INTERNATIONAL SUMMER SCHOOLS: AN EFFECTIVE WAY OF LEARNING

Summer schools are intensive academic meetings, whose objective is to share knowledge on an specific topic among experts and qualified students, and plays an important role for training future, highly specialized professionals. This type of learning allows students with different background and from different countries work to together under supervision of experts. Thus, they can share their knowledge, abilities, and attitudes during the resolution of prescribed short projects.

This paper presents the development and results of an International Summer School organized by the ‘Escuela Internacional de Doctorado en Estudios del Mar’ EDEIMAR (Campus de Excelencia Internacional del Mar, CEIMAR) (Spain), through the Universities of Granada (Spain) and Utrecht (The Netherlands). The school was intended for graduate students interested in physical processes in nearshore and estuarine systems. The III CEIMAR International Summer School (06/05-17/ 2016, Granada, Spain) consisted of 70 hours in a two-week period, and aimed at providing an integral view of actual coastal systems through thematic lectures (50% of hours), and hands-on practices (50% of hours) led by international renowned experts. The course included laboratory experiments and a field trip to the Mediterranean coast of southern Spain to provide knowledge on these systems.

The students’ activities included:
(1) short individual presentations in which they introduced themselves and their research interests;
(2) teamwork to carry out practices and a short research project, and
(3) final group presentations of the project outcome. The projects were addressed under supervision of experts.

Finally, the Summer School programme was evaluated by students through an anonymous survey regarding, among others, selection and organization of lectures and the short project; and the likely future impact of the Summer School in the participants' professional careers. The survey results were favourable, with every answers evaluated in upper 4s out of 5. The participants’ evaluation showed that the development of this type of activities is positive for both learning and specialization.