April 2018
The Project Team continued to arrange the 2018 Summer School. Organisational and promotional activities were carried out. Registrations to the 2018 edition were opened starting from 12 March to 1 May 2018. Since some of the selected applicants communicated their impossibility to participate to the course, the selection procedure has been re-opened until 21 May 2018. Cinzia and Marta took care of the applications by periodically controlling the e-mail box and answering to the requests.
Isolde arranged the practical aspects of the organisation and, in particular, she reserved the lecture hall in the Law Department and the catering service for the last day of the course, Friday 22 June 2018, to celebrate the end of the third edition jointly with all the participants. Caterina contacted the lecturers providing administrative information.
She also requested the accreditation of the course to the Bar Association of Verona and to the Director of the PhD School of Law and Economics of the University of Verona. Both institutions positively evaluated the request and the course was thus part of their respective accredited training programmes (more specifically, the Bar Association assigned 12 credits for the participation in at least 80{a14a5fb528fe56ca25149d65a85f27027fc08aee43dd8ba19daa5f9e2276d995} of the scheduled activities, while the PhD School assigned one credit every 8 hours of attendance).
Cinzia was involved in promotional activities. She drafted promo posters, with essential information on the course’s contents and its agenda, as well as the accreditation and the deadline for registrations, and uploaded them on the project website and on the social media accounts.
Other activities were carried out by Marta, who updated the bibliography on fashion law issues available in a specific section of the project website and drafted the Newsletter n. 2/2018. Cinzia revised it and then uploaded it on the project website. The Newsletter was also sent to a wider audience thanks to the already reviewed mailing lists (academics, practitioners’ associations, general public), as well as the project social accounts (Twitter and Facebook). The issue contains some highlights of the Conference and its results and reports useful information about the upcoming edition of the Summer School.
May 2018
The online and offline dissemination activities continued to be performed throughout the month in order to promote the upcoming Summer School. Online communication was sent via mailing lists and published on the website of the Law Department and of the PhD School of Law and Economics. Cinzia and Diletta posted promotional posters at relevant locations in order to attract potential attendees (such as Departments and Libraries of the University of Verona, practitioners’ associations offices, the Court of Verona).
Information on the Summer School were sent via e-mail to the Bar Associations of Vicenza, Padova, Venezia, Treviso, Trento, Rovigo e Mantova and also published on the website of the Italian Society of International Law (SIDI – ISIL).
Diletta reviewed the evaluation surveys. One general evaluation survey, that would be distributed at the end of the Summer School, contained questions on various aspects of the course (contents, Teaching Staff, organisation and delivery, overall satisfaction), as well as free questions in order to get suggestions and advice for the last edition of the course. Other specific evaluation surveys concerning each member of the Teaching Staff were distributed during every day where the participants were requested to comment on the lecturers.
The Project Team checked all the applications collected. Their number showed a successful reception of the contents and objectives of the course that exceeded the expectations of the Project Team, and the applicants’ backgrounds proved to be generally impressive. Therefore, despite the threshold envisaged in the project’s application being lower, the Project Team decided to accept a higher number of participants. 54 applicants have thus been admitted, and this number was indeed considered manageable.
Cinzia informed the selected applicants with individual confirmation e-mails, and provided them with useful information concerning the venue of the course, the final schedule and the presentation of the lecturers. She also anticipated that evaluation surveys would be distributed, the certificate of attendance would be awarded only if they attended at least 80{a14a5fb528fe56ca25149d65a85f27027fc08aee43dd8ba19daa5f9e2276d995} of the teaching hours, they would be required to sign attendance registers at the beginning and at the end of every lecture.
Prof Baruffi and Isolde contacted interested law firms that were available to open internship positions to be offered to the Summer School attendees. Among them, KPMG Tax & Legal confirmed their availability.
June 2018 (before the Summer School)
The activities focused on the finalisation of the organizational aspects of the Summer School. Cinzia prepared the badges for the participants, the lecturers and the Project Team Members. Copies of the programme and copies of the questionnaires were printed out.
Diletta updated the project website with new contents: the final version of the Summer School programme, the section regarding the accreditation and the description of the Teaching Staff. Cinzia updated the social media accounts of the project, posting relevant information about the course.
In the last days before the starting date of the Summer School, 6 participants informed the Project Team about their impossibility to attend the course. Other 2 participants communicated they would be able to take part only for few days.
18-22 June 2018: Summer School
The course has been successful as to the number of attendees and the overall positive feedback it received (for a detailed review, see the analysis of the evaluation surveys in Annex 1).
The participants who have reached the minimum of attendance required for the award of the certificate were 46.
During each lecture the registers of attendance were distributed and duly signed by the participants in order to check their attendance required for the award of the final certificate. To this end, Cinzia and Diletta collected the registers after each lecture. On Friday, also the general evaluation survey was distributed with the aim of receiving their feedback on various aspects of the course.
