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The Introduction of Open and Free Academic Courses in Conservation of Cultural Heritage in Greece

Anna Karatzani, Alexandros Tagoulis, Vasilike Argyropoulos, Athina Alexopoulou, Stamatis Boyatzis and Maria Chatzidaki

Abstracts

The 4-year Bachelor Degree in Conservation-Restoration at the Technological Educational Institute (TEI) of Athens has the difficult task of preparing its students to become professional Conservator-Restorers with knowledge and skills in six specializations of either archaeological (objects) conservation or in conservation works of art. Thus, the academic staff of the Department has the challenge to prepare its students to be qualified in practice and knowledge of many specializations of conservation of Cultural Heritage (CH) within its 4 year program. To meet this demand, many members of the academic staff are participating in a project co-financed by Greece and the European Union (European Social Fund) called ‘Open Academic Courses’ (2013-2015). The goal is to prepare their course material in Greek as freely accessible digital educational content in the form of thirteen PowerPoint lectures with or without video lectures per course offered via the open source eLearning platform ‘Open eClass’ hosted by the TEI of Athens. The paper describes how the courses were prepared, the challenges involved in its preparation, as well as the benefits to the students.

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Introduction

1The OpenCourseWare (OCW) started thirteen years ago as an initiative of the academic community for free, open and coherent internet access to digital educational content from everywhere and by everyone.1

  • 2  Free Online Course Materials. Why Donate? MIT OpenCourseWare (On line, 04/08/2014),  http://ocw.mi (...)

2In 2002 MIT started with 50 courses and today it hosts more than 2180 courses including also translations of the courses in other languages. MIT’s OCW aims at putting all of the educational materials from its undergraduate and graduate level courses online, partly free, and openly available to anyone.2

  • 3  JOHNSTONE, Sally M., "Open Educational Resources Serve the World",  Educause Quarterly 28 (3), 200 (...)
  • 4  "Giving Knowledge for Free: THE EMERGENCE OF OPEN EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES", Center for Educational R (...)

3This initiative caused the expansion of Open Educational Resources (OER) movement. In 2002, the term was first adopted at UNESCO's 2002 Forum on the Impact of OCW for Higher Education in Developing Countries.3 The OER are defined as: "digitized materials offered freely and openly for educators, students, and self-learners to use and reuse for teaching, learning, and research. OER includes learning content, software tools to develop, use and distribute content, and implementation resources such as open licenses".4

  • 5  PAPPANO, Laura, "The Year of the MOOC", The New York Times,  (2/11/2012), (On line, 20/06 2014), h (...)

4Today is the era of second generation Open Courses called Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs).5 These are accredited courses with a duration of six to eight weeks consist of short length video lectures with a small fee.

5The need of open access to educational resources has been acknowledged also by the European Union and the Opening Up Education Initiative has been developed. The main goal of this initiative is to stimulate ways of learning and teaching through ICT and digital content, mainly through the development and availability of OER.6

Open Courses at the Technological Educational Institute of Athens

6The Greek Ministry of Education following up these initiatives announced in 2011 the first call for proposals regarding the development of Open Academic Courses in Greek Universities.7 The Open Courses Project at the Technological Educational Institute (TEI) of Athens started in January 2013,8 co-funded by the European Social Fund and the Greek Ministry of Education and aims to have participants from all the national Higher Education Institutions.9 The Greek Universities Network (GUNET) is a non-profit public company responsible for the definition of the project’s specifications and also for creating a central repository (aggregator) to host the courses of all the educational institutions that participate in it. 10

7TEI of Athens aims to publish 440 open courses by the end of 2015. So far 22 out of the 26 Departments of the institution are participating in the project. More than 65 Professors are preparing their course material in order to create about 150 Open Courses by the beginning of the next academic year 2014-2015.

8The courses fall within one of the following types:

  • Α- : The learning material (PowerPoint presentations, PDF files, or word documents) that Professors use to teach in classroom.

  • A : Podcast. The learning material that Professors use to teach in classroom synchronized with the lecture in audio (narrated course).

  • A+: Video-lecture. The recorded lecture in classroom accompanied by and synchronized with the presentation used during the recorded lecture.

The main specifications for the courses

9Each course should have an organized template which includes the description of the course, the learning outcomes, key words and bibliography. The courses should comprise of thirteen distinct units (based on the duration of the academic semester in Greek Universities) and each unit should also follow the same template. The learning material should be comprehensible and easily accessible to impaired people.

