Undoubtedly, the modern museum has become a center of education, communication, cultural information and creative innovation – a hub where intellectual leisure combines elements of entertainment content. It also reflects the key trends in the development of modern society.

The international conference on DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION IN MUSEUMS: CHALLENGES, ACHIEVEMENTS, IDEAS, organized and held online by the French company Trend and training, was implemented on February 12, 2024. It brought together directors, curators and managers of international cultural institutions to discuss issues related to the digital transformation of museums. The DAISSy Research Group of the Hellenic Open University (HOU), sharing valuable experience in the digital transformation of the cultural sector, participated in the high-scale event and was represented by Mrs. Panagiota Polymeropoulou, Senior Researcher of DAISSy, as an invited speaker, delivering a presentation on the “Museum Sector Alliance-Mu.SA” project outcomes, with a focus on crucial digital skills for professionals in the museum sector.

The conference offered a unique opportunity for participants to enhance their visibility, showcase their research findings, and gain insights from leading representatives of the museum community.

For more information about the activities of the DAISSy-HOU:

• Website: https://daissy.eu/
• Facebook: @DAISSyResearchGroup
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/daissyresearchgroup/ &
• Twitter: @daissy_research
• Instagram: @daissy_researchgroup
• Email: info@daissy.eap.gr

On March 28^th 2022, the 1st Work Café on “Digital Environment for the Mu.SA Community” was held with the keynote speaker Myriam Hadnes, who shared with her experience of digital platforms as a behavioral economist and host of the podcast “Workshops Work” with the participants. The second guest was Sherif Abaza, Chief Growth Officer of Withlocals, a company specializing in affordable and sustainable tourism promoted by locals and an expert on the Slack platform. The speakers answered the questions and then, in the second part of the Work Café, participants explored the Welo platform and discussed, in small groups, the topics of the talks and how a community could be not only attractive but also sustainable.

On April 4^th 2022, MICA project hosted the 2nd Work Café on “Best practices in cultural communities” where examples of successful cultural communities were presented and questions were raised about their potentials and weaknesses and how the MICA community can develop its own potentials. The first speaker, Maria Ann McNair, museum educator at History Colorado Museum, described how storytelling can be the strongest tool to create empathy, connection and networking in the process of building a community. Also, hosted Harikleia Haris, architect, urban planner and Mu.SA course successful learner from Greece, who described to participants how different digital platforms are used by different digital communities around the world, how to measure their impacts and the importance of balancing online and offline cultural community’s elements. In the second part of the Work Café, on the Welo platform, the speakers’ contributions deepened and discussed ways of building and feeding a digital or even physical (face-to-face) community which is open to the exchange of knowledge and experiences but also to critiques based on trust and respect.

The 3rd Work Café was dedicated to “Best practices in non-cultural communities” and took place on April 11^th 2022. The main focus of the discussion was the participation of community members in the community and how to keep it active. The first speaker was Stella Tsala, head of the Cookpad Greek community, who described the three groups into which a digital community can be divided, the role that each group has and finally, how these groups can contribute to the development and maintenance of the community. Then, Susana Gomes da Silva, Head of education of the Gulbekian Museum in Lisbon, Portugal explained to the participants how museums keep in touch with their communities. The last speaker was Lana Jelenjev, author and “alchemist” of communities, who highlighted the importance of different ways of reaching out to members of a community. Participants, in the second part of the Work Café, were again moved to Welo platform where they exchanged views on the speakers’ key topics and discussed new strategies.

On May 2^nd 2022 will be organized the 4^th Work Café, entitled “Crowdfunding strategies and tools” with keynote speaker Zoe Akrivouli, Economist and researcher of the DAISSy group of the Hellenic Open University.

View the next work cafés livestreamed in Facebook of MICA project!

For more information about the MICA project and the activities of the DAISSy research group:

• Websites: https://micaproject.eu/ – https://daissy.eu/,
• Facebook: @micaproject –  @DAISSyResearchGroup
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/showcase/m-i-c-a-mu-sa-international-community-activators – https://www.linkedin.com/in/daissyresearchgroup/
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/daissy_research
• Instagram: @daissy_researchgroup
• Email: info@daissy.eap.gr

The small-scale MICA project (with a duration of 12 months) aims at creating a practical community of self professional education and self lifelong learning for Heritage professionals. The primary target group includes participants and partners of eCult Skills and Mu.SA Museum Sector Alliance projects.

