About the Project
Experiential Environments is a class module that empowered students to observe, visualize, and analyze historical data using 3D technologies in a collaborative context. Throughout the semester students reflected on historical perceptions of the natural world and built environment by asking how they were different from (or similar to) our own. For the project, students examined primary texts, images, and monuments in order to visualize a specific place or kind of space that existed in Byzantine society. Students have gained embodied knowledge of how people of the past utilized natural landscapes and their own technologies to create a built environment that reflected their unique cultural contexts. The featured image in each essay on this site is of a 3D model created by the author.
While examining primary and secondary sources in for written research, students visualized Byzantine spaces by designing 3D models in SketchUp. Screenshots of the models are presented within the essays on this WordPress website, which is hosted on Humanities Commons. Models are also hosted externally on SketchFab, where LEADR has been given a Professional account to host Cultural Heritage models. The models were uploaded to SketchFab using the SketchFab Uploader Extension in SketchUp; they were embedded into the WordPress site using a shortcode with the open source SketchFab Embed plugin.
The Experiential Environments digital class project has been supported by a grant from the Catalyst Innovation Program at MSU’s Hub for Innovation and Learning in Technology. The grant provided funding for training and software for the Experiential Environments unit of the course.
About the Class
This Experiential Environments project was produced in Dr. A.L. McMichael’s undergraduate History course on Byzantine Landscape and Environment at Michigan State University in Spring 2020. The course was taught in collaboration with the Lab for Education and Advancement in Digital Research (LEADR). The class would like to thank LEADR Graduate Assistants: Grant Gliniecki, Jen Andrella, Zach Francis, and Dan Fandino. We would also like to thank Anne Donlon and Eric Knappe on the Humanities Commons team.