DE FACTO
Providing educators with a science-based toolbox to understand and counter misinformation and disinformation
Project: Erasmus+ Programme 2014-2020 – KA2 Strategic Partnerships
European partners:
- Natsionalen ucheben tsentar (Bulgaria) – Lead Organization
- Arteveldehogeschool (Belgium)
- Andragoski zavod Ljudska univerza Velenje (Slovenia)
- Euroface Consulting s.r.o. (Czech Republic)
- New service s.r.l (Italy)
- TLM The Learning Machine Ltd (United Kingdom)
Timeline: 24 months form 1/09/2018 to 31/08/2020
Summary of the project
We live in a world which is increasingly governed by information. It flows in every direction and imprints on every aspect of our professional and social lives. Information is also the key ingredient in education and training. This is why it is very important that we can rely on its accuracy so that we can make our decisions, form opinions, produce arguments, participate in positive debates.
Yet there are those who, willingly, produce disinformation. Their objective is to deceive, to confuse, to spread fear and uncertainty. And there are others who, unwillingly, help them by repeating what they believe is true, spreading disinformation. And form opinions which are misinformed, and, ultimately, believe things that are not true to be true.
DE FACTO intends to address the problem of misinformation by putting science at the service of educators to improve the quality of teaching and learning.
We will develop a toolbox for educators which will consist of:
- a classification of types of misinformation and disinformation;
- sample detection algorithms;
- disinformation case studies;
- disinformation production kit;
- guidebook to fact-based reading and teaching containing different kits;
- blueprint for authoring disinformation and disinformation case studies.
We will conduct 4 trainings for educators where we will demonstrate the 4 pillars and how they work, and we will present the tools which we have developed so that we can understand what is happening and what we can do to make sure that we can distinguish between true information and false information, understand why some things are neither true, nor false (or are both), why and how people produce disinformation and how this affects us. Further, we will send these tools to adult and VET education and training organisations.
For more information, please, visit the project website https://defacto.space/
