Springer, pp. 37–48.

19.

Hirsch BD (ed) (2012) Digital Humanities Pedagogy: Practices, Principles and Politics. Cambridge: Open Book.

20.

Holtorf

(2007) Can you hear me at the back? Archaeology, communication and society. European Journal of Archaeology 10: 149–165.

21.

Jordan

(2014) Initial trends in enrolment and completion of massive open online courses. The International Review of Research in Open and Distributed Learning 15: 133–160.

22.

Kansa

(2012) Openness and archaeology’s information ecosystem. World Archaeology 44(4): 498–520.

23.

Kansa

(2011) Toward a do-it-yourself cyberinfrastructure: Open data, incentives, and reducing costs and complexities of data sharing. In: Kansa

Kansa

Wattrall

(eds) Archaeology 2.0: New Approaches to Communication and Collaboration, Los Angeles, CA: Cotsen Institute of Archaeology, pp. 57–92.

24.

Kansa EC, Kansa SW and Wattrall E (eds) (2011) Archaeology 2.0: New Approaches to Communication and Collaboration. Los Angeles, CA: Cotsen Institute of Archaeology.

25.

Kansa

Arbuckle

(2014) Publishing and pushing: Mixing models for communicating research data in archaeology. International Journal for Digital Curation 9: 1–15.

26.

Kee K (ed) (2014) PastPlay. Teaching and Learning History with Technology. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.

27.

Keengwe

Onchwari

Oigara

(2014) Promoting Active Learning through the Flipped Classroom Model, Hershey, PA: IGI Global.

28.

Kenski K, Coe K and Rains S (2012) Patterns and Determinants of Civility in Online Discussions. Final Report to the National Institute for Civil Discourse, University of Arizona, 13 October. Tucson: National Institute for Civil Discourse.

29.

Khalil H and Ebner M (2014) MOOCs completion rates and possible methods to improve retention—A literature review. In: Proceedings of World Conference on Educational Multimedia, Hypermedia and Telecommunications. Chesapeake: AACE, pp. 1236–1244.

30.

Koh A (2015) Teaching with the Internet; or how I learned to stop worrying and love the Google in my classroom. Hybrid Pedagogy (August 2015).

31.

Kolowich S (2013) Coursera takes a nuanced view of MOOC dropout rates. In: The Chronicle of Higher Education. Available at: http://chronicle.com/blogs/wiredcampus/coursera-takes-a-nuanced-view-of-mooc-dropout-rates (accessed 3 September 2015).

32.

Kulkarni CE, Socher R, Bernstein MS, et al. (2014) Scaling short-answer grading by combining peer assessment with algorithmic scoring. In: Proceedings of the First ACM Conference on Learning @ Scale Conference. Atlanta, GA: ACM, pp. 99–108.

33.

Kulkarni

Wei

(2013) Peer and self assessment in massive online classes. ACM Transactions on Computer-Human Interactions 9: 1–32.

34.

Lewin T (2013) After setback, online courses are rethought. The New York Times, December 11, A1.

35.

Lock

(2006) Computers, learning and teaching in archaeology. Life past and present on the screen. In: Evans

Daly

(eds) Digital Archaeology. Bridging method and theory, New York: Routledge, pp. 226–234.

36.

Looting Matters (2015) Looting matters: Discussion of the archaeological ethics surrounding the collecting of antiquities. Available at: http://lootingmatters.blogspot.com (accessed 15 April 2015).

37.

McDavid

(2004) Towards a more democratic archaeology? The Internet and public archaeological practise. In: Merriman

(ed.) Public Archaeology, London: Routledge, pp. 159–187.

38.

McDavid

Brock

(2015) The differing forms of public archaeology: Where we have been, where we are now, and thoughts for the future. In: Gnecco

Lipper

(eds) Ethics and Archaeological Praxis, New York: Springer, pp. 159–183.

39.

Morgan

Eve

(2012) DIY and digital archaeology: What are you doing to participate? World Archaeology 44(4): 521–537.

