What is a museum? What is the best way to design an exhibition? Thanks to this course you will learn some concepts of collections management, communication strategies and cultural heritage preservation techniques
Course description
This course will provide you with concepts concerning collections management, exhibition design, communication techniques and much more. Despite of the course title, the topics are applicable not only to museums, but to all kinds of cultural institutions of any size and type.
The “Museums and Society” course is organized in 4 Weeks: Week 1, 2 and 3 provide students with theoretical concepts, while Week 4 presents a more practical case study of museum renovation.
With regard to the topics addressed, Week 1 “The modern museum and its forms of communication” starts with some definitions and the history of modern museums. The second module of the week is devoted to the communication strategies of the cultural institutions and to some concepts of public archaeology.
Week 2 “The educational entertainment” focuses on the role of museums in the education of the public: some strategies facilitating learning for different types of audiences are explored, together with the concepts of “edutainment” and “participatory museum”. The second module concerns the museum collections management and the creation of well-designed exhibitions, with an insight on the digital strategies.
The lessons of Week 3 “The social impact of museums” are concentrated on the impact of museums on the society: their role for the protection and enhancement of cultural heritage is deepened, as well as some procedures in case of emergencies. Then, the social, economic and political role of cultural institutions within the society, together with the definition of “ecomuseum”, are presented.
Finally, the theme of Week 4 “Birth, fall and renaissance of the Iraq Museum in Baghdad” completes the theoretical framework, by presenting an in-depth analysis on the Iraq National Museum of Baghdad as a good case study of museum's renovation.
The “Museums and Society” course has been developed within the framework of EDUU (Education and Cultural Heritage Enhancement for Social Cohesion in Iraq, CSO-LA/2016/382-631, www.eduu.unibo.it), a 30-months international project funded by the European Union in the frame of the EuropeAid – Civil Society Organisations – Local Authorities Programme in Iraq.
Prerequisites
No prerequisite knowledge is required.
Discussion forum
The forum of this MOOC is freely accessible and participation is not guided; you can use it to compare yourself with other participants, or to discuss course contents with them.
Quizzes and scores
The course entails quizzes that will be evaluated. In order to receive the final certificate of course attendance, you have to pass all the quizzes.
Scoring for the quiz equals 1 point per question. You can retry the quiz up to a maximum of 3 times. Remember, the system will record the result of your final attempt, not the best of your attempts.
The course is considered properly completed if the participant responds correctly to at least 60% of the questions in total. The total score will be calculated by averaging the scores of the quizzes for each individual week.
After completing the course, if you have surpassed the required score, you can download and print the Certificate of Accomplishment.
Certificate of Accomplishment
The Certificate of Accomplishment will be released to anyone who successfully completed the course by answering correctly to at least 60% of the questions by the end of the edition.
You will be able to download the Certificate of Accomplishment directly on "Progress" tab inside the course.
Once you have successfully passed the course, you can request the Certificate of Accomplishment without waiting for the end of the edition.
The Certificate of Accomplishment does not confer any academic credit, grade or degree.
Subtitles
For having a better understanding, English and Arabic subtitles are available for each video with the possibility to be activated or not. If you want to revise some crucial passages you can move through the video content by clicking on the text.
The texts in Arabic were curated by Mohammed Alkhalid.
Additional materials
To deepen the topics or to receive a more concrete view of the contents there is an Additional Materials section where you will find a bibliography, a glossary, a list of websites mentioned in each Week and four interviews to Directors and Curators of Italian prominent museums
Nicolò Marchetti is Full Professor of Archaeology of the Ancient Near East. Since 2011 he directs the joint Turco-Italian Archaeological Expedition at Karkemish (Turkey). Since 2015 he also directs the QADIS archaeological survey project in the Iraqi province of Qadisiyah. He is coordinator of the EuropeAid EDUU project (Education and Cultural Heritage Enhancement for Social Cohesion in Iraq) together with the Universities of Turin, Baghdad, Qadisiyah and Kufa. He was awarded several Italian and international grants among which the Erasmus+ WALADU project as coordinator (2017-2019), the EU Grant for the "JPI HeAT" project (2015-2018), the FP7 ERC AdG EblaChora project as a Beneficiary (2010-2014), the EU FP6 ARCHAIA project as coordinator (2007-2008) as well as many from the Italian Ministry of Education, University and Research (PRIN and FIRB from 2003 to 2019). He has also organized several international conferences and exhibitions in Italy and is the scientific responsible of the research website www.orientlab.net. He is author of more than 100 scientific publications and several books.
Giulia Scazzosi
Giulia Scazzosi is coordination team member of EDUU project (Education and Cultural Heritage Enhancement for Social Cohesion in Iraq): she is the coordinator of the trainings for Iraqi cultural heritage operators and the developer of this e-learning course. She is also coordinator of the training activities for Iraqi secondary school students, focused on preservation and valorisation of cultural heritage. She also collaborated in the Erasmus+ WALADU project (2017-2019).
She is currently perfecting her education, by attending a Master in “Economics and Management of Art and Cultural Heritage” at 24 Ore Business School. She obtained a PhD in Near Eastern Archaeology at the University of Pavia, with a thesis on the food-production practices in ancient Mesopotamia. She studied at the University of Milan (BA), Bologna (MA), and the Institute of Archaeology of the University College of London (MA). Since 2009 she took part in several archaeological excavations in Italy, Turkey and Iraq. Since 2012 she is a member of the archaeological expedition at Karkemish (Turkey), as area supervisor and object registrar, and since 2016 she is also a member of the archaeological survey in the Iraqi region of Qadisiyah. She collaborated in the organization of some exhibitions in Bologna and Gaziantep (Turkey).
Carlo Lippolis
Carlo Lippolis is Associate Professor of Archaeology and History of Art of the Ancient Near East at the University of Torino. He is specialized in the study of the Hellenistic culture in Central Asia and in the civilizations of the Ancient Near East. He is collaborating in several activities of EDUU project (Education and Cultural Heritage Enhancement for Social Cohesion in Iraq).
He is director of the scientific journals Mesopotamia e Parthica and the series Monografie di Mesopotamia. Since 2011 he has coordinated the restoration works of the Iraq Museum of Baghdad. He is director of the excavations at Parthian Nisa (Turkmenistan) and Tulul al Baqarat (Iraq). For his field researches, he was awarded in 2013 by the President of Turkmenistan with the International “Magtymguly” Cultural Prize. He is author of several books, exhibition catalogues, and articles in scientific journals, encyclopedias, conference proceedings, and edited books.