The main goals of MICA are to guarantee a wider age range in participants to activities, to give a wider and multicultural approach to professional experience, to fight cultural field isolation, to avoid social, age, sex, economic barrier to access high level professional training and to increase digital skills and new technologies access for participants.

MICA project capitalizes the results of the Mu.SA project and addresses especially the learners of the four Specialisation Courses (in 4 emerging role – profiles: Digital Strategy Manager, Digital Collections Curator, Digital Interactive Experience Developer and Online Community Manager) in Mu.SA course, coming from Greece, Italy and Portugal. The focus of the activities will be “How to manage and engage an active community for Cultural Institutions”. The partners Melting Pro, Hellenic Open University and University of Porto have collaborated closely in Mu.SA project.

On January 28^th, 2022, the kick-off meeting of the MICA project was delivered online, hosted by Cultura REPublic from Italy, Coordinator of the project. In the meeting participated also the partners Melting Pro, from Italy and Hellenic Open University – DAISSy, from Greece.

The first project meeting was dedicated to an overview on the MICA project, the proposal submitted and previous agreements among partners. In the first part of the meeting the topic “Tools and Communication” was discussed, and proposals were made concerning MICA’s next steps. The discussion focused on the WORK CAFÉs and on how they can be translated from a live format to a digital one. More specifically, five WORK CAFÉs on subjects of Heritage field will be organized: Wc1 Tools, Wc2 Cultural best practices, Wc3 other fields best practices, Wc4 Crowdfunding, Wc5 Guests. Young experts from different fields (e.g., Gaming, Comics, online entertainment etc.) will be invited to each session, in which engaging an active community through digital means is already a consolidated reality.

Another issue in the agenda was the communication strategy, the community of participants created through an online digital platform, the project work activity and the crowdfunding campaign on a specific activity per community at country level.

The second part began with a summary of proposals on shared tools to be used for the collaboration of partnership and communication with the target groups. The last part of the meeting was about work packages, tasks, time –plan, financial & administrative issues.

The e-book is free to download, the content of this work is made available under a Creative Commons [Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike] 4.0 International License (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0).

ISBN 978-618-84272-9-7
Production: Hellenic Open University Press
© 2020 Hellenic Open University Press

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Project Mu.SA created and offered a set of online and offline learning opportunities and contributed to the development of essential digital skills by museum professionals. Firstly, the project described four emerging job profiles: Digital Strategy Manager, Digital Collections Curator, Digital Interactive Experience Developer and Online Community Manager. A complete training curriculum was designed and implemented for each of them, consisting of two major stages: a MOOC, which was common for all profiles, followed by a blended course, which was specialized for each profile; the last stage of the course included an extensive workplace learning phase.

The Mu.SA training methodology, shortly presented in this article,  provides an excellent basis for BIBLIO! It is true that the two projects share common characteristics and that is the reason why, they are strongly interrelated. The Massive Open Online course (MOOC) entitled “Essential Digital Skills for Museum Professionals” is especially designed for the museum community, targeting professionals, students, volunteers and unemployed, who wanted to pursue their future career in the museum sector. The Mu.SA MOOC is a flexible, self-paced course organized in modules that allows trainees to develop a set of 22 core digital and transferable competences required for the museum sector.

The Mu.SA MOOC extends over eight (8) weeks of training, each week consisting of 2-3 training modules. For each one of the 22 competences, a separate training module has been designed, the material of which was grouped into units, which include presentations, videos and study material related to a set of learning outcomes that are assessed at the end of the module. Each week focuses on one competence coming from e-CF (the European standard of IT competences) and combines related competences from DigComp (the global standard of digital literacy of the average citizen) and P21 (a 21st century skill model) frameworks. Beyond the ability to develop digital strategy, digital content or use digital tools and platforms, trainees advance their skills like time management, communication, team-working, leadership and creative thinking. During the deployment of the MOOC, online tutors monitored, assisted and facilitated learners’ training. Once enrolled, trainees had guided access to all videos, quizzes, and assignments. A dedicated training platform based on the popular Moodle platform was developed by the HOU-DAISSy Research Group and the course was designed so as to facilitate active participation, peer-learning and open discussion among the course participants. After the completion of the training course, successful learners were able to develop and use digital and transferable competences necessary for professionals working in the museum sector. The instructional design was based on learning outcomes and was modular, in order to allow each trainee to study based on his / her pace and availability.

