Comments on: FutureLearn social network: Portus in the UoS MOOCosphere

By: Dave Hall

Dave Hall — Tue, 10 Mar 2015 18:09:25 +0000

I found this an interesting post.
I am one of the oddballs that have done Web Science, Portus-1, Portus-2 and Hadrian’s Wall. It might have been interesting to have included Hadrian’s Wall in the graph but I recognise that there are issues involved in doing so.
The links that have been provided between Portus and Hadrian’s Wall are interesting and useful. Additionally they provide different viewpoints on some issues and I am planning to look at these relationships in more detail.
I cannot think of any links between Portus and Web Science that would work in the same way. However I would like to investigate Roman sites as a network and see what emergent behaviour if any there is. It might also be interesting to look at Portus as a Complex Adaptive System to see if this provides any interesting insights
Doing Portus for a second time was a different experience to doing it for the first time and I feel that I have gained a lot from it. I am finding it difficult to imagine what I would gain from taking Web Science again but I cannot specify why I am taking this position.

By: Keith Twort

Keith Twort — Tue, 10 Mar 2015 13:49:56 +0000

Hi Graeme
Many thanks to you and your colleagues for a fabulous course! No way in my whole career have I been involved in archaeology in any shape or form, but I have been inspired by the enthusiasm exhibited by all.

The diagram above showed some very interesting trends (marketing and shipwrecks have, not surprisingly I suppose, very little coupling!)

Two statistics would be interesting though:
How many people started the course and how many finished it?
How many finished the course and made no comment?

I have always wondered how “massive” a MOOC really is! 100s? 1000s?

Best regards

Keith Twort

By: Andrew Wilkinson

Andrew Wilkinson — Tue, 10 Mar 2015 07:25:25 +0000

That is interesting analysis. At my own university Portus was a key topic in the introductory subjects to maritime landscape and maritime based terrestrial archaeology. There is a strong connection between the two. This led to my own interest in the course as there are no local topics on offer. It would be interesting to see the demographics of participants from Southhampton University as I believe the quality of instruction in these fields is second to none.

By: Graeme Earl

Graeme Earl — Mon, 09 Mar 2015 23:04:31 +0000

Many thanks Trevor. That is great to hear! Please do keep posting comments on the platform – we will get to them in the end, hopefully in time for the next run of the course if not before! Best wishes, Graeme

By: Trevor Newman

Trevor Newman — Mon, 09 Mar 2015 21:30:27 +0000

Hi Graeme, How very interesting.
In my case my Father was an Admiralty scientist who’ worked with Cousteau and developed sonar for submarines (asdic as it was called in the post war era). He also was based at the Embassy in Washington in the 70s being involved with the submersible drift vehicle which followed the Gulf Stream.
His love or archaeology and history has by osmosis been transmitted to me. Boats and the sea are in my blood ……so as a result my wife and I cannot get enough of the Classical period and if it involves anything to do with water, ports shipping and the ancient world we would love to be informed. Many thanks for a superb course, many questions still remain.
Best wishes to you all
Trevor