CAMS 3208 (Gaming) Homer
Three credit blended course
University of Connecticut
Spring semester 2014
Instructor:
Roger Travis, Ph.D.
Associate Professor of Classics
Department of Modern and Classical Languages
University of Connecticut
Office hours:
Arjona 200 and online on HuskyCT Chat: T 10­11, Th 11­12 (Eastern Time), and by
appointment
HOMERID PRIME ONLINE
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Greetings from the Homerid Prime.
You have been chosen for an elite training course in the art of the epic bards, as part of an
initiative to save Western Civilization from oblivion. Once you complete your tutorial, you
will be ready to enter the immersion­space of what my organization judges the most
important form of modern epic, the narrative digital game, and to gain proficiency in
analyzing homeric epic through a comparative analysis especially of two of these games.
In order that this mission remain secret, I have disguised myself as a professor, and
disguised this course as CAMS 3208 Homer and CAMS 3101 Topics in Advanced Greek.
Read this syllabus for the details of this disguise, including course requirements and
policies.
((Out­of­game information will be enclosed in double­parentheses; if at any time you wish
to communicate with me outside the game­based framework of the course, simply enclose
your communication like this one.))
((Welcome to CAMS 3208/3101, a course about what it means to be the kind of human
being who takes a course about Homer at the University of Connecticut. What you’ll find in
this syllabus is a summary of the goals of the course, a list of course materials, an overview
of course policies, and a schedule of missions, each one with a precis of that mission's
activities. You’ll find the instructions and materials for the mission­activities on the course
website, and the links in the instructions will guide you through the required activities, which
include all the assignments you will be completing as the course requirements.))
((This course is taught in a game­based format. Game­based learning is one of the
fastest­growing and most exciting developments in learning today, at every level from
grade­school through graduate­school. Increasingly, teachers and educational theorists are
moving towards a model not of games *in* school but of games *as* school. I’m proud to
say that my work in the field, in particular my work in collaboration with Professor Michael
Young of the Neag School here at UConn, is considered some of the leading research and
practice in the fields both of classics and of education. I say all that because otherwise you
might well think that what I’ll be doing with CAMS 3208/3101 is some sort of gimmick,
designed to try to get you to have “fun” while you’re learning. I can honestly say that while I
do consider you to be in danger of having “fun” while you take CAMS 3208/3101, that’s not
the point of the game­based format at all. Game­based learning allows you, as the student,
to work towards the course’s learning objectives not because I tell you that you should but
because you have a reason of your own to get there. In the case of CAMS 3208/3101, or,
as you’ll come to call it if you decide to continue in it, Operation ΚΛΕΟΣ, you’ll be learning
about homeric epic through video games, and even learning how to read some ancient
Greek, because you need to explain to the modern world the vital necessity of performing
and analyzing epic, both ancient and modern, as a way of dealing with our cultures’
problems.))
((Please remember that this syllabus is, in terms of Operation ΚΛΕΟΣ, a “disguise.” While
everything in this syllabus is true, complete, and accurate, and held by me to be binding
upon me, you need to remember as you’re fulfilling the requirements on this syllabus that
you are also a novice homerid­­a bard­in­training­­in Operation ΚΛΕΟΣ, and that nothing
on this syllabus changes the game­based methodology of the learning in the course.))
((Finally, it’s important to say that the game­based format of the course is not a gimmick or,
above all, something you can ignore. While it is possible to receive an A in the course
without doing any serious role­playing and by simply completing the assignments as if this
were a traditional­­though online­­course, in order to do well on those assignments you are
going to have to engage the rules of Operation ΚΛΕΟΣ, which happen also to be the
learning objectives of the course. Operation ΚΛΕΟΣ is not an activity you can skip; the
operation is the course, and the course is the operation.))
Goals, Objectives, Assessments
Key to assessments:
● R: Reports: Five team collaborations on and individual versions of mission­end
reports ((four 750­100 word analytic papers, one 2000­2500 word research paper)),
including “final exam” (=final report) = 40%
● B: Bardic Occasions: Twenty­eight team collaborations on gaming
immersion­sessions through performed close­reading=40%
● G: Greek­based theme annotation and collection: Twenty­eight
reading­and­annotation sessions=20%
A. Goal: Knowledge of the homeric epics
Objective: Describe the works; summarize the works’ achievement.