The Mu.SA MOOC is a unique combination of the European Frameworks and standards, and for this reason it is considered as best practice at European level. The impressive element in the Mu.SA training course was that the enrollment to the MOOC attracted more than 5.000 people from more than 45 countries from all around the world! After the successful completion of the MOOC, almost 1400 people [coming from Greece (400 people), Italy (491), Portugal (137) and other countries (371)] were certified, having attended more than 80% of the whole course and succeeding in at least 80% of graded activities; all candidates were able to download their digital certification through the Moodle Platform.

Learners who successfully completed the MOOC were eligible to continue their learning journey by applying for an advanced, six-month specialization course. Selected students, based on specific criteria, could choose a specialization training in one of the four emerging job profiles: Digital Strategy Manager, Digital Collections Curator, Digital Interactive Experience Developer and Online Community Manager. Open Educational Resources (OERs) were offered in these four specialized courses, for a total of 27 digital competences, 21 (e-CF) and 6 (DigComp) as well as 15 transferable competences, through blended learning (e-learning and face-to-face lectures) and work-based learning in a museum in Greece, Italy or Portugal. A total of 79 museum professionals completed the course successfully and were specialized in one the four job profiles. Forty two online selected OERs were designed and developed for Mu.SA courses and are available today.

It is noteworthy, that Mu.SA has been included in the DigComp User Guide (2018) as one of the 38 existing inspiring practices of DigComp implementations and it is selected as one of the 9 best cases that use DigComp for employment. In addition, Mu.SA project has been proposed as Good Practice under the “Initiative 8 – Heritage-related skills / Component 3: Opportunities for cultural heritage professionals” by European Commission. Recently (2020), Mu.SA project was included in the “DigComp at Work” report issued by EU, as best practice for implementing the DigComp framework for digital competences (!).

It is clear that the effective structure of Mu.SA methodology and the project accomplishments about applying the DigComp framework in the employment sector (for museums) provide an excellent example to be fully exploited and adjusted when developing the respective BIBLIO methodology for the library sector. The Mu.SA lessons learnt will be transferred effectively by HOU-DAISSy Reseach Group within the implementation of BIBLIO project, so that the current partnership and BIBLIO beneficiaries fully gain through this valuable experience.

For further information on Mu.SA project, please check:

• Website: http://www.project-musa.eu/
• Facebook: Mu.SA Facebook page
• YouTube: DAISSy Research group channel
• Email: info@daissy.eap.gr

For more information on BIBLIO project and other activities of DAISSy:

• Website: https://daissy.eu/, https://www.biblio-project.eu/
• Facebook : @DAISSyResearchGroup, @digitalbiblio
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/daissyresearchgroup/
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/daissy_research
• Instagram: @daissy_researchgroup
• Email: info@daissy.eap.gr

Culture Action Europe, DAISSy Research Group of the Hellenic Open University and the Mu.SA project partners have jointly taken the decision to move the Mu.SA Final Conference online. This decision has been taken following the COVID19 emergency.

IISA-2019 is the tenth conference in the IISA series, technically co-sponsored by IEEE, the University of Piraeus, the University of Patras and the University of the Peloponnese.

The International Conference on Information, Intelligence, Systems and Applications (IISA) series offers a forum for the constructive interaction and prolific exchange of ideas among scientists and practitioners from different research fields such as computers, mathematics, physics, biology, medicine, chemistry, experimental psychology, social sciences, linguistics, and engineering; having the goal of developing methodologies and tools for the solution of complex problems in artificial intelligence, biology, neuroscience, security, monitoring, surveillance, healthcare, sustainability in energy sources, governance, education, commerce, automation, robotics, optimization, image, speech and natural languages, and their integration.

The paper entitled “Implementing a MOOC course for Museum Professionals with a worldwide effect” was presented by Mrs Panagiota Polymeropoulou, Researcher of the DAISSy Research Group of Hellenic Open University. The participants to the session “E-Learning Systems” were very interested to learn more about the Mu.SA project, the training program, the outcomes, the four role profiles as well as the results and the worldwide  participation to the MOOC “Essential Digital Skills for Museum Professionals”. In the paper are described the Methodology for designing and developing the modular online course as well as the European Frameworks of e-CF and DigComp adapted to the museum sector’s professionals knowledge and training. In the paper are presented also, in numbers and graphs the results of providing the MOOC, open to museum professionals participating from all the world. The paper will be published in the IEEE Xplore series.

We would like to thank all candidates who took time and submitted their Expression of Interest for the Mu.SA Specialization Course! We remind you that this is a pilot specialization course that we hope to develop it to a permanent course, and we shall inform you when a new Mu.SA Specialization Course is announced.

Once more, we would like to thank you all for supporting the Mu.SA project and we are looking forward to see you in a new course!