Open training course for an international audience

Di Matteo Mancini

CREMIT – the Research Centre on Media Education, Innovation and Technology at the Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore – has long been committed to developing free, open online training grounded in its own research. Three of its MOOCs – Massive Open Online Courses – are now available in languages other than Italian, reaching teachers, educators, healthcare professionals, and media practitioners with no barriers to entry. All courses are hosted on the EduOpen platform, are fully self-paced – no tutor, no deadlines – and award a free certificate of participation from the Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore upon completion.

Check & Design – Digital Information Literacy and Collaborative Learning at School

Italian │ English ┃ 6 modules │ 25 hours │ 8 weeks ┃ Secondary school teachers and students

Check & Design is a course dedicated to Information Literacy, built as an OER – Open Educational Resource: an open, freely reusable and adaptable resource. It was developed within the Erasmus+ project “Check and Design – Digital Information Literacy and collaborative learning at school” (2020-1-IT02-KA201-079985) and is aligned with the Digital Competence Framework 2.1 (DigComp) of the European Commission. The course is aimed primarily at secondary school teachers and their students, and is open to anyone wishing to develop a more critical and informed relationship with digital information.

The six modules work across four key areas:

• reflecting on information and on the way digital media reshapes how we produce and consume news;
• searching online and filtering digital data, information and content;
• evaluating digital data, information and content;
• participating in and contributing to the digital environment as content producers – the prosumer role.

Course modules

Each module includes video lessons, thematic resources, a final test, and an e-tivity – a structured activity inspired by Gilly Salmon’s model, designed to be adapted in classroom or educational settings:

• Module 1 – Media and News. What is news today, the concept of the spectauthor, fake news and post-truth. E-tivity: #spreadthisaround.
• Module 2 – Algorithm. How algorithms work, their effect on content visibility and digital identity, personal data. E-tivity: Clickbait.
• Module 3 – Search. Effective online search strategies and how to keep them updated. E-tivity: Save the Bookmark culture!
• Module 4 – Copyright. Copyright in the digital context, Creative Commons, Open vs Closed content. E-tivity: Find your inspiration!
• Module 5 – Source. What a source is, how to evaluate sources in the social web, how to become a fact-checker. E-tivity: Being a fact Checker in 5 hashtags.
• Module 6 – Online Participation. Conscious participation in the digital environment, social web and civic activism. E-tivity: Choose your way.

Learning outcomes

By the end of the course, participants will be able to:

• recognise and articulate their information needs;
• search for data, information and content in digital environments and navigate between sources;
• create and update personal search strategies;
• analyse, compare and critically evaluate the credibility and reliability of digital sources.

For teachers in particular, the course supports the ability to:

• use digital technologies for formative and summative assessment;
• provide targeted and timely feedback to students through digital tools;
• adapt teaching strategies based on evidence generated by the digital environment;
• help students and families understand outcomes and evidence produced through digital technologies.

The final questionnaire is available in two age-differentiated versions (14–20; 21 and over). The teaching team includes Michele Marangi, Rosaria Pace, Sara Lo Jacono, Simona Ferrari, Elena Valgolio, Enrica Bricchetto, and Stefano Pasta.

Enrol now: learn.eduopen

How to access the courses

All three courses are free and available on the EduOpen platform. Simply create a personal account and enrol in your chosen course: all modules are immediately accessible, with no deadlines to meet. Upon passing each module’s test, participants can download their certificate of participation from the Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore. All content is distributed under a Creative Commons 4.0 licence (BY-NC-SA).

We look forward to seeing you on EduOpen.

Further reading

This article is part of the CREMIT MOOCs Beyond Borders series. Discover the other open training courses available in the same collection:

• YO-MEDIA – Youngsters’ Media Literacy in Times of Crisis
• Pallium – Towards a Culture of Palliative Care

All articles are published in the International MOOC section of the CREMIT website.