Course Objectives

The name of this course is Roman Architecture, Construction, and Culture. As the title suggests it is about Rome, Italy. The course's main focus is on the Ancient Roman empire and the artifacts and buildings they have left behind, such as the Colosseum, the Pantheon, the Circus Maximus, the aqueduct system, etc. It shows what these topics were like as well as what they are like today, over 2000 years later.

Unlike most classes, however, this course is not based on lecture, but research rather in what is known as "Problem-Based Learning" (PBL). At the beginning of the course, the entire class was divided into five groups of three, four, or five people. Then, each group was given a topic and a problem associated with this subject. By running the class this way, we learn how to solve a problem in a team, while still learning about whatever topic we were assigned.

The main goals of the course can be divided into three subcategories:

Cognitive

1. Developing knowledge and appreciation of technology

2. Understanding the strong inter-relationship between society and technology

3. Learning effective research methodology

Behavioral

1. Improving oral and written communication skills

2. Applying resources to solve problems

3. Developing skills to function in an interdisciplinary team

4. Understanding the importance of life-long learning

Affective

1. Appreciating the benefits of history in the decision-making process

2. Experiencing a different culture

3. Enjoying the benefits of the PBL approach to learning and problem solving

4. Recognizing the student’s need to know and support each other

The First Problem

The first topic that my group covered was the Roman Colosseum. We were assigned the following problem:

The Big Contest

Part One

Sam carefully maneuvered his motorcycle between the cars in the parking lot next to the International office. He is a man on a mission; the latest university budget cut has left his group with little money to run a program very dear to his heart, the “International Business and Technology” program. There is no money what-so-ever to travel; meanwhile his group members had set their eyes on the Eternal City “Rome” as their next destination.

Sam was in a reflective mood, he just came from the tribunal meeting where he had a serious discussion about keeping the program alive. However, without a travel abroad experience, his will have to limit their activities to seminars and discussion. He predicts that most of the members will drop out if the international travel component is eliminated. Sam‘s group wanted to raise money, but did not know how? They have heard of the cut in the international grants for travel but they did not feel that bake sale can make-up difference to help them in their travel expenses. After all, the trip to Rome will cost two thousand dollars without food. They could go on the diet…. But even that is not sufficient!!

As Sam stopped by the International office, he noticed a sign about a competition posted by the Association of Professionals for Preservation of Heritage (APPHS). The APPHS is trying to raise the awareness of school students of all ages of professional careers in preservations of heritage by providing exciting resources that stimulate their interests. The association is phasing-in a new program about international and historical architecture, construction and culture; it has announced a contest for college students to develop resources for school students about the subject in the Eternal City, Rome.

Resources on Construction in Rome for Children of all Ages

Prize is $5,000 in scholarship- The scholarship will be used for exploration of archaeological sites involving Historical Structures.

Guidelines:

1. Develop Authentic and Engaging Educational Resources (in any form) that stimulate the interest of school students in historical architecture, construction and art in Rome and excite their inquisitive minds of the culture in Rome at that time.
2. Although the entire roman heritage is addressed, the focus will be on the Colosseum project
3. Resources shall include but are not limited to art, history, technological solution to building design and construction problems.
4. The research of the heritage shall link the history to the present and future
5. The proposal shall extend to methods of dissemination of the resources to school children.

Selection of winning proposals will be based on the proposal strength in engaging the school children, fostering their interests in conservation of heritage professions, and the proposed resources and their methods of dissemination. Oral Presentation will be given in front of a committee of professionals on Tuesday October 28. The committee encourages the students to be creative in their proposal presentations.

Part Two
At University Hall

The next day, Sam, Angel, Antonio, Sarah, Matt and Andrew are discussing the subject at lunch at one corner of University Hall cafeteria. “Look dude”, said Antonio, “my major is Spanish, I have taken some Gen Ed classes in History and Culture, but repairing the steps of our back porch is my only and last experience with construction projects”. Sarah mumbled “I am a Business major, what do I know about the subject? I am just interested in traveling.” Matt remarked kiddingly, “I am a techie I may be able to contribute in the technology area but the Roman did not have computers then!” After a heated discussion about the subject Andrew stood up and said “hold-off you guys, we each have our own strength and we all have done research, it is all about research, isn’t it..” “No!!” quickly interrupted Matt, “it is also about putting together a successful proposal and delivering it.” Angel who remained quiet during the entire discussion, raised her head and said “I really think we can do it and have fun on the way!! There are zillions of materials available on the subjects, all we have to do is to assemble the information, make sure of its accuracy and document it, then deliver the proposal in a creative way. That should be lots of fun!!”