At the end of every day, Cinzia forwarded to the participants the presentations and the materials used by the Teaching Staff Members.
Then, after the last lecture, Prof Baruffi held her concluding speech jointly with the Project Team who deeply thanked all the participants and the lecturers, and the certificates of attendance were awarded to those participants who had met the required minimum of attendance (80{a14a5fb528fe56ca25149d65a85f27027fc08aee43dd8ba19daa5f9e2276d995} of the total hours). The course ended with a farewell drink.
June 2018 (after the Summer School)
After the Summer School, a Project Team briefing took place on 25 June. The Team gathered to discuss the results of the course right after its conclusion and to plan the upcoming project activities according to the timeline. In particular, further steps were planned as follows.
Prof Baruffi e-mailed the Teaching Staff Members to thank them for their contribution in the successful delivery of the Summer School. Many of them expressed their satisfaction with the participants and the course, wishing for a similar success for its following editions. She also reminded the deadline for the submission of the papers to be published on the online journal Papers di diritto europeo.
Prof Baruffi also e-mailed the Summer School attendees to thank them for their participation to the course. Many of them replied thanking the Project Team for the organisation of the course; their interest in its topics was so high that some of them also wished for an additional advanced course.
As to administrative issues, Isolde checked all the documents of the Teaching Staff Members and transferred them to the competent secretarial office.
Diletta collected the teaching materials of the Teaching Staff Members and uploaded them as open access resources on the project website in the page dedicated to the 2018 Summer School. She also reviewed the photos taken during the Summer School and uploaded them on the Facebook page. An e-mail was sent to all the participants to inform them about these online contents.
Cinzia carried out the analysis of the evaluation surveys. 42 completed surveys were collected and their outcomes were discussed by the Team before drafting the report on the data (see Annex 1). Similarly, she drafted a confidential report on the outcomes of the evaluation surveys regarding each member of the Teaching Staff and submitted it to the Project Team.
Verona, June 2018
***
Annex 1
Report on the 2018 Summer School evaluation surveys
The surveys disseminated at the end of the course were aimed at evaluating the general organisation of the Summer School, the contents of the lectures, the Teaching Staff and the methodology, as well as collecting suggestions and proposals on various aspects that might be useful for the organisation of future editions.
The survey was filled out by 42 attendees of the Summer School. Amongst them:
- 29 were females and 13 males;
- 28 were under 30 years old, 8 between 30 and 39 years old and 6 over 40 years old;
- 11 were lawyers, 14 trainee lawyers, 13 university students and 4 of other categories.
Overall, the results of the evaluation surveys showed a high level of satisfaction with the Summer School, its organisation and contents.
The specific outcomes of the surveys are as follows.
Knowledge of the course
17 attendees were informed about the organisation of the Summer School by an exchange of information with other colleagues and 15 participants became aware of the course because of the news posted on the official website www.univr.it/fashionweek or on the social media accounts. Other means of knowledge were the promotional communication sent by the Project Team through mailing lists (which include academics, students and other practitioners) and the dissemination of promo posters. Respectively, 5 and 5 attendees knew about the Summer School thanks to those initiatives. 2 participants were informed thanks to other means.
Objectives and contents
As to the objectives and contents, 11,90{a14a5fb528fe56ca25149d65a85f27027fc08aee43dd8ba19daa5f9e2276d995} of the attendees declared that before attending the course they had a poor knowledge about the provided topics, 7,14{a14a5fb528fe56ca25149d65a85f27027fc08aee43dd8ba19daa5f9e2276d995} was fairly aware of them and 45,24{a14a5fb528fe56ca25149d65a85f27027fc08aee43dd8ba19daa5f9e2276d995} had a good familiarity and 2,38{a14a5fb528fe56ca25149d65a85f27027fc08aee43dd8ba19daa5f9e2276d995} very good. As a result of the course, 7,14{a14a5fb528fe56ca25149d65a85f27027fc08aee43dd8ba19daa5f9e2276d995} reached a fair level of knowledge, 54,76{a14a5fb528fe56ca25149d65a85f27027fc08aee43dd8ba19daa5f9e2276d995} felt that their level was good and 38,10{a14a5fb528fe56ca25149d65a85f27027fc08aee43dd8ba19daa5f9e2276d995} very good, and none of the participants rated it low. 9 participants rated as good the relevance of the Summer School programme and its topics, while 78,57{a14a5fb528fe56ca25149d65a85f27027fc08aee43dd8ba19daa5f9e2276d995} believed that it was very good. None of them believed it was poor.
With regard to the topics on the fashion industry in the European Union, some of the participants suggested that the topics related to employment law, human rights protection, sustainability, antitrust, contract law, intellectual property rights, privacy, e-commerce, social media communication, crowdfunding, made-in should be maintained as part of the teaching lectures.
