The HPJ staff:

Casey Dué: (video production, teaching fellow)

Mary Ebbott (co-leader, graphic design, teaching fellow)

Tom Jenkins (co-leader, graphic design, video production, teaching fellow)

Gregory Nagy (concept, content, and organization, Professor)

with help from John Wilbanks, Wendy Seltzer, Alex Macgillivray, and Antoun Nabhan, of the Berkman Center and Rudy Hypolite of A/V services.

What it was: A 4-week cyber series, sponsored by the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard Law School. The series featured assigned texts (an edition of the Iliad prepared by the HPJ staff, and an article by Gregory Nagy), 45 minutes of RealVideo produced and funded especially for HPJ (5 segments in all), optional lectures and notes (RealVideo), discussion boards (with weekly assignments), and realtime chats (four in all, using iChat software). The series focused on questions of morality and justice in the Iliad, and analyzed especially the litigation scene on the Shield of Achilles as a micro-narrative for the macro-narrative of compensation and value that runs throughout the epic.

How we did it: The Berkman Center staff provided an initial series template, as well as some technical guidance in building the html. In practice, the Berkman Center (which was also running four other series) managed the registration program and the password protection code, as well as the iChat software and other specialized functions. The HPJ team modified the html for its own purposes and ran the series on a day-by-day basis, including the taping and production of the RealMedia dialogues, the monitoring of discussion groups, and the general series content. (The HPJ team also fielded the troubleshooting questions.) The Berkman Center is partially funded by law firms and other external sources; the Berkman Center in turn bankrolled the salaries of our TFs, and one equipment purchase.

What we hoped to accomplish:

We aimed for a broad constituency of participants for an investigation of law and morality in the Iliad&endash;and that is what we got! Roughly 1/4 of the participants were students or educators, another 1/4 were attorneys, 1/4 were technology professionals, and 1/4 were everything else, including free-lancers, TV producers, retirees, military officers, and activists. Participants flocked from all over the world, including Brazil, Switzerland, Alaska, Australia, Slovakia, and the Arab Emirates. We were pleased with the general tenor of the discussion on the hypernews lists, and quickly activated a ‘newcomers’ forum for those who felt they needed a more general introduction to Greek literature.

The response was phenomenal. From an initial response of 250 or so participants, the series ballooned to close to 700, mostly through word of mouth.

Some feedback:

• The course was a revelation. And of course the technology was only a part of it. Tools don't work in the hands of people who don't know how to use them. You, Professor Nagy, and your colleagues were marvelous. I can't get over the quality of the conversations and the degree to which I felt connected to the whole experience. One of my colleagues, a retired foreign service officer who served in seven African countries, was looking over my shoulder last evening during the chat session (despite the best efforts of our firewall to make the connection go away), enthusing about distance learning's potential for a continent where higher education is, in many states, in near collapse. My organization, the National Intelligence Council, will be putting on a conference later this year on societal implications of the information revolution, and I can't wait to see how the other panelists react when I start talking about the "ascending scale of affection" and our need for kleos.
• This opportunity to experience the blessing of a gifted teacher pour his love into the students (me) and guide us towards our own boundaries, is the way civilization is supposed to work.... I am most grateful for the Berkman Center and to our kindly professor for this gift.
• I particularly value the generous use of time in reply to us stupid students given ungrudgingly by Greg and all you tutors, y’all (am I learning American?).... The human approach, expertise, cooperative planning and wide knowledge and care you all displayed was phenomenal and unbeatable! Cooperation between four scholars in Finland would be rather rare.
• (From a comment on the discussion sections): Excellent&endash;no personal invective, unlike every other discussion forum that I’ve seen. Constant participation by the TF’s, who goosed the dialogue when it flagged, was the other key to success.
• This has been far and away the most enjoyable thing I have ever done on the Net, and one of the highlights of my year so far.
• I thought the Teaching Fellows did an outstanding job in supporting my efforts, and in answering questions. Super job! The whole experience was wonderful and I would love to see another like it in the near future. This was the first time I’d read The Iliad, and I will continue my studies on it and other works.
• I am tickled pink that this type of material is available.
• Fascinating and inspiring. Took me back to my college days.
• Had Zeus granted me an extra four hours per day through the month of April to spend reading, thinking, and responding to conversations evolving in the discussion forums, I would have sacrificed a goat for the opportunity.
• It was superb. Please consider other ventures.

Suggestions for improvements included:

• Perhaps I would edit the lectures to make them available for audio only (as an alternative, of course), which seems easier to download than video.
• I would like some questions which dealt with the language of the text, since there seemed to be so many participants who read the text in the original.
• Perhaps one more chat session with the professor. I really wanted to log on and live chat with others, but my schedule has been a bit hectic lately. Thanks for transcribing them though.
• Maybe even more "homework" questions.
• Substitute written material for the realvideos. I don't have to see Prof. Nagy talk to understand him.
• Yes, I never could get iChat to work, even though I tried hard twice to do so. I got my login name and password going, but when I tried to log on to the chat session, I kept getting a screen that said I could not log on because the connection to the cyberhost (?) could not be made, or it didn't recognize the cyberhost name (?) or something like that. That was disappointing, and I closed down both times cursing technology and shaking my head at the time I had spent to no avail.
• overall, it was a very good series and utilized a lot of various media which i think contributed to the series. there's a trade-off between asking the participants to write longer, perhaps more thoughtful pieces and the ability to have multiple responses. but this is a difficult trade-off to resolve.
• Lest you think I have little imagination.... why is there no video game / computer game for this? Get with Sierra and kids could really visit Troy and role play the heroes. Heck, they could play the Gods too.
• recommend at some point providing the staff "answers" to the questions. a personal response to each participant is not feasible (and i am not recommending that) but it would be interesting if i could have compared my answers with what the experts thought was appropriate.
• I would be most grateful if you could use Greenwich Mean Time instead of EDT (or whatever) for those of us who live in a different hemisphere and have no idea of American time zones. At least with GMT we could work out when the ichats were going to be.