  • 11  "Frequently Asked Questions". In Wikipedia, Creative Commons, (On line,25/06/2014). http://wiki.cr (...)

10Copyright Clearance is another key issue, where course material is published under the Creative Common License (CCL).11 Thus, the learning material may consist of Professors’ work, open educational resources, and works that a license is granted for their use.

Usability and Accessibility

11The learning material should meet the following specifications regarding design and development:

  • Easy content navigation (Use of Contents, Titles, Headings)

  • Comprehensive and logical design (organization of chapters and units, no surprises during navigation/reading)

  • Attractiveness (good quality of graphics)

  • Easy to learn when using it (consistency and uniformity of the learning units)

  • Clear and small meanings in every slide (for power point presentations)

Open Courses at the Department of Conservation

12The Open Courses project was introduced to the academic staff of the Conservation Department in April 2013. During this first meeting various objections were expressed by its staff concerning the problems that could be created by offering lectures related to Conservation-Restoration of Cultural Heritage open freely to all via the web. The main objection was that although the profession of the Conservator-Restorer is protected in Greece by law, it may offer too much information on the Conservation-Restoration of Cultural Heritage objects and be harmful to the field.  Also, some feared that students would not attend in person the live lectures offered at the Department. Moreover, the preparation of the standardised course material would be time consuming, since there were many specifications that the lectures should follow and this would add to the heavy work program of the Department’s staff.

13The discussion with the Open Courses team was helpful in clarifying issues related to all these concerns as well as to encourage Professors to have copyright clearance for their teaching material. Through many discussions, it became clear that the Open Courses project would not harm either the teaching or profession, but rather enhance it. The quality and number of open courses offered by the Department would improve its status and would attract more candidates to the profession.

14The project would also benefit the educators in the following ways:

  • Enhance the significance to the educational material created by the instructors;

  • Deal with copyright issues when using third-party materials;

  • Train instructors in new technologies and the application of digital learning educational material;

    • 12  WALSH, T., Unlocking the Gates: How and Why Leading Universities Are Opening Up Access to Their Co (...)

    Promote the reputation and visibility of instructor’s textbooks. International practice has shown that the availability of Open Courses by Faculty helps to promote their publications and the University.12

15Additionally, it would allow the educators to spend more time in the lecture room in dealing with specific case studies to strengthen or reinforce the concepts taught in the online course. It would also allow for a larger audience so the educator can promote the state-of-the-art or standard practices in Conservation-Restoration. However, the courses would not offer any certificate or feedback to the online end-users from the educators.

16Another very important issue was that various private educational institutions in Greece (IEK) offer two year conservation programs for conservation technicians. The paid instructors of these institutions could now be able to use the material prepared by the Department’s staff as their teaching material. However, this may also occur for the academic staff’s printed teaching material. Also, CCL states that the material cannot be used for commercial purposes, which secures that the Department and its academic staff are protected in such cases. Moreover, it would be better for the Department to be aware and “control” the type of information and knowledge that IEKs’ students obtain during their studies, which sets the standards for conservation training in Greece.

17Now, one year later five courses have been prepared and three more are developed in order to be available during the next academic year. These courses include Conservation of metals, textiles and wall paintings as well as Materials Science, Physiochemical Methods for Diagnosis and Documentation and Organic Chemistry for Conservators. Six of the courses correspond to type A- and two to type A+.

18This number is still limited since the Department offers 40 courses during the seven semester period. These courses include general and specialization courses in six areas of either archaeological (objects) conservation (metals, stone, organic materials, ceramics and glass, textiles, and mosaics) or in conservation works of art (panel and easel paintings, wood and wooden sculpture, wall paintings, paper and books and photography). Not all members of the staff are willing to participate or have the time to prepare their courses according to the specifications outlined by the project and within the specific time period.

19One of the most problematic tasks for the participating academic members of Conservation Department is to find royalty-free license for photographic material of Cultural Heritage object(s), collections, and/or products used in conservation. The educational content for the Open Courses are to be published under the CCL, which do not allow commercial use; however, the participating academics still have the time consuming task of requesting written permission to use such photographs in order to enrich their course content. In various cases, the Open Course team in collaboration with the Professors had to develop images and drawings in order to replace those which could not be obtained under CCL.

Development process of the Open Courses at the Department of Conservation

20The figure bellow outlines the steps in the development process of the Open Academic Courses being designed at the TEI of Athens.

