What an amazing first week of the course, once again! It has been fantastic for all of us involved and we are so grateful for the breadth and depth of comments coming from everyone on the course. Reading and participating in the discussions really gives us a sense of the enthusiasm people have for learning about Portus.

The step that stood out for me this week was the discussions around the Portus in the 1^st Century First Century (requires login). In this step we invited you all to share your thoughts about arriving at Portus. The sheer number and variety of comments was amazing.

Above is a wordcloud showing some of the top words that learners used to describe what they believe would greet them as they arrived into Portus in the 1^st Century. What is clear is that a lot of people expect to see a great number of goods and cargo being unloaded and loaded onto ships. The docks would be bustling with activity, including travelers buying and selling in the shops of the colonnaded buildings surrounding the port. However, it wasn’t only the sights of the port that were considered, but the smells and sounds of Roman life were thoroughly explored by many. Using your own experiences of life today and what you understand about Portus from Week One or through other archaeological sites you have brought together a rich mixture of facts and artistic imagination. This collection of comments can only add to our work at Portus, where try to bridge such scientific and creative divides.

Exploring the Study Groups, a new FutureLearn platform feature, has been an exciting time for all of us. We really didn’t know what to expect. My first impression is that this addition has had a really positive effect on how people interact with other learners. It seems that many of you are taking this opportunity to share your backgrounds, experiences and interests with others in a smaller group. I look forward to seeing these connections grow as the weeks progress. Your shared thoughts and ideas from exploring Portus through the Virtual Tour and the Google or Bing maps really helped me a get a better understanding of the role and use of the Tour. Both good and bad features have been pointed out and I fully intend to use this feedback to make the next version even better.

A reminder that we have a flickr group pool. If you want to create your own video or image representations of the port then please share them with us, or use other tools to share audio. Please feel free to share these imagines on the course when commenting, maybe to ask a question or even to help other learners better understand certain topics.

If you are reading this and haven’t yet signed up then please do! There is still plenty of time to join in the conversations from week one and move on to week two. You can watch the trailer and register on the FutureLearn site here. Next week on the course is the second century and the Emperor Trajan. We will see the construction of a new basin, a series of enormous structures, and what the evidence from these buildings and other historical sources can tell us about Portus at this time.

Looking forward to Week 2

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We are pleased to have launched a series of online tours to help with navigating Portus in space and time. Produced by myself, with input from the rest of the Portus Project team, the linked tours have been created for the Claudian, Trajanic, and Severan periods, and for the Fifth to Seventh Centuries. There is also a tour providing a virtual visit to the archaeological site as it is today. Finally there is an interactive timeline for the site explaining the history of archaeological investigation at Portus.

We hope that these are of use throughout the course and help you in understanding the different periods of Portus. The tours are intended only as a first step and we have many additions and modifications planned. We would welcome your comments and suggestions below or via portus@soton.ac.uk

The tours are available in English and Italian and are accessible via: http://www.portusproject.org/tour/

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On the Italian version of this blog Eleonora has now added a summary of the week three topics.

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Once again Eleonora has translated the summaries of the week one activities into Italian in order to support sharing of the course via Italian social media. As discussed previously the course itself runs in English and it is not possible to moderate the posts on the FL platform in English and Italian. This would require Italian speakers on the FutureLearn platform which is monitored 24 hours a day.

So, we will continue to provide additional resources such as this where possible, including the Italian transcripts mentioned in Eleonora’s previous post. As ever we welcome Italian contributions via other social media. Tweet Eleonora at @eleonorag1

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Hello all, my name is Peter Wheeler and I’m one of the designers on #UosFLPortus. I have the great job of helping to put the entire MOOC together. Whilst you won’t see me on camera – although I do have two cameos – I have been behind the scenes putting together each video, text and other additional content in preparation for the launch. We think it is important that you know about all the people involved in the Portus MOOC and their experiences of working at this fantastic site.

My first involvement at Portus came in 2009 when I was a first year undergraduate student at the University of Southampton. I was lucky enough to be chosen as one of the students to go to Portus as part of my field work experience. Having already been fascinated by Roman history at school, being able to come to this site and work alongside experts in the field was a truly amazing experience. Ever since those first five weeks it has been a great privilege to not only be involved in the project but also to research and contribute to it as well. It is something that I have done with great passion and commitment and has been a part of most of my academic career so far.
For my undergraduate dissertation I researched into the use of 3D models in archaeology and continued on the tradition of using computer graphics to help understand the complex buildings at Portus. I focussed on one area of the site, the Castellum Aquae, for my project and produced an interpretative visual reconstruction of the building with help from Simon and Graeme.

I then moved on to study the MSc in Archaeological Computing, again at the University of Southampton. During this time I studied the use of computational approaches and techniques in archaeology. I also learned about laser scanning, RTI, database management and additional surveying techniques.

However, the main focus of my research over the past two years has been in the use of web technologies in educating others about the site of Portus. This culminated in my recent masters dissertation, entitled “The use of Web Technologies in providing a fundamental experience of archaeological fieldwork at Portus”. This project used a series of HTML5 and WebGL technologies to create innovative educational material. Here I attempted to visualise different types of 3D data collected on site in order to give a fundamental experience of what the site looks like today and what we currently know about the archaeology. During the course of the MOOC you will get to see many of the 3D data sets that I used during my dissertation.

My role on the Archaeology of Portus MOOC began nearly a year ago with the initial designing of the course’s structure in preparation for filming on site during the 2013 field school. Through this process each video was recorded with specific learning goals in mind. This was a very enjoyable experience for me. Planning each video while walking around the excavation really highlighted how much the site has changed over the 5 years that I have visited. The amount of knowledge and understanding that I have gained in that time has been astonishing and something that I really value.

Over the past few months I have been reviewing the footage that was shot in July in order to make it even better. With the help of many volunteers we collected both archaeologists’ and non-archaeologists’ suggestions about what additional content would make each video more informative and accessible. Having created this long list we have set about finding or creating appropriate materials. I think it is really important to say that we have always tried to use content that was created by the Portus project in order to make everything we present to you as true to life as possible. I really think that the content produced – especially the videos – gives a true sense of the multi-national and the collaborative atmosphere that occurs each day on site at Portus, as well as the quality of the research work that the project achieves. I hope when the time comes that you also agree.

Once the MOOC begins you will hopefully see me online quite a bit, both on this blog and the FutureLearn forum. My main role then will be to help as many as possible enjoy the course and make it both enjoyable and worthwhile. You can find my forum comments via my FutureLearn profile.

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