by Paula Estalayo, Octaedro, Spain.
The context
Media has become deeply integrated into our culture, making it essential to develop tools and skills to engage with it. Media literacy education is crucial for critically analyzing media messages and challenging the status quo. Fortunately, after years of research and advocacy, media education is now part of the curriculum in several EU countries, reflecting a shift in our view of the media’s role in society. While media literacy strategies are in place for young people in schools, they should also be extended to non-school environments to help senior citizens, who have experienced the transition from print to social media, navigate this new landscape.
MELISE Project
To this end, the MELISE Project has developed a set of learning activities and materials to address MEdia LIteracy for SEniors. MELISE is co-funded by the Creative Europe programme of the European Commission. It is conducted by a consortium of nine partners from Spain, Italy, Portugal, Greece, and Germany. The consortium includes universities such as AUTH (Thessaloniki, Greece) and UNED (Spain). It also involves a prominent journalists’ association in Portugal, ALPMJ; a specialised media outlet for the third age (Grey Panthers, Italy); and an award-winning digital education organisation, Dataninja. The project is coordinated by Ediciones Octaedro, a Spanish publishing house specialising in education.
The MELISE sMOOC
MELISE has recently released a Social MOOC (sMooc), titled Networks and Realities: Media Literacy for Seniors. With a gamified narrative, this innovative open online course intends to involve Senior European citizens in a highly engaging learning experience where they will interact with the content, the tutoring team, and their peer learners.
Over five stages, agents Dis, In, For, Mat and Ion must undertake a set of crucial missions, with the common goal of countering disinformation. In their journey, the course participants will refresh their knowledge about the evolution of media technologies, and use their critical thinking to help MELISE agents solve media literacy challenges. To solve those challenges, learners will be provided with accessible instructions to use state-of-the-art open digital tools, from source verification to Generative Artificial Intelligence applications.
Although addressed at senior audiences, this course can become a positive learning experience to audiences of all ages. By participating in the course, learners will gain critical understanding of the post-digital society and the impact of technologies on everyday life; they will better equipped to critically assess information, and identify disinformation projected through the media and social networks; they will develop specific skills to apply verification tools for analysing and verifying digital content; they will explore the role of AI and its ethical, social and professional implications, and they will become aware of the direct and indirect effects of disinformation in society and the quality of our democracies.
Hosted in ECO Digital Learning, an online courses platform sparked with European funding, the sMOOC offers a smooth learning experience and an accessible user experience. The course is offered in five different languages: English, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, and German. The course will be open for subscription from the 30th of January, and will be facilitated by tutors from UNED, a long established distance learning university in Spain.
The MELISE podcast
The project has also released the MELISE Podcast Series, which can be accessed in Spotify and iVoox. Through periodically released episodes, different experts in Media Literacy for Seniors will be interviewed in journalistic style sessions to discuss a variety of topics around media in our post-digital society.
How to get involved
Visit our project website: https://meliseproject.eu/
Join our sMOOC here: https://hub8.eco-learning.eu/course/networks-and-realities-media-literacy-seniors/ Subscribe to our podcast series here: https://open.spotify.com/show/6AUoaAGh5OSFY2Ot5WKyE7
Author
Paula Estalayo, Project Coordinator, Octaedro, Spain.
