Fake News, Information Overload, Bots and Algorithms — Opinion Shaping in a Digital Society as a Topic of Instructional Development

Type of event: Seminars
Organisation: eLearning Office Educational Science
Funding period: 01.04.2022 to 31.03.2023
Short title: OpinionDigital

Extract from the funding application: "The way we form our opinions is influenced by the complex structures and forms of communication in digital society. Digital data processing has an impact on public communication as the basis of democracy. The development of maturity in a digital society includes the promotion of data literacy as a key competence. This should already be promoted at school - to the same extent as the promotion of reading and writing skills, i.e. literacy in the original sense."

The OpinionDigital project

The promotion of basic elements of receptive data literacy among (prospective) teachers as multipliers in the field of school education is a necessary, but not sufficient condition for anchoring data literacy education as a core element of school education in the long term. However, courses on data literacy have not yet been systematically anchored in the teacher training curriculum. And even teachers who are already in the teaching profession often do not have the necessary knowledge and skills - at the same time, they do not have the time in their everyday school life to deal practically and reflectively with the current changes in an increasingly digitalized world shaped by data-driven processes.

Review and results

The overarching goal of the research workshop was to enable (prospective) teachers to develop concepts and ideas on how basic data literacy skills can be promoted at school. Through cooperation with the State Institute for Teacher Training and School Development and the participation of teachers from the field, it was possible to combine a theoretical perspective on the topic with a solution-oriented view of the integration of data literacy into school teaching and learning processes. To this end, the topic was first developed together with students and teachers as part of input, discussion and reflection phases and then the school reference was deepened once again in concrete research projects.

Especially during the first phase (input & reflection), the cooperation between the university and the State Institute for Teacher Training and School Development proved to be very beneficial, so that the continuation of project seminars on the topic of data literacy education, which are offered at the Faculty of EW in cooperation with the State Institute for Teacher Training and School Development, is already being planned. This has shown that both sides (students and teachers) have benefited greatly from the exchange. Both the students and the participating teachers from the field were able to develop an understanding of the relevance and breadth of the concept of data literacy education in schools as part of the research workshop and, based on the technical questions and theoretical considerations, identify concrete approaches and build a bridge from theory to practice.

Another aspect of the teaching project was the development of a blog that provides teaching and learning materials on the topic of data literacy education for schools. This blog will be used for future courses on data literacy education at the Faculty of Education and will continue to be maintained in this context. It is currently still being revised in order to adapt the level of complexity of the materials in the blog to the requirements of data literacy education in schools and to remove the seminar-specific content once the project is complete.

Tips from lecturers for lecturers

The project has clearly shown that the organisation of hybrid events can work very well if there is a (student) person who acts as an interface between participants in attendance and students participating digitally. In this way, messages from the digital classroom can be better transferred to the classroom and, conversely, results from the classroom work can be documented for the digital participants. The use of a shared digital whiteboard was a good support, but here too it was good that a student assistant was available to help structure its use and was also able to transfer face-to-face results directly. This also made it possible to work with maps on site, which allowed participants to interact and engage in a different way.