Digital Citizenship "Ethics and Empathy" Course

The development of technology has created a new social structure that controls who, how and when individuals interact with society. In less than 30 years, the use of the Internet, mobile phones and computers has increased to the point that we hardly know what we would do without them. Digital citizens are required to act in a certain way that fits with accepted norms, standards and regulations.

The Ethics and Empathy course is representing those behaviours that maintain “peace”. Much has been written in recent years about how personal electronics and the use of social media networks seem to be isolating us more and more from each other. Despite these, researchers found that young people may actually be growing more socially adept, perhaps thanks in part to advances in technology. It depends on how technology and social media are integrated into our lives and how the correlation with our feelings fosters peace.

This course was designed as an instrument to assist teachers, trainers and youth workers in their daily work with young people. However, the course may be also followed directly by young people on their own. It includes readings, exercises, case studies, quizzes and self-reflection questions, divided into five modules:

• Positive online behaviour;
• Empathy as a skill for life;
• Ethical thinking;
• Ethical decisions;
• Practice empathy.

While this Ethics and Empathy textbook is available to download for free here and in the TrainingClub.eu European non-formal education platform of TEAM4Excellence, it is also available as a Moodle massive open online course in English. Furthermore, each module was translated into three languages: Romanian, Greek and German.

“Ethics and Empathy” is the result of the Erasmus+ project “Strategic partnership to develop open educational resources for teaching digital citizenship”, implemented by a consortium of four partners from Romania, Cyprus, Germany and Greece, aiming at improving a broad range of competences, so citizens are able to actively, positively and responsibly engage in both on and offline communities.

The authors consider that digital citizenship should be faced as a multidimensional and complex concept. Based on this aspect, they created 10 courses that together help improve the digital citizenship skills of people: Access and Inclusion, Learning and Creativity, Media and Information Literacy, Ethics and Empathy, Health and Wellbeing, ePresence and Communication, Active Participation, Rights and Responsibilities, Privacy and Security, Consumer Awareness.

Besides English, each course was translated into three more languages: Romanian, Greek and German. All the courses may be accessed online and anyone can enrol on Moodle and follow the courses for free.