VRoma - A Virtual Community for Teaching and Learning Classics

VRoma is first and foremost a community of
scholars, both teachers and students, who create on-line resources for teaching
Latin and ancient Roman culture and who use these resources in their courses.
The project was initially funded by a $190,000 National Endowment for the
Humanities Teaching with Technology grant in 1997. The two major components of
the project are its virtual environment (MOO) and its collection of internet
resources, both of which can be accessed by clicking on the
“hotspots� on the images above. The VRoma MOO requires logging on as
a guest or through your personal character and password, but all the web
resources are freely accessible on the internet.

The center and home of VRoma's virtual community
is an on-line “place,� a multi-user networked environment (MOO/web
server) built upon a spatial and cultural metaphor of ancient Rome, where
faculty and students can meet in real time, interact, collaborate, hold
classes, and access databases, texts, images and teaching materials. The
simulated environment of the VRoma MOO contains two types of spaces:
Rome is an imaginative virtual “city� modeled on the
historical city of Rome circa 150 CE, while Officina, the non-historical
part of the MOO, contains faculty “offices� and simulations of
various types of spaces that imaginatively evoke ancient life. VRoma, like any
complex city, can be confusing, so we include our own tour guide,
Eamus VRomam! Let's Go
VRoma! [5] We welcome anyone with a serious interest in ancient Rome to
join [6] the ranks of VRomans and
log in [7] to this special place.

The VRoma Project uses workshops and
presentations to engage teachers and students in a virtual community dedicated
to using internet technology to foster the teaching and learning of Latin and
Roman culture. This web site features various types of resources created by
VRomans, including a large archive of
digital images [8] relating to classical antiquity, help
files [9] and other materials about the MOO, teaching resources [10] and course materials,
information about the project and its participants [11],
and relevant links [12] to other sites. All of these
resources are available on the web and do not require logging in to the MOO.