Finally, Sam puts an end to the conversation: “look guys, this will give just about $1000 a piece to go to Rome, isn’t that the destination we discussed last term. So.. OKAY!! We have been at this now for a whole hour, let us vote. How many are willing to take the plunge and pull their weight.” Sam, Angel, Matt, and Andrew raised their hand. “OK!! Let us meet on Saturday and draft a C-Map and make some plans.”

The Colosseum

We used this PowerPoint as part of our presentation:



We also included a video clip from the movie Gladiator to help the audience get a visual of the things we talked about in our presentation.

Reflection - Problem #1

1. I have really learned a lot working on our problem these past few weeks. I would even go as far as to say that I've learned just as much about working on projects and teamwork as I have about the Roman Colosseum. I've learned dividing a project into parts is a fairly good way to go about solving a problem, but that communication is essential if this approach is taken. As for the Colosseum, it's impossible to write down everything that I've learned so far. There were a lot of things that I knew about the Colosseum before this project, but this assignment really allowed me to connect all of these ideas. I was able to find out how and why things were. For example, I had heard that the Colosseum had a retractable roof, but I never knew how it worked, or at least how it might have worked; that was one thing I learned during my research. One of the most surprising things I learned about the Colosseum, however, was the seating system. I was surprised to find out that the Romans would hand out tickets for each event. The audience would be given clay tablets known as tessera which would have the seat, row, and section number on it. What really got me was how similar that idea was to our method of seating today. The only major difference was that today we use paper tickets instead of clay.

2. After we were given the assignment, we first stated brainstorming. We wrote down all of our ideas on post-it notes which we then organized on a C-Map, which I'll post below. We made sure to be as open-minded as possible because there is no such thing as a bad idea. Once we organized all of our ideas we started to weed through them. This was really the hard part because there were so many sides to the Colosseum that we wanted to talk about, it was very difficult to decided what was better. Eventually, we were able to consolidate all of our thoughts into three main categories: history, entertainment, and construction. We felt these were the most important things when talking about the Colosseum. We also thought the arch was very significant in the Colosseum so we made sure to highlight that in our presentation. After we found our main ideas, each one of us chose a topic to research. I was responsible for researching the arch and relating it to Colosseum. The first two classes after we divided the research, we simply discussed all of the things that we had come across and traded sources to aid in our research. As the presentation date drew closer, we each created a part of a PowerPoint slideshow with our own topic. We then put all of our pieces together to make our final presentation.

3. Working in a group really helped out with the research. There was truly an overwhelming amount of information on the Colosseum, it would really be difficult for one person to digest it all. Another benefit of working with a team was that we were able to "cover more ground" so to say on the internet. We were able to search more sites between all of us and so we were able to find some really good sources.

4. I thought that the overall project made for an interesting experience. It was a different way to run a class and it was nice to have a change. However, I wouldn't say it went perfectly. Our presentation could have been a bit better. I think that, because there was so much information on our topic and so little time to present, we missed a lot of important things that, given more time, we would have been able to cover. There were just so many interesting facets to the Colosseum. Another unfortunate part of our presentation was that it ended up being more of a lecture rather than an "interactive presentation to stimulate interest". In that respect we did not do so great. I think that it was mostly due to some confusion over the problem. I was conflicted between wanting to relay a lot of the great information I found to the audience and fulfilling the requirements of the problem. Initially when I found at that the class was problem-based I thought, "Oh, okay, we're going to create presentations to teach each other about Ancient Rome." Because of this initial thought I had a preconceived idea of what we were supposed to do. I think this may have interfered with our final presentation and caused it to be more of a lecture. But after seeing all of the presentations, it seems like we were supposed to present of an idea of how we would "stimulate interest". I think we were supposed to give a presentation on what we would do. Some other groups did this in their presentations and I think that theirs were far more enthralling than ours, but I thought this method also presented a problem: by concentrating on what they would do, I felt that we as the audience missed out on a lot of information. I know that I learned way more during my research than I was ever able to present and I'm sure the same goes for all of the other groups. Overall, I thought this project was a great experience. I really learned a lot of things that I hope to be able to apply to our second problem.