Princeton Weekly Bulletin December 7, 1998
Online courses begin with Balkans
By Caroline Moseley
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Taught by Professor of Near Eastern Studies Norman Itzkowitz, the free course is available to alumni and their families, students and parents, and the entire campus community. There are currently more than 550 people enrolled, according to Douglas Blair, the Alumni Council's associate director for special projects, who coordinates the course.
The course reviews 2,000 years of Balkan history, exploring the psychological roots that have produced this century's ethnic conflicts. There are four lectures, each of which is divided into several segments. Included are streamed audio lectures, maps, cultural images, suggested readings, links to related Web sites and an online precept.
The multimedia format, says Blair, encourages learning, because "Visual images, text and audio lectures reinforce each other." In addition, "The course is not live, so participants can 'customize' it by going backward or forward, examining materials of special interest or exploring other Web sites." Interactivity means "People can stop or start at any time."
A year to develop
It took Itzkowitz and Blair about a year to develop the course. Itzkowitz provided the lectures and identified relevant visual materials. Blair did much of the programming himself. An outside vendor, Midi Inc., located in Princeton, "took the lectures and made them into scripts; designed the site and the navigating tool bar; recorded the audio material; and synchronized audio, text, images and animations," Blair says.
Blair and Itzkowitz identified Web resources that could enhance the course, such as encyclopedias, an atlas, information on the Balkan War and a glossary of relevant terms. Midi Inc. created links so that those enrolled in the course could travel to the ancillary Web sites and still, as Blair says, "stay inside the course."
Student workers helped with scanning images, first in CIT's The Place and later in the Alumni Council office. "Then," says Blair, "the images needed to be processedfor instance, black-and-white to color, and to be fitted appropriately onto a given lecture page." The entire project has been funded by the Alumni Council and the Office of the President.
The online course covers "the Romans to World War I," says Itzkowitz. He is now at work on a second part that will bring the course up to the present. He is also to lead an alumni college that complements but does not repeat the online course: "Balkan Prelude: The Seljuk and Ottoman Empires," to be held in Turkey June 26 through July 10.
Three hours per screen minute
Blair says he has long been "interested in the Internet as a way to communicate with alumni. Once the Web had reached the point where it could deliver audio as well as visual material, an online course seemed a natural."
Itzkowitz "was very enthusiastic about the project and has spent countless hours on it," Blair says. But neither of them "had any idea just how much time it would takeabout three hours of work per minute onscreen."
Blair believes that the online course "is really breaking new pedagogic ground." When he gives presentations to colleagues on Princeton's use of online resources in alumni relations, especially alumni education, "People act like it's science fiction," he says. "We've only been able to do it," he adds, "because TigerNet makes it easy to reach a community of alumni already online." TigerNet, the alumni network that has been operating since 1995, now boasts "15,500 alumni with Internet connections."
The Alumni Council also plans to offer an online course called Walks in Rome, taught by John Pinto, professor of art and archaeology. "We'll create three walks in the city, and highlight the architecture along the routes," says Blair.
New way to teach, learn
A member of the Class of 1971 with an MBA from Columbia, Blair was in international banking for 22 years before deciding he wanted "to work in a nonprofit, educational environment." He joined the Alumni Council in 1993, working in regional affairs and alumni education. He has held his present position since January.
Itzkowitz, a faculty member since 1958, regularly teaches Ottoman history and modern Turkish, as well as occasional courses in psychobiography and the use of the computer in historical research. Trained as a psychoanalyst as well as an Ottomanist, Itzkowitz has enjoyed the challenge of creating the online course. It shows, he says with a smile, that "You can teach an old dog new tricks."
What appeals most to both of them is, in Blair's words, "the excitement of a completely new way to teach and to learn."
Registration information for Demonization of the Other and technical requirements can be found at http://www.princeton.edu/~alco/@princeton.html.