Hornemann Institute's Online-Courses Still in Demand Worldwide

They are designed for supervised self-study: A tutor supports the learners via e-mail or telephone. Due to the technical diversity of the courses, the academic conservators of the HAWK Faculty of Architecture, Engineering and Conservation as well as external lecturers or the authors, support her. The Hornemann courses are used both in teaching (for supervised self-study) and in further education. A successful final test at the end of the course leads to a qualified certificate.

Participants of the current course programme

Another course cycle has just started with participants from 15 countries on four continents. Some come from non-German speaking countries, mainly from Great Britain, but also from Canada, the USA, Costa Rica, Japan, Brunei, Luxembourg, Malta, Sweden, Poland, Belgium and Russia. Other participants live in Germany, Austria and Switzerland. As in today's conservation and conservation studies, the proportion of women clearly predominates.
Professional conservators as well as students and teachers of conservation science are the main participants in the courses. However, other professional groups are also represented, especially monument conservators and employees in museums and churches.

The top themes

The Hornemann Institute now offers 13 courses on very different topics for external participants - most of them in German and/or English, one also in Spanish. The most popular are the most recent courses Kirchenräume und ihr Klima / Church Rooms and their Climate and Konsolidierung von Holz / Consolidation of Wood. However, courses on very specific topics are also in high demand, such as Microbial Infestation of Objects of Art and Cultural Heritage, Conservation of Globes and Preservation of Wax Moulages. Not all universities with conservation training teach these subjects - the HAWK therefore enables learners to expand their portfolio for professional practice.

The courses of the Hornemann Institute

The Hornemann Institute has been working as a scientific service institution in the field of preservation of cultural heritage since 1998, and as an institute of the HAWK since 2003. The primary objective of the Hornemann Institute is to promote the worldwide transfer of knowledge in the field of preservation of cultural heritage and to provide further training for conservators and monument conservators. In the internet-based learning courses, it conveys new research results and basic knowledge.

There is a lot of work behind the courses: suitable authors have to be recruited and advised, the texts have to be edited, good images have to be found, videos and audio content have to be edited if necessary, varied learning checks have to be developed and finally all the materials have to be entered into the learning platform Moodle. In addition, these are only the most important elements - depending on the course topic and the didactic ideas of the authors, there may be many more.

Future

The Hornemann Institute is continuing to develop its range of courses. Among other things, there will be future courses in the area of paper/book consolidation and digitisation, i.e. topics that are also in great demand internationally. In the area of the development of university teaching, after the coronavirus pandemic and online teaching, a stronger demand for online offers is also expected.