Dr Jeremy Huggett
Spinning an enthralling archaeological web
Dr Jeremy Huggett has worked in archaeological computing for 25 years and has been a lecturer here for 20 years - most recently Head of the Department of Archaeology for five years, and currently Head of Subject and acting Dean of Learning and Teaching in the College of Arts.
Jeremy is seen by many as a model of good practice, having demonstrated outstanding personal commitment to teaching excellence, with a substantial contribution to improving the Archaeology curriculum at all levels.
His early awareness of the educational potential of IT has been demonstrated in the pioneering use he has made of it since the early 1990s when he came to Glasgow as a lecturer in archaeological computing. He was instrumental in the successful Archaeology Teaching and Learning Technology Programme based in Glasgow and has been closely involved in the creation and development of the Archaeology Data Service and the online journal Internet Archaeology.
Over the years he has taught undergraduate and postgraduate courses on the use of databases, CAD and GIS in archaeology alongside his more general contributions to the subject.
IT and web-based teaching is central to his teaching and he has championed it more generally within the subject. Students have access through dedicated websites and moodles to detailed guides to Internet resources and online support materials, software demonstrations, and so on, created by Dr Huggett to support their learning.
`Delivering 1T -based teaching means that students can benefit from up-to-the-minute resources, have greater control over when and where they study, and engage in more flexible peer group support and learning.'
Dr Huggett engages his Level 1 students with the role of archaeology in modern society employing current debates within the discipline from the looting of antiquities, and the media use of images for human evolution, to the use of metal detectors, and capitalising on the host of websites and other media available via the internet. Current issues emerge as topics for examination: for example, the latest Indiana Jones film releases and the regular use of news cuttings as the basis for questions. His students see him as a tremendous lecturer, always highly organised, thorough and fully up-to-date. His enthusiasm for research-based teaching of archaeology is found by students to be ... thought-provoking, inspiring, fun, and challenging'.
An indication of the impact of his approach to teaching of advanced software applications has been the demand for access to this from both staff and students across the university. He encourages staff and students to think creatively about new research applications, and fosters interdisciplinary approaches to research.
`Teaching the application of software has to go beyond learning about the tools and techniques; until a student has been faced with a previously unseen dataset and applied those tools and techniques to analyse and understand those data, they cannot truly appreciate either the appropriate application of technology or the nature of the data underpinning the subject.'
(The above article first appeared in Campus News Issue 14)