Online courses in Egyptology from Exeter University (update)

I have recently ended up in the odd position of having to lecture about Egyptology while having no academic background in Egyptology (Anthropology, yes. Egyptology, no.) While I do know something about the subject (thanks to more than a decade here in the Ancient Civ forum of ATS), the truth is there's a lot of gaps in my knowledge. So I was delighted to find that Exeter University is offering "fun ed" courses in the topic that are priced within the budget of many people (including me) and are not going to require papers or exams.

You don't get a "diploma" or any other certification -- but it's far less expensive than courses where you take a degree.

I thought some of you might enjoy taking these courses as well.. here's a link to them:
education.exeter.ac.uk...

Sorry for my absence, folks. I am writing my PhD dissertation (having marched through all(!) the coursework, passed the brutal qualifying exams, submitted a research proposal, re-submitted a modified research proposal, and done the research.) I'm 5,000 words into what's likely to be a 60,000 word manuscript.

I'll be more responsive and interactive in August.

Originally posted by Byrd
I have recently ended up in the odd position of having to lecture about Egyptology while having no academic background in Egyptology (Anthropology, yes. Egyptology, no.) While I do know something about the subject (thanks to more than a decade here in the Ancient Civ forum of ATS), the truth is there's a lot of gaps in my knowledge. So I was delighted to find that Exeter University is offering "fun ed" courses in the topic that are priced within the budget of many people (including me) and are not going to require papers or exams.

You don't get a "diploma" or any other certification -- but it's far less expensive than courses where you take a degree.

I thought some of you might enjoy taking these courses as well.. here's a link to them:
education.exeter.ac.uk...

Sorry for my absence, folks. I am writing my PhD dissertation (having marched through all(!) the coursework, passed the brutal qualifying exams, submitted a research proposal, re-submitted a modified research proposal, and done the research.) I'm 5,000 words into what's likely to be a 60,000 word manuscript.

I'll be more responsive and interactive in August.

Good resource Byrd. I feel your pain, once had to teach Islamic history, jewellry store management, Polynesian pre history and Java scripting during my time as an instructor (none of which I knew much about when I got thrown the job). Good luck on the dissertation those can be a bear presently writing a book and am 320 pages into the necessary 600+.

You could always try to get Margaret from the apprentice to lend a hand...she's just finished her PHD on something Egyptian i seem to remember and theres no way you'd get any back chat with her running things

Great link!

Many thanks!


Off to check it out!

reply to post by Byrd


Doug Exeter?...sorry in case people didn't get that reference. Exeter
--
That's very interesting. Thanks for sharing.

reply to post by Byrd


I'm majoring in anthropology! Also, out of curiosity, what is your dissertation topic?

Thanks for the link, too.

Originally posted by Nacirema
reply to post by Byrd

 

I'm majoring in anthropology! Also, out of curiosity, what is your dissertation topic?

Thanks for the link, too.

I believe it covers how she plans to use a knowledge of indigenous peoples parietal art to take over the world!

I know it's not a degree course, but if you have to pay to take the class, I would hope they at least offer credits.

I've recently done a bit of research into online classes, and it seems that 99% of "free" classes offered (of which there seem to be quite a lot, in a wide range of subjects) do not offer credits for completing the course. A smaller number of these free courses do offer a "certificate of completion."

On the other hand, oddly enough (or not very odd, when one considers the notion of greed) some of these very same courses which can be taken for free, can also be taken for a fee-- in exchange for which you get "credits" for completing the course.


Apparently information is free-- but a resume is costly.

Originally posted by Hanslune
Good luck on the dissertation those can be a bear presently writing a book and am 320 pages into the necessary 600+.

We can whine together. Thank the gods they aren't imposing a word limit... otherwise I'd be feverishly digging for every adjective I could think of.

Originally posted by Nacirema
reply to post by Byrd

 

I'm majoring in anthropology! Also, out of curiosity, what is your dissertation topic?

Thanks for the link, too.

It's not anthropology (as you'll find out, darn few places offer anthropology PhDs.) It's in Information Science (how people acquire and use knowledge.) In my case, it's about wheelchairs which sounds blitheringly simple and turns out to be VERY complicated and dependent on all sorts of interesting social factors. What's interesting is how much the rise of the internet has NOT really affected information sources.

...and back to writing....

Originally posted by iwilliam
I know it's not a degree course, but if you have to pay to take the class, I would hope they at least offer credits.

The ones that offer a non-degree diploma are about three times as expensive.

I've recently done a bit of research into online classes, and it seems that 99% of "free" classes offered (of which there seem to be quite a lot, in a wide range of subjects) do not offer credits for completing the course. A smaller number of these free courses do offer a "certificate of completion."

I also noticed that. I was slightly leery of some of the free courses because I'm not sure how solid and current their instruction will be (as I said, my field is "knowledge acquisition." I can be very twitchy about sources.)

On the other hand, oddly enough (or not very odd, when one considers the notion of greed) some of these very same courses which can be taken for free, can also be taken for a fee-- in exchange for which you get "credits" for completing the course.

Apparently information is free-- but a resume is costly.

The difference is that they have to pay some poor Teaching Assistant (like I was) to interact with the students and grade papers and give feedback. In a class of about 30, this can mean 10-20 hours work per week for a TA (at a measley $12/hour, I might add) and in a case of 100 (which I was a TA for) it can mean 30 hours/week for 3-4 TA's. I was a TA for one nightmare course with a boatload of homework and it was every bit as hard on us as graders and commenters as it was for the students. Worse, actually, because we had to read all their papers (and they submitted multiple papers) each week.

So there's a service that you pay for if you want the degree. I'll consider getting online coursework and a diploma or some such... AFTER all this is over.

...and back to writing. Really. ...

Well, the dissertation is in the hands of my committee chair, and -- best of all, the three Exeter University courses have just started and I did manage to get into the GlyphStudy group on Yahoo. So I thought I would give some comments about them.

Cost -- these courses are less expensive than most university courses, but they're around $300 for a 20 week course. GlyphStudy is free but you do have to buy the correct books to be able to work along.

GlyphStudy is challenging. We're learning to read hieroglyphs -- right now the hardest part is learning which typed letters can be substituted for any given hieroglyph. Given that there are over 900 individual hieroglyphs (yes, you read that right... 900), this is a bit of a challenge. One group is working on the titles of Hathor, one group is working through the Tale of Sinhue, I'm working through the Collier and Manley book. Translating is interesting and the leaders are good at explaining the variants we see in the text (and giving us the background.)

Exeter University:
I'm taking the introductory history of Egypt, the art of Egypt, and the history of Nubia

Impressions:
OMG. You have NO idea how much scholars know that has been hidden by people who are more interested in their own pet theories than they are about the truth. I know a bit about Egypt, but I've been literally blown away by what I'm learning (for example, some of the material in museums is mislabled (and scholars KNOW this and often try to get the museums to correct it.)) The history of Nubia does NOT ignore the Black Athena books but will cover them (I'm looking forward to that one). We dive right into the topic from the first sentence -- for history, we're shown maps of the 44 nomes and we're to figure out why certain ones were important (haven't figured that out yet, but am looking at maps and topology.) In the art course, they point out how the "granite" bowls and "granite" objects in museums are often mislabeled -- they're not granite but a softer (and somewhat similar looking) stone. For this class, we have to first start out looking at rocks and gems and pictures of them until we can tell the difference between travertine and alabaster (for example.)

I can't tell you how exciting this is!