Assessment: RBG
B. Goal: Knowledge of the cultural background of homeric epic
Objective: Describe the cultural background; identify and summarize its key
elements.
Assessment: RBG
C. Goal: Skill at analysis of homeric epic
Objective: Produce a culturally­informed analysis of a key passage.
Assessment: RBG
D. Goal: Skill at analysis of modern epic
Objective: Produce a comparative analysis of homeric epic and a narrative digital
game.
Assessment: RBG
E. Goal: Skill at practicing the art of modern epic
Objective: Render a virtuosic narrative performance in a digital game, and produce
an analysis of it.
Assessment: RB
Required Course Materials
Books
Lord, A., The Singer of Tales (Harvard) (There will be some difficulty obtaining this book.
There is a preview on Google Books that will be serviceable.)
Nagy, G., The Best of the Achaeans (Johns Hopkins)
Homeric Iliad tr. Lattimore (Chicago)
Homeric Odyssey tr. Lattimore (Harper)
Games
The Lord of the Rings Online (Turbine) (LOTRO)
Star Wars: The Knights of the Old Republic (BioWare, 2003) (KOTOR)
Forum Access
You will be required to participate in forum discussions on the practomime.com/arkhaia
website as part of this course. Links to the specific discussions will be provided within
each module.
((You are required to keep a gmail account, and an associated forum account at
practomime.com/arkhaia, in the name of your homerid (bard­in­training). Please refer to
the e­mail you received from me, click here for a copy.))
Course Policies
This course requires a great deal of work. As you’ll see from the schedule of modules, you
will have briefings to watch, reading to do, reports to turn in, and ((operation­related))
discussions to participate in faithfully. The written assignments themselves are not
especially time­consuming, but to complete them on­time and successfully, and thus pass
the course, you will have to do the gaming, watching, and reading assignments, which are
much more time­consuming activities.
Assignments must be submitted on time, except in case of documented emergency. This
policy includes the required collaborative discussions, the annotations, and the collections:
none of these will receive credit if made after the date when that portion of the operation
closes, which is the same time the lead op’s post is due for each immersion session,
though failure to complete the minimum standard, whether for credit or not, has serious
assessment consequences (see below). If you foresee a conflict, please inform me of it as
soon as possible. In the absence of a documented emergency, you may not make up the
credit for missed work. Computer problems by themselves do not constitute a
documentable emergency unless you can provide evidence, for example from the HuskyCT
support team, that you made a diligent effort to complete the assignment but were
prevented by the computer problem.
You will receive credit for your contributions to the collaborative activities in the course,
and not for the finished product. Your credit for a collaborative assignment, that is, is not
dependent on anyone else’s contribution. Note that because reports are partially
collaborative, this policy applies only to the collaborative part of the report activity.
Grading for the course is progressive, and depends to some extent on the activities you
undertake, but the total Bard Points available for each assessment category are as follows:
R 400,000, B 400,000, G 200,000. Each activity has its own number of points available;
Annotations, for example, are capped at 40,000 points per module. In order that you
receive full credit for full work, you will need to ensure that your contributions to your team’s
collaboration contain a richness of research and detail that demonstrates your advanced
progress towards the learning objectives. I will be consulting with you throughout the course
to help you reach this standard.
This is an online asynchronous course with semi­synchronous online activities. That means
that you may choose your own schedule for completing course activities on a short­term
basis­­that is, in a 24­hour period, you get to choose when to work on the course. It does
not mean that you can go long periods between sessions of working on the course. Most
importantly, this course thrives on discussion, and discussion requires constant attention. If
you want to perform well in this course, you should at a minimum post every 48 hours in
your team­forum.
Introduction to course­structure:
The operation is divided into five mission modules. To complete each mission, you must
do the assigned reading, annotate the reading, participate in online class­discussion in a
way that demonstrates that you have done the reading, and file a mission­end briefing
report.
