Teaching media ethics and media literacy online
To mark World Teachers Day on 5 October 2017 the Ethical Journalism Network delivered a workshop in Bangkok for 20 media literacy experts from six universities in Malaysia, Thailand, and Vietnam on teaching media ethics as part and media literacy through massive open online courses or MOOCs.
As well as, delivering the workshop in Bangkok the EJN is reviewing and giving advice on the ethical dimensions of the online courses.
Feedback from participants included:
- “Very Interactive, open some point of my view.”
- “I really admire to the content & the whole presentation. Gave me very important and interesting input. The method of presentation and materials are excellent.”
- “Very good presentation, especially the video he showed at the end of the presentation concerning the migration.”
Teaching Media Ethics
The MEDLIT-project has officially been established in October 2015 by a grant from the European Commission within the framework of the Erasmus Plus programme, specifically the call for Capacity-building in the Field of Higher-Education. The mission for the consortium is to expand academic structures of knowledge exchange and transnational knowledge development in the field of Media Literacy.
It is meant to build capacities for a broad educational program of awareness and societal reasonability for the social and cultural usage of media in the interest of maintaining and developing individual motifs of meaningful and mindful participation in society-relevant discourses and social life.
Speaking about the consortium, the project network consists of three European Universities from Austria, Germany, and the Netherlands and altogether six Universities from Malaysia, Thailand, and Vietnam (see the partners section for details).
The geographical focus on South-East-Asia is interesting because of many reasons: The phenomena of globalization are mirrored differently, in Asia more in terms of technology, as in Europe more in terms of culture. Both dimensions are important levels of development and in that meaning areas of social change to be societally understood, to be considered and reflected in the frame of social, cultural and media studies.
Furthermore, the South-East-Asia Region became a strong partner for academic cooperation for the Department of Communication, which we want to deepen, to widen and to strengthen with effects in a sustainable programme of diversification of teaching and research.
The main parts of the projects are:
- an Action-Research oriented Delphi Study to do research on the current knowledge and demands in Media Literacy combined with the attempt to find and activate stakeholders
- a series of Train-the-Faculty workshops that should present different perspectives and tools within a diverse theoretical concept of Media Literacy and its educational institutionalization
- the capacity to develop eLearning materials based on the findings of the Delphi Study and the study programmes in the partner countries
- based on this eLearning training MOOCs should be developed and tested in the partner countries that address study beginners but also larger groups of stakeholders and awaken an interest in Media Literacy
- furthermore, the consortium should be extended – especially from the pool of addressed stakeholders – into a Media Literacy Cluster/Network that tries to promote Media Literacy and develop future projects beyond the project duration