Results of the activities performed with VET students/learners and aimed at testing the products of the Erasmus+ transnational education project "CHERISH - Cultural and natural HERItage: a Sustainable tourism VET integrated Approach"

CHERISH is a currently ongoing project funded in September 2019 by Erasums+, the European Programme aimed at promoting the development of innovative tools, products, services and policies in the field of education, training and lifelong learning. The project operates in the field of transnational cooperation for educational tools dedicated to Vocational Education and Training (VET) teachers and students. In particular, CHERISH is dedicated to the sustainable valorization of Cultural and Natural Heritage that can be considered, as a whole, as Non-Reproducible Goods (NRGs). The aim of the project is to develop an original integrated and multidisciplinary educational path, based on the best practices developed at EU level and on the state of the art of technical-scientific knowledge acquired by several actors of the European scene related to the NRGs. The project activities are performed, indeed, by a partnership of six institutions, including research bodies, universities, NGOs and SMEs, coming from the four European Members States hosting the largest number of UNESCO Cultural and Natural Heritage Sites (Italy, France, Spain and Greece) and from another EU Country that is currently very proactive in the field of sustainable tourism (Bulgaria). At present, all the educational products foreseen in the project have been developed and they consist in two teaching programs presented in the form of 'Open Education Resources' (OERS) and aimed, respectively, at introducing the VET students/learners to the basic principles of sustainable valorization of NRGs (namely IO2 Program) and to the state of the art tools designed to operationally preserve NRGs (IO3 Program). An additional advanced didactic module dedicated to the use of Geographic Information Systems (GIS) for the integrated territorial management of NRGs has been developed as well (IO4 Module). All these products have been tested between April and June 2022 by performing dedicated didactic activities with selected testing panels made up of end-users (students/learners), primary target group (teachers/tutors) and stakeholders (private and public organizations operating in the education sector and/or in the management of NRGs). Testing activities have been carried out in each of the five Countries participating in the project by following a common methodology and overall involved a total of 110 testers. All testers were asked to fill in a series of before/after self-assessment questionnaires that were respectively aimed at: oAssessing and quantifying the general increase in knowledge on the sustainable management of NRGs perceived by the testers after the training; oAssessing and quantifying the specific increase in knowledge perceived by the testers on each of the main topics presented during the testing; oEvaluating the quality of each didactic module of the two teaching programs; oEvaluating the overall quality of the CHERISH educational offer. The results of the testing activities will be presented and critically discussed in the full paper, by highlighting both the common aspects found in the assessment carried out by all the panels and the differences in the feedbacks received from different clusters of testers subjected to different training approaches (e.g. frontal lessons, distance learning). The guidelines for the use of the products of the CHERISH project that have been developed on the basis of the feedback received by the testers will be presented as well.