On March 17, the University System of Georgia announced it will move to online instruction for the rest of the semester Spring Semester as the state reacts to the COVID-19 pandemic. 

As faculty prepare to teach remotely, UGA faculty experienced in online teaching are offering to make their online instructional media publicly available in order to help faculty everywhere adjust with rapid online course development.

UGA anthropologist Victor Thompson developed Anthropology 2002 Tombs and Temples online as an Online Learning Faculty Fellow with UGA Online Learning.  He hopes to lend a helping hand by making about one third of his course media content public.

Thompson has already sent out a link of the course content to his colleagues around the world and hopes that they will share it in their online communities as well. 

“Teaching online, if you’ve not done it before, can be daunting,” Thompson says.

Two years ago, he developed a series of videos with the help of UGA Online Instructional Designer, Stephen Bridges, explaining aspects of archaeology online. The videos Thompson has made available as an open educational resource include various terms for students, method explanations and demonstrations of ancient technologies with experts. 

“The downside is that I’m in all of these videos acting like a goof. If you can get past that, then I think these might be of some help to those of you teaching online archaeology and archaeology-related classes,” Thompson says. 

You can access instructional media for Thompson’s course at:

Kaltura channel “Archaeology”

YouTube playlist “Archaeology”