21The Professor initially fills in the Educational Material Form which all the information about the course (semester, theory or lab course, instructional hours, material used and complementary information). Then each Professor prepares the course material according to the specification and forwards it to the Open Courses team. The team checks whether the course material has been properly prepared according to the project’s specifications. The team also suggests how the course material can be further altered in order to be more comprehensible, and at the same time the team also “clears” the content from copyright issues. The main tool for the copyright clearance process is to search and find OER to replace third party copyrighted material. However, the open courses team encountered barriers in closed access contents, and permissions were not given, even though the material would be used for educational purposes. In the case of A or A+ courses the lectures are audio and /or video recorded and are edited by the team

Fig.1 Development process of the Open Courses at the TEI of Athens

Fig.1 Development process of the Open Courses at the TEI of Athens

Open Courses, TEI of Athens

Credits: Open Courses, TEI of Athens

22Each Professor and a member of the Open Course team perform together a final check of the material and the team certifies through a technical checklist that the course complies with the project’s specifications. Each Professor signs that he/she allows the publication of the courses with CCL. Finally, the team uploads and publishes the course at the Open Courses TEI of Athens platform and GUNET publishes the course at the central repository automatically.13

23In the following images, slides from different courses are presented before and after the modification of the Open Courses team. As can be seen the changes have enhanced the quality and clarity of the slides making them more attractive and comprehensible.

Fig. 2 Slide from the course Physicochemical Methods for Diagnosis and Documentation

Fig. 2 Slide from the course Physicochemical Methods for Diagnosis and Documentation

Study of a post Byzatine icon belonging to Lomberdos collection housed at the Byzantine and Christian Museum of Athens  before the modification of the Open Courses team

Credits: A. Alexopoulou, TEI of Athens

Fig.3 The same slide after the modifications from the Open Courses Team

Fig.3 The same slide after the modifications from the Open Courses Team

Study of a post Byzatine icon belonging to Lomberdos collection housed at the Byzantine and Christian Museum of Athens after the modification of the Open Courses team

A.Alexopoulou, TEI of Athens  

Fig. 4 Slide from the course of Textile Conservation after the modification

Fig. 4 Slide from the course of Textile Conservation after the modification

The drawing in the slide was created in collaboration with the author in order to explain the bond developed between the adhesive layer and the textile in correlation with heat and pressure during the application of a new support

Anna Karatzani, TEI of Athens

Open Education Resources for the development of future Courses

24During the copyright clearance process the team discovered many OER, which could allow the replacement of the copyrighted material. The Getty, the British Library and the Metropolitan Museum of Arts are some of the institutions that have released thousands images under CCL and in the public domain. Moreover, many journals regarding conservation, archaeology, museum studies and science and technology of the Arts are provided with unrestricted open access to anyone.

  • 14  Open Courses TEI of Athens, Open Educational Recourses, Department of Conservation, (On line,25/06 (...)

25These OER are hosted by the Open Courses TEI of Athens website and can be a useful tool for Professors and scholars.14

Conclusions

  • 15  HONEYMAN, M., MILLER, G., "Agriculture distance education: A valid alternative for higher educatio (...)

26Distant education has existed since the 18th century to provide “access to learning when the source of information and the learners are separated by time and distance, or both."15

27Today MOOCs further developed this concept through interactive participation and open access via the web or other network technologies. The Open Academic Courses project hosted by the TEI of Athens aims to offer the opportunity of free learning to a national audience, but does not offer any certificate and interaction with the educators.

28The participating academic staff of the Conservation Department believes that the open courses will offer numerous benefits to the students, the community, and the instructors themselves. For the students, it will give them more time to reflect on or apply what they heard during their course lectures. For the community at large, it will allow them to appreciate the complexity involved in the conservation of Cultural Heritage as well as the standard methodologies used in conservation practice. The free access also allows professional Conservators Restorers currently working in the field to update their knowledge with the latest course material offered by our Department.

29For the Professors the project has helped to improve the quality of the teaching material. The teaching material has been cleared from third party copyright restrictions and can be used for publications, conferences, eLearning programs and other funded projects.

