Into Fifteenth Century Venice with the First Multimedia Case History

Two firsts for Bocconi teaching. Today the first multimedia case history will be discussed in the classes of Foundations of globalization (Module 2: Comparative evolution of international business), which in turn is the first graduate blended course at Bocconi University.

A blended course, compared to a traditional one, implies that students have to spend part of their time on Bocconi's eLearning platform and professors exploit class time for what is really valuable in a face-to-face relation: in-depth analysis and interaction.

"Thanks to the eLearning platform we can provide our students with a number of videoclips", Veronica Binda, Lecturer of Economic History and course Director, "including interviews. Furthermore, each part of the course is introduced by a clip in which colleagues such as Vincenzo Perrone, Carlo Altomonte, Italo Colantone, Fabrizio Perretti, Charles Williams, Lorenzo Cuocolo and Andrea Colli recall useful concepts in a compact and sharp way".

As the course includes five case histories, these are being digitalized. "This year two of them will be multimedia case histories and the first one, about Andrea Barbarigo, a Venetian merchant of the first half of the XV century, will be discussed in these days", Binda continues.

The realization of a multimedia case history has been a collective effort that joined the forces of the faculty with those of BETA (the Bocconi Education and Teaching Alliance, the laboratory on teaching innovations) and the publishing house EGEA. "The case histories are available both on the eLearning platform and in the ePUB3 multimedia format as standalone publications", EGEA's Managing Director Orsola Matrisciano says.

HOW THE CASE HISTORY LOOKS LIKE

"The case history has been a great adventure", says Andrea Colli, Full Professor of Economic History, who co-authored it with Binda. "We went to Venice to shoot using the cooperation of the Venice Film Commission and SMAV, an association for ancient music and dances, whose members have composed and performed an original score for the case history".

A multimedia case history, though, is not only videos. Text still plays an important role and the interactive and animated maps are an effective aid to memorization. Modularity is, furthermore, a fundamental feature. Teachers with different needs can decide which parts to use and how to use them, including a flexible assessment system.