Culture and Museums at the Center of the Latest Bocconi MOOC

ANDREA RURALE INTERVIEWD MANAGERS OF MAJOR ITALIAN AND INTERNATIONAL CULTURAL INSTITUTIONS FOR THE COURSE OF ARTS AND HERITAGE MANAGEMENT STARTING TODAY ON COURSERA. THE MOOC IS MOSTLY FILMED IN MUSEUMS AND HISTORICAL SITES

Six months of film making, with footage in the most prestigious cultural institutions, to reach the same video quality of a documentary, along with the rigor of a top-tier university. The massive open online course (MOOC) in Arts and Heritage Management testifies, on the one hand, Bocconi’s commitment to new teaching methods and, on the other, the advancement of managerial studies in arts and culture.
 
The MOOC, realized by BETA (Bocconi Education and Teaching Alliance), and held by Andrea Rurale, director of SDA Bocconi School of Management’s Master in Arts Management and Administration (MAMA) begins today on the Coursera platform with the cohort formula, with a new edition each month.
 
The MOOC was designed with reusability in mind. The course materials, among which stand out the interviews with senior executives from some of the most prestigious cultural institutions from Italy (the Archaeological Site of Paestum, Venice Civic Museums, the Fondo Ambiente Italiano, the Leonardo da Vinci's Last Supper, the Vatican Museums and the Museo dell'Opera del Duomo) and the rest of the world (the National Trust), may also be used within the usual teaching activities of Bocconi. "The interviews", says Rurale, "are well suited to be displayed in the classroom, because they give great insights into the dilemma between a curatorial and a managerial approach to the management of a cultural institution. I am therefore particularly grateful to all the people who, in a spirit of partnership, agreed to be interviewed".
 
For Rurale it was challenging but stimulating experience. "The two difficulties for a university professor working on a MOOC" he says, "are the lack of direct interaction and not knowing exactly who will be the user". Thanks to the multi-year experience matured by BETA the Mooc was designed in a way that allows to re-create, in virtual form, the interaction. "This time", says Noemi Azzolina, who oversaw the MOOC for Beta, "we tried to obtain a faster rhythm, providing a greater number of tests regarding smaller parts of the program. We have also included a number of optional research assignments with peer-to-peer assessment and we have launched a project which wants to map smaller, but not minor, cultural institutions, reccomended by the participants".
 
As expected, participants are very well educated, with 78% of them holding at least a bachelor degree.
 
A month after the presentation on the platform, the enrolment count reached 1,600. In the pilot edition, that began in early December, they have already expressed higher satisfaction than the average of the platform. Compared to other Bocconi MOOCs, the geographical composition of participants is distinctive, with a larger presence of Europeans (55%, compared to the usual 30-35%).

by Fabio Todesco