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Notes

1 Open Education Consortium (On line, 04/08/2014), http://www.oeconsortium.org/

2  Free Online Course Materials. Why Donate? MIT OpenCourseWare (On line, 04/08/2014),  http://ocw.mit.edu/donate/why-donate/

3  JOHNSTONE, Sally M., "Open Educational Resources Serve the World",  Educause Quarterly 28 (3), 2005, (On line, 23/06/2014), http://www.educause.edu/ero/article/open-educational-resources-serve-world

4  "Giving Knowledge for Free: THE EMERGENCE OF OPEN EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES", Center for Educational Research and Innovation, (On line, 20/06/2014), http://www.oecd.org/edu/ceri/38654317.pdf; "Open Educational Resources", The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, (On line, 20/06/2014), http://www.hewlett.org/programs/education/open-educational-resources

5  PAPPANO, Laura, "The Year of the MOOC", The New York Times,  (2/11/2012), (On line, 20/06 2014), http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/04/education/edlife/massive-open-online-courses-are-multiplying-at-a-rapid-pace.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0

6   Open Education Europa, (On line, 04/08/2014), http://openeducationeuropa.eu/el/initiative

7  Call for proposals within the Open Academic Courses Scheme, (On line, 04/08/2014), http://www.edulll.gr/wp-content/uploads/2010/11/eclass_V73.pdf

8  Greek Higher Education Digital Activities, (On line, 04/08/2014), http://www.edulll.gr/?p=7133

9  Open Courses TEI of Athens, (On line, 04/08/2014), http://opencourses.teiath.gr/

10  Support Unit for Educational Programs, (On line, 04/08/2014), http://msee.teiath.gr/ ;Greek Universities network, (On line, 04/08/2014), http://www.gunet.gr/

11  "Frequently Asked Questions". In Wikipedia, Creative Commons, (On line,25/06/2014). http://wiki.creativecommons.org/FAQ

"Creative Commons Legal Code", in Wikipedia,Creative Commons,January 9, 2008, (On line,25/06/2014),http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.5/au/legalcode2014.

12  WALSH, T., Unlocking the Gates: How and Why Leading Universities Are Opening Up Access to Their Courses”, Princeton University Press, 2011

13  Greek Universities network, (On line, 04/08/2014), http://www.gunet.gr/

14  Open Courses TEI of Athens, Open Educational Recourses, Department of Conservation, (On line,25/06/2014), http://opencourses.teiath.gr/mediawiki/index.php?title

15  HONEYMAN, M., MILLER, G., "Agriculture distance education: A valid alternative for higher education?".  Proceedings of the 20th Annual National Agricultural Education Research Meeting, December 1993, pp. 67–73.

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List of illustrations

Title Fig.1 Development process of the Open Courses at the TEI of Athens
Caption Open Courses, TEI of Athens
URL http://journals.openedition.org/ceroart/docannexe/image/4231/img-1.jpg
File image/jpeg, 364k
Title Fig. 2 Slide from the course Physicochemical Methods for Diagnosis and Documentation
Caption Study of a post Byzatine icon belonging to Lomberdos collection housed at the Byzantine and Christian Museum of Athens  before the modification of the Open Courses team
Credits Credits: A. Alexopoulou, TEI of Athens
URL http://journals.openedition.org/ceroart/docannexe/image/4231/img-2.jpg
File image/jpeg, 744k
Title Fig.3 The same slide after the modifications from the Open Courses Team
Caption Study of a post Byzatine icon belonging to Lomberdos collection housed at the Byzantine and Christian Museum of Athens after the modification of the Open Courses team
Credits A.Alexopoulou, TEI of Athens  
URL http://journals.openedition.org/ceroart/docannexe/image/4231/img-3.jpg
File image/jpeg, 664k
Title Fig. 4 Slide from the course of Textile Conservation after the modification
Caption The drawing in the slide was created in collaboration with the author in order to explain the bond developed between the adhesive layer and the textile in correlation with heat and pressure during the application of a new support
Credits Anna Karatzani, TEI of Athens
URL http://journals.openedition.org/ceroart/docannexe/image/4231/img-4.jpg
File image/jpeg, 224k
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References

Electronic reference

Anna Karatzani, Alexandros Tagoulis, Vasilike Argyropoulos, Athina Alexopoulou, Stamatis Boyatzis and Maria Chatzidaki, “The Introduction of Open and Free Academic Courses in Conservation of Cultural Heritage in Greece ”CeROArt [Online], HS | 2014, Online since 01 October 2014, connection on 15 June 2025. URL: http://journals.openedition.org/ceroart/4231; DOI: https://doi.org/10.4000/ceroart.4231

