The paper is commenting on the evaluation of an established residential summer school on cultural heritage preservation, which took already place in Thessaloniki (Greece) and Palermo (Italy) as an activity of the European Chemistry Thematic Network, involving in each case approximately forty-five second cycle university students and twenty teachers/tutors.
The initiative is deeply inter-disciplinary, since the educational qualifications of teachers and learners, as well as the learning outcomes expected and the pedagogical approaches used, are far from homogeneous. Indeed, teaching staff are selected not solely among specialized chemists or physicists, but further amid restorers, archaeologists or engineers; and although students have a priori the indispensable basic scientific knowledge – as defined in the frame of the Dublin/Budapest descriptors and the Eurobachelor® requirements –, there are considerable variations in the depth of their analytical/instrumental skills, theoretical understanding of physicochemical procedures, and acquaintance with humanistic issues. Therefore, both different educational experiences and distinct pedagogical concepts are a first main characteristic of the school.
At the same time, the scheme is genuinely trans-national, given that educators cover most European and Arab Mediterranean countries; and students are predominantly European and Arab Mediterranean, but as well South American, and occasionally North American, Chinese or Japanese. Hence, greatly diversified cultural backgrounds, as well as a multitude of mother tongues – in some way contesting English as the course language – are the second main characteristic of the school.
Evaluation has been systematically conducted by means of appropriate questionnaires or observation sheets, and a large number of semi-constructed interviews, and involved all types of attendees. It is taking into account the following challenges:
(a) In order to meet the necessity of levelling and homogenizing knowledge and skills, two distinctive e-learning possibilities are offered to the students for pre- and post-school use, namely on-line didactic and self-assessment material prepared by the teaching staff and further experts, and largely validated; and a specifically designed self-assessment test of European dimension – EChemTest: Chemistry and Cultural Heritage.
(b) In order to enhance the possibility of an efficient active use of English for communicating on scientific issues, a special on-line linguistic tool – English for Specific Purposes: Conservation Science – has been developed, and a consistent tutorial system has been created.
Particular students not able to be physically present have in all cases been encouraged to benefit from the abovementioned asynchronous services, as well as to follow the learning activities in the frame of an operating videoconferencing and webcasting/archiving scheme. The relevant platform consists of an open-source course management system, combined to a direct dialogue tool, and an open video learning system sustaining extended self-study.
Based on the evaluation results, considered optimal to positive according to the aspect examined, the paper is drawing conclusions on the efficiency of the strategies used and techniques applied for addressing problems due to diversity, and assuring a high-level intensive education in conservation science topics.