On the contrary, other attendees would not recommend repeating certain topics. In particular, they proposed to remove from the course the topics related to fiscal aspects, transfer pricing, corporate social responsibility, sustainability, innovation strategies.
Furthermore, suggestions have been made as to possible arguments for future courses, eg. International trade, SMEs’ aspects, animals’ rights protection, block chain and consumer perspectives.
Teaching staff
Participants were requested to evaluate the Teaching Staff Members’ competence and communication skills. 2.38{a14a5fb528fe56ca25149d65a85f27027fc08aee43dd8ba19daa5f9e2276d995} (1 participant) considered them fair, 30,95{a14a5fb528fe56ca25149d65a85f27027fc08aee43dd8ba19daa5f9e2276d995} good and 66,67{a14a5fb528fe56ca25149d65a85f27027fc08aee43dd8ba19daa5f9e2276d995} very good, while 0{a14a5fb528fe56ca25149d65a85f27027fc08aee43dd8ba19daa5f9e2276d995} rated it poor. As to the quality and effectiveness of the didactic materials, 40,48{a14a5fb528fe56ca25149d65a85f27027fc08aee43dd8ba19daa5f9e2276d995} expressed that the uploaded and distributed resources were good, and 59,52{a14a5fb528fe56ca25149d65a85f27027fc08aee43dd8ba19daa5f9e2276d995} very good, while 0{a14a5fb528fe56ca25149d65a85f27027fc08aee43dd8ba19daa5f9e2276d995} rated it poor.
Organisation and delivery
Further questions concerned the organisation of the Summer School and the Project Team’s activities. With regard to the Staff, which includes the Project Team, Academic Coordinator, Module Leader, Tutor and Secretarial service, 14,29{a14a5fb528fe56ca25149d65a85f27027fc08aee43dd8ba19daa5f9e2276d995} of the attendees declared it was good and 85,71{a14a5fb528fe56ca25149d65a85f27027fc08aee43dd8ba19daa5f9e2276d995} very good. None of them rated it poor.
Participants were also required to submit proposals in respect of the organisation and delivery of the course. They requested to reduce the number of lectures to be held in one day, to reduce the minimum threshold to be awarded with the attendance certificate, to move the course in another period, to schedule networking dates with societies and enterprises as well as plan interactive workshop on legal counselling.
Overall satisfaction
The highest percentage of attendees (80,95{a14a5fb528fe56ca25149d65a85f27027fc08aee43dd8ba19daa5f9e2276d995}) declared that the level of their overall satisfaction with the course was very high, while 19,05{a14a5fb528fe56ca25149d65a85f27027fc08aee43dd8ba19daa5f9e2276d995} expressed it was high. 0{a14a5fb528fe56ca25149d65a85f27027fc08aee43dd8ba19daa5f9e2276d995} rated it low or fair. With regard to their expectations, none of the participants declared they were met to a low extent, 2,38{a14a5fb528fe56ca25149d65a85f27027fc08aee43dd8ba19daa5f9e2276d995} (1 participant) was fairly pleased, 42,86{a14a5fb528fe56ca25149d65a85f27027fc08aee43dd8ba19daa5f9e2276d995} highly satisfied and 54,76{a14a5fb528fe56ca25149d65a85f27027fc08aee43dd8ba19daa5f9e2276d995} very highly satisfied. Indeed, 76,19{a14a5fb528fe56ca25149d65a85f27027fc08aee43dd8ba19daa5f9e2276d995} of the participants considered the course useful and 23,81{a14a5fb528fe56ca25149d65a85f27027fc08aee43dd8ba19daa5f9e2276d995} moderately useful.
Lastly, none of the attendees declared that they would not advise the course to other people, while 2 participants declared that he/she does not know if he/she would suggest the attendance of the course. 14,29{a14a5fb528fe56ca25149d65a85f27027fc08aee43dd8ba19daa5f9e2276d995} stated that if their suggestions were accepted they would do it and 80,95{a14a5fb528fe56ca25149d65a85f27027fc08aee43dd8ba19daa5f9e2276d995} confirmed that they would certainly recommend the course.
In conclusion, the 2018 edition of the Summer School Univr Fashion Week proved to be very successful as to its programme, topics and lecturers, also with regard to the consideration afforded by some teachers to, and the introduction of lessons on, the topic of sustainability, and as to its practical aspects, including the general organisation of the course. In light of the suggestions, critics and proposals related to the subject matters to be deepened, the Project Team reflected on the need to dedicate seminars or workshops to specific aspects having a significant relevance in practice, eg. fiscal issues, contract law and legal counselling in general, as well as to involve entrepreneurs operating in the fashion industry.