(2000). The Corrupting Sea: A Study of Mediterranean History. History: Reviews of New Books: Vol. 28, No. 3, pp. 139-139.

The Corrupting Sea: A Study of Mediterranean History

The purpose of this study was to investigate how to facilitate learners' engagement and persistence in massive open online courses (MOOCs). Specifically, this study used structural equation modeling to examine the structural relationships among academic self-efficacy, teaching presence, perceived usefulness, and perceived ease of use, learning engagement, and learning persistence in MOOCs. For the data analysis, we selected as the research subjects 306 learners who were taking MOOCs in South Korea. The results indicated that academic self-efficacy, teaching presence, and perceived usefulness had significant direct effects on learning engagement. Furthermore, teaching presence and perceived ease of use had direct effects on learning persistence. Finally, learning engagement had indirect effects on the relationships between academic self-efficacy, teaching presence, perceived usefulness, and learning persistence. These findings suggest implications for designing and developing effective instructional and learning strategies in MOOCs in terms of learners’ perceptions of themselves, instructors, and learning support systems.

Learning Engagement and Persistence in Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCS)

Ancient Near Eastern Texts Relating to the Old Testament

The chief executive officer of edX, Anant Agarwal, declared that Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) should serve as “particle accelerator for learning” (1). MOOCs provide new sources of data and opportunities for large-scale experiments that can advance the science of learning. In the years since MOOCs first attracted widespread attention, new lines of research have begun, but findings from these efforts have had few implications for teaching and learning. Big data sets do not, by virtue of their size, inherently possess answers to interesting questions. For MOOC research to advance the science of learning, researchers, course developers, and other stakeholders must advance the field along three trajectories: from studies of engagement to research about learning, from investigations of individual courses to comparisons across contexts, and from a reliance on post hoc analyses to greater use of multidisciplinary, experimental design.

https://science.sciencemag.org/content/sci/347/6217/34.full.pdf

Rebooting MOOC Research

La mémoire collective

Classics; Homer; Archaeology; Odysseus; Sea Peoples; Naval Warfare; Nautical Archaeology; Mycenaean; Greece

Black Ships and Fair–Flowing Aegyptus: Uncovering the Late Bronze–Early Iron Age Context of Odysseus’ Raid on Egypt

The appearance of the brailed rig and loose–footed sail at the end of the Late Bronze Age revolutionized seafaring in the eastern Mediterranean. The most famous early appearance of this new technology is found in history’s first visual representation of a naval battle, on the walls of Ramesses III’s mortuary temple at Medinet Habu, where both Egyptian and Sea Peoples ships are depicted with this new rig, as well as top– mounted crow’s nests and decking upon which shipborne warriors do battle. The identical employment of these innovative components of maritime technology by opposing forces in this battle suggests either some level of previous contact between the invaders and those responsible for designing and constructing Egypt’s ships of war, or shared interaction with a third party, perhaps on the Syro–Canaanite coast. This article examines the evidence for the development of the brailed rig in the eastern Mediterranean, and explores the possibility that at least one group of Sea Peoples, who may have comprised a key part of the international economy of the Late Bronze Age in their role as “pirates, raiders, and traders” (Georgiou 2012: 527) – Artzy’s “nomads of the sea” (1997) – played a similarly integral role in the transference of maritime technology between the Levant, Egypt, and the Aegean.

Sea Peoples, Egypt, and the Aegean: The Transference of Maritime Technology in the Late Bronze–Early Iron Transition (LH IIIB–C)

The end of the Hittite Empire and the destruction and abandonment of Alalakh represents a cultural break between the Late Bronze and Early Iron Ages in the ‘Amuq Valley. In the Iron I, a population with clear ties to the greater Aegean world, perhaps related to the Philistines of southern Canaan, established an agro-pastoral settlement at Tell Ta‘yinat and the surrounding area. This occupation, marked by Field Phases 6–3 at Ta‘yinat, was both materially and chronologically ephemeral, and should be viewed as a cultural outlier sandwiched between the Hittite-controlled LBA and later Iron I. This intrusive population lived alongside the indigenous inhabitants of the ‘Amuq, bequeathing to the region a toponym—Palistin—that would far outlast their own relevance and archaeological visibility. By the First Building Period at Tell Ta‘yinat, which followed the Aegean-related phases, the site was home to a dynasty overseeing a typical Neo-Hittite state, with its toponym all that remained of the “Sea Peoples” presence that occupied it at the beginning of the Iron Age.

/pdf/king-taita-and-his-palistin-philistine-state-or-neo-hittite-3fen7bzhei.pdf

King Taita and his “Palistin”: Philistine State or Neo-Hittite Kingdom?

CB22x: The Ancient Greek Hero, was offered as a HarvardX course in Spring 2013 on edX, a platform for massive open online courses (MOOCs). It was taught by Professor Greg Nagy. The report was prepared by researchers external to the course team, based on examination of the courseware, analyses of the data collected by the edX platform, and interviews and consultations with the course faculty and team members.

/pdf/heroesx-the-ancient-greek-hero-spring-2013-course-report-4utvbwudjc.pdf

HeroesX: The Ancient Greek Hero: Spring 2013 Course Report

Primary sources from the end of the Bronze Age have long been read as suggesting a time of chaotic transition, particularly with regard to threats from the sea that the established powers had no means of combatting. While the scale and severity of seaborne attacks seems to have increased in the late 13th century, these were not in themselves new phenomena, as a state of maritime threat seems to have been a constant for coastal polities and mariners in the Late Bronze Age eastern Mediterranean. However, a combination of internal and external factors in the late 13th and early 12th centuries combined to make these attacks more effective than they had been in the past, and polities more vulnerable to them. These included the rapid spread of improvements in maritime technology, particularly from the Aegean and the Levant, via high–intensity ‘zones of transference’, as well as an increase in the scale of ship­–based combat operations, due in part to the displacement of people during the Late Bronze Age collaps...

Jeffrey P. Emanuel

Papers

Black Ships and Fair–Flowing Aegyptus: Uncovering the Late Bronze–Early Iron Age Context of Odysseus’ Raid on Egypt

Sea Peoples, Egypt, and the Aegean: The Transference of Maritime Technology in the Late Bronze–Early Iron Transition (LH IIIB–C)

King Taita and his “Palistin”: Philistine State or Neo-Hittite Kingdom?

HeroesX: The Ancient Greek Hero: Spring 2013 Course Report

Maritime Worlds Collide: Agents of Transference and the Metastasis of Seaborne Threats at the End of the Bronze Age