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Another series of explorer.ie trials were carried out with the archaeology students of University College Dublin (UCD). This user group had a good general knowledge of the domain content. This allowed for focused experimentation and testing of the narrative construction tools.
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The community comprised thirty students based at the University Campus in Dublin. Their interests included archaeology, Irish history, Landscape archaeology, educational resources online learning.
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The trial within UCD was carried out as follows. First, an introductory lecture was given to students on the subject of explorer.ie, including CH ontologies and narratives. Second, a supervised practical workshop of explorer.ie CH forum was ran. Third, UCD students, in their own time, used explorer.ie to construct their own archaeological narratives. Finally, an evaluation workshop was held were students could report back with their findings.
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The explorer.ie CH Forum allows users to create, edit browse and search for archaeological narratives. Each narrative is constructed as an archaeological lesson, explaining a particular time period, find, or archaeological method. Each of these lessons can be described using the ontology. The ontology can be used to support the browsing and searching of lessons.
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- The students were able to use explorer.ie to construct their own archaeological narratives.
- Students were motivated by the easy access that explorer.ie provided to the Sites and Monument Record (SMR) - a national database of archaeological artefacts.
- Lecturers within UCD displayed interest in the possibility of providing content to the explorer.ie website that would act as a central learning repository for students in the future.
- Specific feedback included: the need for more visual content, more guidance on the use of the ontology, improved instructions for the creation of narratives.
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