Report of the Comenius 1 History Project Meeting

Cortegaça, 19 - 24 October 2004

At the fifth meeting of the project in Cortegaça, the participants from the partner schools evaluated how work had progressed since last May, looked at the next phase of work on terrorism including the discussion forum, made preparations for the final meeting of the project in Rome, and discussed ways of evaluating and disseminating the project.

Progress

As the academic year had started quite recently, many of the partners reported that work on the theme of terrorism (chosen at the last Edinburgh meeting) had either just started or was about to start. There were already some contributions to the first question in the forum from Portuguese, Spanish and Scottish students but more contributions would be coming soon.

Planned work on the theme of terrorism

Each partner re-affirmed the work its students would do on the theme of terrorism over the coming months as decided in Edinburgh, including contributions to the three questions in the discussion forum. It was agreed that all contributions to the discussion forum should be completed by 31st January 2005.

Some discussion ensued on how best to include submissions from students at I.S.A. Pomezia, most of which are visual images rather than text. It was agreed to have links in the forum to the original images elsewhere on the web site so that all partners will be able to access the images easily.

Also as last year, it was agreed to award "Comeniad prizes" for the best forum contribution from each partner school. Various questions were asked on the best way to proceed with this, and after some discussion, it was decided that each partner school would first select three of the best contributions from their own school. These contributions would ideally be chosen by the students themselves to ensure that it would be done in the most democratic way. The best three contributions will be proposed by 31st January 2005 at the latest. After this, each partner school will vote on the best forum contribution from each school from the ones proposed. Each school will have one vote for a contribution from each school but they will not be allowed to vote on contributions from their own school. Voting will be done in secret using the voting facilities of the web site. One person from each school was elected to be the voting representative: Maria do Rosario Costa (Portugal), Donny Gluckstein (Scotland), Cristina Fuga (Cattaneo), Antonio Baudrocco (Pomezia), J Antonio Juárez (Spain) and Costin Iliescu-Bulcu (Romania). It was agreed to complete the vote by 28th February 2005 and announce the winners at the next meeting in Rome.

Preparation for the final project meeting in Rome

The final project meeting, to be held in Rome, was then discussed. The main aim of the meeting will be to present this year's work on the theme of terrorism and to review the entire three-year Comenius History Project. It was agreed that the meeting will be held from Monday 4th April to Saturday 9th April. The first two days will be for preparing for the presentation events. The presentation would then take place over two further days; one day on I.S.A. Pomezia and one day in IPSIA Cattaneo. As the overall theme of the project is a historical one, it was agreed that there must be at least one history teacher from each school at the meeting.

After some discussion, a provisional plan for the two-day presentation was agreed and chair persons appointed as follows:

Day 1: ISA Pomezia

Day 2: IPSIA Cattaneo

It was agreed by all, however, that for operational reasons, the exact timings would be decided by the teachers at Cattaneo and Pomezia.

All participants were reminded to inform the organisers at Cattaneo/Pomezia who would be attending the final meeting as early as possible to enable suitable accommodation arrangements to be made and also to inform Cattaneo/Pomezia of any audio/visual and computing presentational aids required well in advance. It was also agreed that the common language for the presentation events would be Italian and that Cattaneo/Pomezia would organise and provide English translation for the events.

Evaluation of the Project

Discussion then turned to how to carry out a final evaluation of the three-year project. Various proposals were put forward and it was decided to get feedback from students, teachers involved in the project, and others if possible. The following specific suggestions for evaluation were proposed:

Who will provide the feedback?

• Students
• Teachers
• Managers (headmasters, administrators, National Agencies, others)

How will information be collected?

• Students - on-line questionnaire (general awareness of Comenius project and, in addition individual institutions can also choose their own preferred methods)
• Teachers - set of interview-style questions (to be prepared between now and December)
• Managers - short questionnaire

Quantitative evaluation

Examples:

• Number of forum contributions
• Number of hits on forum
• Numbers of students in classes involved in project
• Number of students who know about the project

Practical issues:

• Who develops student on-line general awareness questionnaire? : Spain
• Who develops the teachers' interview-style questions?: Cattaneo
• Who develops the managers' short questionnaire?: Stevenson
• Who, in each institution, develops method of student evaluation for their school
  
  
• Dates for completion of questionnaire design:
  • First draft end November
  • Comments by end December
  • Finalised end January
    
• Dates for submission of results: 10th May 2005
  
  
• Publishing of evaluation results (to be decided in Rome on preparation days)

We were reminded that on the national agencies' Socrates web-sites, there are evaluation forms which we could use as a basis for the questionnaires.

After some discussion, it was agreed that Cattaneo would provide the teacher's questionnaire, Spain would provide the questions for the student on-line questionnaire, and Scotland the questions for the manager's questionnaire. The first draft of these will be circulated by the end of November 2004.

Comments of the first draft will be taken during December 2004 so that the questionnaires will be ready for use by the end of January 2005. Stevenson College will implement the online student questionnaires during February 2005.

It was agreed that the responses to all questionnaires would be collected by 10th May 2005 so that the responses can be analysed and published before the end of the academic year.

Dissemination

A short discussion ensued on how the project should be disseminated to a wider audience and whether we should apply for funding for a 4th year for this purpose. No final decision was made on this last point; all the partners will have to communicate with their National agencies and with each other via email if we wish to proceed with an application for 4th year funding before the closing date in February. It was agreed to leave further discussion on how the project should be disseminated to the 2-day preparation period at the final meeting in Rome.

Summary of agreed actions