Course will commence once the minimum capacity is reached
Courses
The Power to Create and Understand Media: A Media Literacy Education Course
Educator: Directorate for Lifelong Learning
Course Offer: Self-Paced Course
Course Duration: 100 Hours (completion by 31/05/2024)
Certification: Letter of Attendance
Prerequisites: Internet connection and a device, basic digital skills
Price: Euro 34.94
Course Description
This course will seek to deliver a basic understanding of what media literacy education is and consists of, as well as its importance and relevance to the everyday life of responsible citizens. It will seek to cultivate media literacy skills and competences required to learn how to discern fake news from genuinely reported news that provides us with the information we can rely on. It will also provide knowledge and skills on how to distinguish between facts and opinions and between various mindsets and worldviews that constantly shape agendas in the media world. Skills that enable the analysis (deconstruction) of messages for intelligent and critical consumership, will be learnt. This occurs through learning to ask the right questions in relation to media texts on all media forms and platforms, and creating media messages that are positive and beneficial to society. The course also promotes awareness of the contribution of these messages to critical reflection, empowering people to make their voices and stories heard, and promoting social justice, peace and freedom.
The self-paced course will commence from October 2023 onwards and once the required number of learners have enrolled. It offers 100 hours of self-paced learning, including instructional materials, online resources, lesson explanations, discussion forums, assignments, and recommended readings. Registration is open until 15 March 2024. Upon reaching the minimum number of participants, you will be notified. You will have until 31 May 2024 to complete the course at your own pace regardless of the commencement date.
Course Outline:
Unit 1
Introducing Media Literacy Education: The Basics
This unit will start with a basic and clear understanding of what media literacy education is and consists of, as well as its importance and relevance to the everyday life of responsible citizens. It will help participants understand the aims, functions and purposes of Media Literacy Education in a world that is seeing the media landscape getting transformed at an exponential rate, with positive and negative consequences. It will also show and discuss the importance of the media triangle, i.e. media content, media organizations and media audiences, and how critical thinking always results from questions related to all these media aspects.
Unit 2
The Key Concepts and Principles of Media Literacy
This unit will facilitate a clear understanding of the basic communication model and discuss its implications to media and their messages. It will also delve into the nature of media messages and explain the key concepts and principles upon which all media messages and texts are constructed. Finally, this unit will also give a historical overview of media literacy education, as it evolved in synch with and adjacent to the advent of new media technologies. The great influence of the Canadian media thinker and analyst Marshall McLuhan will be discussed to understand better how the development and progress of media technologies affected societies, cultures, and individuals.
Unit 3
Basics of News Literacy and the Positive and Negative Impact of Media on Individuals and Society
This unit seeks revolves around an understanding of how the media affect people in all aspects of their personality. It delves into various media effects theories and perspectives, and the influence and persuasion tactics and techniques used by the different media. It also focuses on news literacy, i.e. on how news is constructed, and how it affects people in different ways. It reflects upon the entertaining aspect of news and the elements of newsworthiness. It also promotes skills required for news analysis through specific questions that cultivate critical reflection.
Unit 4
Advertising Literacy and Audiences in the Media
This unit seeks to teach the basics of advertising literacy, especially the most common and effective persuasion tactics and strategies used in media advertising. It will also explore the concept of media audience as it transpires from the evolution of media audience theory. Different types of audiences will be discussed, and their implications for the content of messages, the techniques and strategies used to convey them, and their possible effects on people and on culture. Thus, the relationship between media and society, as well as between media and culture, will also be explored and discussed.
