JISC

This project is part of the museum content project cluster in this particular programme. The main focus for projects in this cluster is on the development and digitisation of museum collections for learning and teaching.

Background

Digital Egypt for Universities builds on the resources available from a university museum. It combines new technologies, in particular VRML, with the objects and archives of the museum to create attractive data-rich online resources for learners and teachers. The project is a collaborative one involving two sections within University College London, the Centre for Advanced Spatial Analysis and the Petrie Museum of Egyptian Archaeology. The resources will encourage multidisciplinary use of material from a minority subject. The project will provide a model for applications of any collection to learning across the range of Humanities and Sciences.

Aims and Objectives

The aim of Digital Egypt for Universities is to explore the different communicative efficiencies of a variety of 2D and 3D learning resources delivered via the Internet relative to one another and to non-electronic media including Museum objects. The project will demonstrate new roles and a new profile for university museums in the context of the lifelong learning society.

The project addresses three challenges for contemporary higher education:

• Provision of data-rich contextual Web-based resources
• Delivery of minority subjects into multidisciplinary environments
• Interdisciplinary access to and use of specialised collections

Project design

The research involves the specialised harvesting of data and the thematic treatment of a variety of 2D graphics combined with 3D reconstructions uniting the archaeological and architectural resources available. Each phase is to be monitored in an evaluation programme designed with the help of the Learning and Teaching Support Network (LTSN) subject centre for Psychology at the University of York.

Outcomes

The project’s immediate outcome will be a Web site offering extensive new and free packages of online resources for university learning and teaching, including a database of graphics, images and textual descriptions. The resources available will grow over the period of the project and will link to other specialist disciplines.

In addition to conference representation and public presentations, the site itself will be used as a major form of dissemination and communication with users. Links with other museums UK-wide offer another channel of contact with both a wider learning audience and specialised colleagues.

Digital Egypt for Universities prioritises the needs of learners who need minority subject material either as comparative material for their subject, or as core course material. Its contents will be of interest to a broader learning audience, offering a bridge between FE and HE and out to the wider learning society.