Encouragingly, the results showed that the students enjoyed using Hestia, particularly the ability to scan the ancient locations and find out about what Herodotus says about them using GoogleEarth. Initially we thought that was accounted for by the fact that GoogleEarth was new to students and that they enjoyed the novelty of seeing the world from satellite. Rather than GoogleEarth’s novelty, most of the students were already seasoned users of the application. So it appears that Hestia was building upon their technological familiarity.

One of the ways that my collaboration with Hestia added to my own “pedagogical toolbox” as a teacher was working with Elton to design the survey.  The survey itself had to target a student audience and, at the same time, deliver robust information for the research team. I had a lot of experience and interest in writing good questions and assessments to evaluate student mastery, but I did not have a lot of experience thinking in survey metrics.