The course is assessed in Bard Points (BP). 930,000 BP gets you an A; 870,000 a B+,
770,000 a C+; 670,000 a D+; 600,000 and below an F (note that it is also possible to get
an F by failing to fulfill the minimum standards detailed below). There are at least 210,000
points available in each module, and there will be frequent opportunities to earn more.
Reading: Homeric Iliad, homeric Odyssey, Lord The Singer of Tales, Nagy The Best of
the Achaeans, assessed in all course activities below.
Immersion discussion: inside the TSTT­interface located at
http://practomime.com/arkhaia, as specified in each mission module (assessed via BP
[Bard Points]): 80,000 HP each.
Annotation: on Google Docs versions of the primary source reading: variable HP per note
(usually 200 BP), to a maximum of 40,000 HP per mission.
Collection: collection on a separate, private Google Doc, of examples of key
themes via meta­analysis of your annotations. Variable HP per group collected,
usually 1000 HP per group, (see Homerid Communiques A001 and D061).
Reports: 5 semi­collaborative reports ((papers)); your work is assessed only on your
contribution to the final product, not on the product itself: 80,000 HP each. Minimum
standard: one hundred words either in the briefing itself or in a contribution to
team­discussion (these words need not appear in the final version of the briefing), except
in case of documented emergency.
Additional Policies
This is the formal stuff that really completes the disguise of this mission as a regular old
course.
You are expected to complete all assignments on time. In case of documented emergency,
I will excuse you from an assignment, and it will not be counted in your final grade, except in
the case of papers, for which extensions until a specified date will be granted.
You are required to complete the assignments for the course on your own except when
collaborative work is specified in a particular assignment, and without breaching rules of
academic conduct concerning cheating and collusion. If you should be found by the teacher
of this course to have committed a breach of these rules, you would be notified by me in
writing, with a copy of the notification sent to the Head of the Literatures, Cultures. and
Languages Department and to the Dean of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences. The
notification would describe the penalty instituted by me. You would have ten days to appeal
the finding and/or the penalty to me, and to request a hearing. That hearing would be
arranged by the Dean. Please refer to the UConn Student Code for further details.
DEMIURGE ONLINE
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SIGNAL "SCHEDULE" FOLLOWS
Schedule (for a granular schedule, click here)
Mission 1: The Bardic Occasion
Objective: Discover the nature of the bardic occasion, and the broad outlines of how it
relates to homeric epic on the one hand and narrative digital games on the other. Relay
your understanding of that information to Homerid Mission Control in the form of a report on
an epic performance in LOTRO.
Time: Weeks 1­2
Reading: Books 1­12 of the Iliad, Chapter 1­2 of SoT
Module 2: The Aristeia
Objective: Discover the nature of the aristeia in ancient and modern epic. Relay that
information to Homerid Mission Control in the form of a report on an aristeia in LOTRO.
Time: Weeks 3­5
Reading: Books 13­17 of the Iliad, Chapter 3­4 of SoT
Module 3: Gear
Objective: Discover the nature of gear in ancient and modern epic. Relay that information
to Homerid Mission Control in the form of a report on a gear­focused performance in
LOTRO.
Time: Weeks 6­8
Reading: Books 18­24 of the Iliad, Chapters 5­6 of SoT
Module 4: Psychology
Objective: Discover the nature of the identity­shaping effects of ancient and modern epic.
Relay that information to Homerid Mission Control in the form of a report on an
identity­shaping performance in KOTOR.
Time: Weeks 9­11
Reading: Books 1­12 of the Odyssey, Chapters 7­9 of SoT
Module 5: Anti­heroism and Ethical Critique
Objective: Discover the potential of epic, ancient and modern, to enact ethical critique.
Relay that information to Homerid Mission Control in the form of a researched report
(2000­2500 words) on a performance that enacts ethical critique in KOTOR
Time: Weeks 12­14
Reading: Books 13­14 of the Odyssey, Parts 1­2 of Best of the Achaeans
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