40.

Newton D (2015) The (accidental) power of MOOCs. In: The Atlantic. Available at: http://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2015/06/the-secret-power-of-moocs/396608/ (accessed 31 August 2015).

41.

Palin A (2014) Moocs: Young students from developing countries are still in the minority. In: The Financial Times. Available at: http://on.ft.com/1lrRhjF (accessed 3 April 2015).

42.

Papacharissi

(2004) Democracy online: Civility, politeness, and the democratic potential of online political discussion groups. New Media & Society 6: 259–283.

43.

Pappano L (2012) The year of the MOOC. The New York Times, November 4, ED26.

44.

Parr C (2013a) Mooc completion rates ‘below 7%’. Times Higher Education, 9 May.

45.

Parr C (2013b) Mooc creators criticise courses’ lack of creativity. Times Higher Education, 17 October.

46.

Pilaar Birch

(2013) Using social media for research dissemination: The Digital Research Video Project. Internet Archaeology. (35). Available at: http://dx.doi.org/10.11141/ia.35.4.

47.

Reich J and Ho A (2014) The tricky task of figuring out what makes a MOOC successful. In: The Atlantic. Available at: http://http://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2014/01/the-tricky-task-of-figuring-out-what-makes-a-mooc-successful/283274/ (accessed 15 April 2015).

48.

Renfrew

Bahn

(2011) Archaeology Essentials: Theories, Methods, Practice, 2nd ed. London: Thames and Hudson, Ltd.

49.

Renfrew

Bahn

(2012) Archaeology: Theories, Methods and Practice, 6th ed. London: Thames and Hudson, Ltd.

50.

Richardson

(2013) A digital public archaeology? Papers from the Institute of Archaeology 23(1): 1–12.

51.

Richardson

(2014a) Understanding archaeological authority in a digital context. Internet Archaeology. 38. Available at: http://dx.doi.org/10.11141/ia.38.1.

52.

Richardson

(2014b) The day of archaeology: Blogging and online archaeological communities. European Journal of Postclassical Archaeologies 4: 421–446.

53.

Ridge

(2013) From tagging to theorizing. Deepening engagement with cultural heritage through crowdsourcing. Curator 56: 435–450.

54.

Sabloff

(1998) Distinguished lecture in archaeology: Communication and the future of American archaeology. American Anthropologist 100: 869–875.

55.

Segal CF (2013) MOOCs R Us. In: Inside Higher Ed. Available at: https://www.insidehighered.com/views/2013/03/07/thomas-friedman-wrong-about-moocs-essay (accessed 3 April 2015).

56.

Selingo JJ (2014) Demystifying the MOOC. The New York Times, November 2, ED23.

57.

Stein K (2013) Penn GSE study shows MOOCs have relatively few active users, with only a few persisting to course end. Available at: https://www.gse.upenn.edu/pressroom/press-releases/2013/12/penn-gse-study-shows-moocs-have-relatively-few-active-users-only-few-persisti (accessed 15 April 2015).

58.

Straumsheim C (2014) Everything in moderation. In: Inside Higher Ed. Available at: https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2014/01/23/u-copenhagen-mooc-instructor-searches-right-amount-online-moderation (accessed 3 April 2015).

59.

Trowel Blazers (2015) Trowel blazers: Women in archaeology, geology and palaentology. Available at: trowelblazers.com (accessed 15 April 2015).

60.

Walker

(2014) Antisocial media in archaeology? Archaeological Dialogues 21: 217–235.

61.

Wang

Baker

(2015) Content or platform: Why do students complete MOOCs? MERLOT Journal of Online Learning and Teaching 11(1): 17–30.

62.

Welsh

Dragusin

(2013) The new generation of massive open online courses (MOOCs) and entrepreneurship education. Small Business Institute Journal 9: 51–65.

Archaeology and the MOOC: Massive,open,online,and opportunistic

Abstract

Keywords

Get full access to this article

References