Teaching Media Literacy Analytics Erasmus Project

Project Title

Teaching Media Literacy Analytics

Project Key Action

This project related with these key action: Cooperation for innovation and the exchange of good practices

Project Action Type

This project related with this action type : Partnerships for Digital Education Readiness

Project Call Year

This project’s Call Year is 2020

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: Pedagogy and didactics; EU Citizenship, EU awareness and Democracy; Open and distance learning

Project Summary

We propose an innovative media and information literacy pedagogy program integrated with debate methodologies that focus on teaching young people to engage with everyday content critically and analyze the ideological background and its social function rather than merely evaluating its validity. We propose integrating it in the digital environment and equipping educators to use this approach in digital and real-life settings. A consortium of 5 organizations experts in debate education, media education, and digital learning and 36 schools are behind the proposal to innovate media education.

Existing media literacy education practices are, by and large, focused on fact-checkers, combating hate speech, and recognizing unreliable news sources. Reports demonstrate disinformation spread is much more complicated than previously thought. Traditional literacy education strategies have not been able to keep up with the nuanced and complex nature of disinformation and the way it is shared. Dissemination networks used to spread such information are flexible, increasingly using new approaches, such as utilizing private messaging apps, indicating that current approaches to teaching media literacy lag behind actual trends in fake news propagation. Finally, the issue of politically biased journalism in mainstream media is becoming increasingly more pronounced, underlying the need for teaching strategies that enable in-depth critical analysis of all news content.

This project represents an innovative approach to media and information literacy education in the school sector. We will produce a new methodological framework and a toolkit for MILE’s practical implementation with debate methodology principles.

MeLitA will strengthen teachers and other educators’ capacity to carry out media and information literacy education in a digital environment, blend non-formal teaching styles with formal education for real-life education and facilitate cross-sectoral cooperation between the school education and youth sector.

Students today are at high risk from entering echo-chambers and interacting only with those peers they share opinions with, preventing dialogue with others, understanding and respecting differences, and providing fertile ground for radicalization. Our project’s key feature is the use of MIL adapted debate methodology, resulting in an environment where students can express different opinions and explore different perspectives, develop critical thinking and understand how to interpret all media content.

The project outputs are:
1. A pedagogical strategy focused on outlining both the contemporary needs and solutions in the field of media literacy education
2. A Methodological Manual OER focused on teaching media and information literacy through the use of collaborative debate methodology
3. An Implementation Toolkit OER delivering practical solutions for teaching media and information literacy in a range of different environments
4. An interactive, easy to use e-learning platform providing for online teaching and learning opportunities

The sector currently lacks such frameworks that would specifically correspond to new trends in media and information consumption. Educators face a broad set of circumstances when teaching in different Programme countries, urban and rural areas, cultural or social exclusion areas, different socio-economic contexts, and more. All of this represents obstacles to conducting education that can have a real, lasting effect on how young people understand and process information gained from the media. We firmly believe that a transnational project with partners from diverse contexts such as this one has significant potential to develop truly flexible outputs, available and applicable even in environments where media and information literacy education is ignored or actively discouraged.

Project activities ensure outputs based on feedback from educators and students involved as project participants, resulting in truly applicable outputs and answer users’ needs. Importantly, project participants include young people as education recipients. They are the stakeholder most often left out of or underrepresented in crafting teaching materials and developing methodological frameworks. We recognize young people as pivotal to creating truly effective and innovative educational approaches and will incorporate their feedback in finalizing the project outputs. In other words, the outputs for young people and educators will be shaped by young people and educators.

Finally, all project outputs will be available freely, with our Methodological Manual and Implementation Toolkit made available in five languages as designed as interactive OERs, allowing for modular use in an appealing, easy-to-use digital format through a developed dedicated e-learning platform, circumventing geographical and financial obstacles to use. They will also be open-sourced and available for further adaptation and implementation.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 266633 Eur

Project Coordinator

INTERNATIONAL DEBATE EDUCATION ASSOCIATION & Country: NL

Project Partners

• Polska Debatuje
• Eesti Väitlusselts
• Za in proti, zavod za kulturo dialoga
• DANES JE NOV DAN, INSTITUT ZA DRUGA VPRASANJA