Ancient Cities: Teaching and learning in the digital age

In this paper we present an overview of the Ancient Cities project’s outcomes and experiences with producing and testing digital educational material in the field of archaeology. In the first part, the Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) Discovering Greek & Roman Cities is introduced with respect to its target audiences and learning objectives, the ways in which it was disseminated to the target audiences, and how its structure and learning material were developed. Based on several questionnaires answered by the participants and user data from the MOOC platform itself, we were able to collect comprehensive information on the demography of the participants, their expectations, and their experiences. These data allow us to draw conclusions about the opportunities and difficulties of open education in the historical humanities. In the second part, we show how the course’s materials were successfully implemented in academic teaching at the Panthéon-Sorbonne University, the University of Paris-Saclay (UVSQ), and the University of Pennsylvania. These examples highlight how smaller academic fields in the humanities can design and enhance their respective teaching environments in the digital age.