The project aims to establish, through the implementation of its activities, a clear link between higher education courses and the future professional needs of graduates and with the updated needs of the labor market by: - Strengthening the CDL of higher education students, especially future teachers, IT specialists, medical professionals, journalists and semioticians; - Identifying the democratic assets of higher education institutions and how they are threatened by misinformation; - Changing current teaching practices in higher education by adopting student-centered teaching strategies that promote web-based research and learning, while proposing a new program to raise students' awareness of misinformation and their CDL.
The project responds to the social need to strengthen students' capacity to understand and combat disinformation by supporting the development of their Critical Digital Literacy (CDL). The project also responds to the European Commission's priorities as expressed in: the Digital Education Action Plan, which combats disinformation through education by promoting digital literacy; the Action Plan against Disinformation, in which ‘the goal is to become more resilient to disinformation, which requires continuous and sustained efforts to support acculturation and media literacy, journalism, fact-checking, researchers and civil society as a whole’ (p. 13); and the Action Plan for Democracy, designed to empower citizens and build more resilient democracies across the EU by combating, among other things, disinformation. The project also presents itself as a response to the challenges faced by European higher education institutions in training future professionals and citizens through improving the quality of learning in higher education.