PHUV9510 Kunnskap og desinformasjon: Undervisning og læring i et digitalt samfunn Emneplan

Children and young people are growing up in an increasingly digital society, and research is needed to understand how they navigate and live with ubiquitous technology permeating the fabric of their everyday lives. Digital technology can be a powerful tool for transforming learning. It can help affirm and advance relationships between educators and students, reinvent our approaches to learning and collaboration, shrink long-standing equity and accessibility gaps, and adapt learning experiences to meet the needs of all learners. Simultaneously digital technology can bring with it several challenges, such as the spread of misinformation, online harassment, and overall ethical concerns. Ultimately digital technology can tremendously impact how people communicate and engage with each other while also increasing the knowledge available. This course seeks to deepen understanding of how digital technology, schools and society interact.

Historically, the culture of education has tended to be local, rooted in neighborhood schools, yet the problems facing education today are no longer confined to local issues and concerns. This is partly due to the increasing use and importance of digital technology in society, which now means that the boundaries of the classroom have been expanded and can include input, information, and knowledge from outside the classroom. What happens outside of school can also affect what happens inside the classroom. As a result, educators are confronting challenges in a variety of areas, from the onslaught against democratic practices the rise of nationalism and populism, as well as the continued inequities made all the more pronounced during the COVID-19 pandemic.

In this course, we are concerned with an understanding of, in general, citizenship but particularly, digital citizenship. For practitioners, scholars and policy makers, it is crucial to understand how education and society can enable children and young people to manage and be resilient to many of the challenges that arise due to digital technology including issues such as safety, health, cyberbullying, and misinformation (fake news) while also being aware of their rights and responsibilities in the digital world as digital citizens.

This course will be taught in English.

After completion of the course, the student will have acquired the following learning outcomes, defined as knowledge, skills and general competence:

Knowledge

The student

• has knowledge of the historical and epistemological issues connected to different perspectives on the role of digital technology in terms of information and misinformation
• has and understanding of the methodological, philosophical and interdisciplinary topics that are embedded in digital spaces and can distinguish between related methodologies and philosophical standpoints
• understands and can critically evaluate the mechanisms and research around the challenges facing education in relation to digital spaces

Skills

The student

• can identify, examine and analyse current issues and challenges facing education in addressing issues around the influences of digital technology and polarised discourses
• is able to analyse and discuss complex methodological, philosophical and interdisciplinary issues in their own thesis in light of the course content

General competence

The student

• can recognize how trends and patterns in micro, mezzo and macro discourses shift practices in education
• can identify and discuss relationships and conflicts between more general scientific theories and this particular field of research
• can critically evaluate complex issues related to the effects of digital technology on information and misinformation

Gender, ethnicity, social class, age/generation, functional ability and sexual orientation form the basis for social categories that are part of the power relations and forms of dominance in society today. That also makes them important to the freedom of action of groups and individuals and the way in which they understand themselves and others. It is a challenge in empirical analyses to take into consideration that people belong to many different categories at the same time.

Intersectional approaches make it possible for analyses to identify the many-faceted interactions that can constitute social categories and that social categories can produce. This course includes theoretical perspectives and empirical research that are primarily based on affiliation to one of the relevant categories, as well as scholarly works that make dynamic relationships between category affiliations the focus of their analysis.

After completing the course, the candidates are expected to have the following knowledge, skills and general competence:

Knowledge

Candidates have

• knowledge about theoretical perspectives that challenge notions that social categories are substantially uniform
• knowledge about social and cultural processes that have contributed/contribute to different forms of category construction

Skills

Candidates have

• an academic basis for conducting complex and dynamic analyses of people's concurrent affiliation to important categories
• an academic basis for analysing and reflecting on power relations in research and social work activities from an intersectional perspective

General competence

Candidates are capable of

• assessing and identifying new research questions in the field
• taking part in debates in national and international forums

Teaching will take the form of lectures, groups- and class discussions.

Participation is mandatory, and candidates are expected to attend all days of teaching. A minor absence may only be accepted under certain circumstances and upon application. In the event of absences that are not approved, candidates will lose their right to have their essays assessed.

An essay of about 6-8 pages must be written in connection with the course. The essay must be handed in for assessment by the teacher responsible for the course no later than two months after the last day of the course. A passed essay is a precondition for being awarded the 5 ECTS credits. If the essay is awarded a fail grade, the candidate can submit a revised essay once, by a specified deadline.

All examination support material is allowed as long as source reference and quotation technique requirements are applied.