Critical Thinking in the Information Society (CTIS) – Erasmus+  Strategic Partnership for Higher Education Project
Project number 2022-1-RO01-KA220-HED-000090207
Coordonator Sapientia University, Romania
Duration: 27-month project (1^st of September, 2022 – 30th of November, 2024)

The general objective of the CTIS project is to stimulate innovative learning and teaching practices by elaborating digital educational materials intended to develop advanced transversal skills of critical thinking and media literacy in higher education students. Ready-to-use digital educational materials necessary for developing critical media literacy in higher education classroom settings will be elaborated in 7 European languages (Romanian, Greek, Bulgarian, Polish, Hungarian, Lithuanian and English) and will be available as open-source educational material.

Educational materials will be elaborated for developing important transversal skills with a method called “flipped classroom”. It is a pedagogical approach in which the conventional notion of classroom-based learning is inverted: students are introduced to the learning material before class, classroom time being used to deepen understanding through discussion with peers and problem-solving activities facilitated by teachers. The flipped method offers an innovative solution to some of the unmet challenges of traditional education. Although the method can be used using solely traditional, off-line tools (like books and drill-books), the internet and information and communication technology has become the facilitators of moving the lecture outside of class with slides, audio, podcasts, or narrated presentations.

There are lot of approaches for developing critical thinking and media literacy skills. However, there are only theoretical initiatives for the joint development of these core skills, by using teaching resources used in media literacy courses for developing critical thinking. Moreover, there is a lack of flipped classroom resources for teaching an entire course in this domain in higher education institutes. The project therefore simulates innovative learning and teaching practices.

Although research evidence supports the effectiveness of flipped methods their spread is hindered by the difficulties in preparing necessary materials. The CTIS project stimulates the use of research data regarding flipped classroom methods in educational practice, having a positive impact on the reinforced interaction between practice, research and policy, in concordance with the with the Digital Education Action Plan (2021-207), an EU policy initiative to support the adaptation of the education systems to the digital age.