Summer School

How to Get Started

This article focuses on what you need to know in order to prepare for offering a summer school. The most important starting point is determining what the exact reasons are for your university wanting or needing to offer a summer school programme. Once you have the ‘why’, the ‘what’ and ‘how’ follow. The article offers a brief overview of summer schools in different parts of the world. It outlines two alternative models of setting up a project organization to get started, before focusing on the process of planning all the necessary activities. All stakeholders are taken into consideration, including of course the most crucial group: the students. The article looks at the different stakeholders’ interests in summer school programmes, both from within the university as well as external stakeholders, e.g. the local community and the different target groups. Finally, the article explains how a summer school establishes its desired profile and what this means for the courses being offered.