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About the authors

Anna Karatzani

Anna Karatzani studied conservation of Antiquities and Works of Art at the Technological Educational Institute of Athens, Greece. She obtained a MA in Conservation of Historic Objects from De Montfort University (UK) in 2001 and a PhD in analytical investigation of ByzantineGreek metal threads from University College London (UK), in 2007. She worked for seven years at the Ministries of Education and Culture in the conservation of mural paintings, textiles and book-papers. Since March 2011 she is Assistant Professor in Textile Conservation at the Technological Educational Institute of Athens, Greece. Her research interests lie in the areas of the study and analytical investigation of traditional and ecclesiastical textiles and the investigation of natural dyes.  Email: karatzani@teiath.gr

Alexandros Tagoulis

Alexandros Tagoulis holds a MA in Technological Education and Digital Systems with specialty in eLearning. He currently works at  the Technological Institute of Athens moment as a MOOC (Massive Open Online Courses) specialist responsible for the management and the development of open digital courses and the dissemination of the project' results. He has published many scientific articles about educational technologies, reviewer at the online Education Research Journal and reviewer of educational resources at the Merlot repository. He has participated in the writing, design and development of various educational projects and has designed and developed educational portals & websites, eLearning platforms, eLearning courses, learning tools and services.

Vasilike Argyropoulos

Vasilike Argyropoulos obtained a BA.Sc in Applied Chemistry and Engineering from the University of Toronto in 1988 and a Ph.D. in Archaeological Sciences from the University of Bradford in 1992. She has conducted research in conservation science since 1993 at the Historic Resource Conservation Branch (Parks Canada), the Canadian Conservation Institute, and ARC Antique, Nantes. The Coordinator of PROMET, Developing new analytical techniques and material for monitoring and protecting metal artefacts from the Mediterranean region, and EC Culture Witness the past: education programs for the public and CH professionals on illicit trafficking of antiquities. Currently, she is a professor in metals conservation at the Technological Educational Institution (TEI) of Athens. Email: bessie@teiath.gr

Athina Alexopoulou

Athina A. Alexopoulou, PhD, is Professor, Chairman of the Dpt. of Conservation of Works of Art and Antiquities, Deputy Dean of the Faculty of Applied Arts and Head of the Laboratory of Physical Chemical Methods for Diagnosis-Documentation and Instrumental Chemical Analysis at the TEI of Athens.  Her scientific work and research activities cover the field of non destructive testing and microanalysis of artworks and antiquities. Project coordinator in several research projects and main collaborator in national and European funded projects. Author of a scientific book and a CD-ROM on non-Destructive Testing, co-author and main author in other scientific books. Her research work (over than 50 papers) has been published in scientific journals and peer reviewed conferences.

Stamatis Boyatzis

Stamatis Boyatzis received his first and doctoral degrees in chemistry from the university of Athens. He has worked as post-doctoral research associate in the University of Champaign-Urbana (Illinois, USA).He has been employed by NCSR Demokritos in charge of the GC-MS and LC-MS facility (Institute of Physical Chemistry) and later by the University of Patras as collaborating Lecturer in the Department of Materials Science. Since 1995 he has been teaching Chemistry (general and organic),Materials Science and Chemical Characterization Techniques at the Department of Conservation of Antiquities and Works of Art,of the TEI of Athens and since 2011 he is Assistant Professor in the same Department. His research interests lie in the areas of materials in art objects and antiquities and the use of spectroscopic techniques for investigating their molecular structure and deterioration mechanisms.

Maria Chatzidaki

Maria Chatzidakis graduated from the dept. of Conservation of Antiquities and Works of Art (T.E.I. of Athens) in 1994 and received a MSc. in Cultural Informatics and Management of Cultural Heritage, (University of Crete) in 2001. She worked as a conservator of paintings since 1988 and she has been involved in various research projects for conservation documentation standards and semantic structure of conservation terminology multilingual thesaurus. She is now lecturer in Conservation of Wall Paintings at Dept. of Conservation of Antiquities and Works of Art, Technological Educational Institute of Athens. Her special interests are conservation of Street Art and Public Murals, conservation documentation standards; conservation terminology: semantic structure and thesauri; historical pigments.

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Copyright

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The text only may be used under licence CC BY-NC-ND 4.0. All other elements (illustrations, imported files) are “All rights reserved”, unless otherwise stated.

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