Cyberspace, May 2025 : twenty master students from EURIDICE’s DIGISOC have just finished one of their modules, “ICT4D, Digital Transformation and Global Development“. They have delivered a science fiction film about the Digital Society. This was a special, new type of project group work. The assignment was very challenging. This was all introduced through one of the guest lectures, this one being about the historical parallels between AI development and Science Fiction.
In the age of generative AI, we as educators, are increasingly challenged to reconsider traditional approaches to teaching and learning. But rather than complaining or ignoring the new reality, we can also try to develop new, innovative teaching approaches. We may regret that academic writing, long regarded as one of the most important academic skills, is no longer a reliable measure of learning outcome. The academic essay, project report, and thesis have traditionally served as the best evidence of a student’s understanding, critical judgment, and ability to communicate (notably, three out of five learning outcomes of the Dublin Descriptors). Yet, today, generative AI tools can produce essays and project reports on virtually any subject with a single mouse-click. Is it surprising that students embrace this efficient tool, when they are urged to learn efficiently? And who are we then assessing? Human creativity or a very eloquent stochastic parrot?
So, to really challenge the imagination, creativity, collaboration, openness to new challenges and the ability to learn from new situations, we asked the students to design a script for a science fiction short film, then to pitch it before audience and subsequently film and submit the creative result as a project group deliverable.
This was not an easy task, and totally new and unexpected. The current situation was: DIGISOC students are situated in various countries: Italy, Austria, Czech Republic. Some of the students were temporarily at work, following the course from their how countries: Ghana, Nigeria, China. We, the teaching team, were in the Netherlands, Malaysia and Ghana. So, the assignment and assessment had to be fulfilled in the digital space.
The result were interesting and very original: five films have been delivered by nineteen students in five groups. The titles are: Approved, A Day without Technology, The Last Feeling, Human as a Service, Dystopian World.
*) Featured image is an AI generated still from one of the student films: “Human as a Service“.