Digital Media, Social Participation and Life-Long Learning

Equitable and Just Digital Society: Developing Interdisciplinary Skills and Knowledge

The course "Digital Media, Social Participation and Life-Long Learning" is predicated on the understanding that digital technologies are not neutral tools but "techno-social devices" that actively assemble and reorganize social activity structures. In the academic year 2026/2027, this module examines how these devices function as learning environments that transcend the traditional boundaries of time and space. Rather than viewing learning as a discrete event confined to the classroom, this course adopts an expanded view of education as a life-long and life-wide process that occurs across formal, non-formal, and informal settings.

Central to the course is the neo-ecological perspective, which technologizes the classical systems of human development. 

By updating Bronfenbrenner’s ecological theory to include the digital sphere, the course analyzes how digital mediation impacts the microsystem (immediate interactions), the mesosystem (connections between contexts), and the macrosystem (cultural and societal values). 

This framework allows students to explore how social participation is co-constructed within digital infrastructures, ranging from social media platforms to citizen-led digital councils.

The pedagogical approach of the course is inherently challenge-based and interactive. It draws upon creative methods such as speculative design and design fiction to challenge students to imagine the future implications of emerging technologies. By engaging in simulation exercises, participants collaboratively build digital infrastructures intended to facilitate community learning. This hands-on work is complemented by critical reflections on case studies involving eg.: youth digital identities, the transformation of schools in the connected society, and the role of MOOCs (Massive Open Online Courses) in professional development.

The course operates within a "care-centered epistemology," which proposes that research and participation should be relational spaces of shared learning. This approach challenges extractive practices and redefines knowledge production as a collaborative process attentive to social realities and the co-construction of meaning. In the context of an equitable digital society, this means ensuring that digital tools and services are developed in ways that respect human dignity, social belonging, and cultural diversity.

• Digital Ecologies and Techno-Social Devices, 
• Expanded Education, 
• Learning in the Connected Society, 
• the Digital Commons and Collaborative Environments, 
• Play, and Digital Identity, 
• Institutional Transformation: Schools and Lifelong Learning,
• Digital Media and Civil Society

Upon successful completion of the course "Digital Media, Social Participation and Life-Long Learning," students will have developed a profound understanding of how digital transformations reshape the fabric of human interaction and education. The learning experience is designed to be transformative, moving students from a position of technological consumption to one of critical, interdisciplinary agency.

Students will first demonstrate the ability to analyze digital technologies not merely as tools, but as complex environments that mediate and construct social reality. Through the lens of neo-ecological theory, they will be able to map the intricate relationships between digital media and human development, identifying how technology influences identity formation and social belonging across the life course. This awareness extends to the critical evaluation of how "expanded education" challenges traditional institutional hierarchies, allowing students to design learning strategies that are collaborative, networked, and grounded in the "procommon".

A core outcome is the attainment of "interactional expertise." Students will develop the capacity to engage in sophisticated discourse across the disciplines of ethics, computer science, and sociology. This enables them to perceive and discuss the moral and social dimensions of digital innovations—such as AI in public services or digital welfare tools—ensuring they can contribute to "responsible innovation" that avoids ethical pitfalls. By applying speculative design methods, students will have the imaginative capacity to project the consequences of emerging technologies, crafting narratives that advocate for social justice and equity.

Furthermore, students will be equipped with practical research skills, including the ability to perform ethnographic inventories of digital devices and analyze data related to ICT-mediated learning. They will understand the "care-centered epistemology," recognizing research as a relational process that values local knowledge and reciprocity. Ultimately, they will be able to collaboratively design and formulate digital transformations that prioritize human dignity and social inclusion within diverse social contexts.   Core Competencies to Acquire:   

• Critical Infrastructure Analysis: Ability to identify and evaluate the socio-cultural affordances of digital learning tools.
• Collaborative Space Design: Expertise in designing and facilitating Computer-Supported Collaborative Learning (CSCL) environments.
• Theoretical Application: Capability to apply neo-ecological theories to solve practical community participation challenges.
• Digital Ethnography: Proficiency in using techno-social field devices for anthropological and educational inquiry.
• Equity Evaluation: Skills to actively assess and mitigate the impacts of the digital divide in digital welfare deployments.

The courses is organised with 10 two-hour sessions from January to May 2027

Reading one text for each session, active participation, Contributions to classes, forums, and blogs (up to 10% based on tutorials). Development of a digital infrastructure proposal or speculative design case. Minimum attendance required for physical/virtual sessions to ensure group cohesion.

Enrolement into a master or PhD programme of a CIVIS University, a degree equivalent to a degree of Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, English level C1

Marta Morgade

I work in the School of Psychology of the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid. I teach undergraduate and graduate courses on developmental and educational psychology, Digital Media,education, gender and  education and within the CIVIS alliance on digital and technological transformation. I have also been actively involved in advising and training in relation to qualitative and ethnographic research methods. My research covers several topics and I have been involved in research funded by Spanish public research programs, the European Union or international organizations. This work gravitates around four main pillars: 

1. Socialization practices and processes in diverse socio-educational contexts, with a particular emphasis on literary, musical, and artistic practices in general.
2. Psychological history and theory, with special attention to the precursors of socio-historical, constructivist, and constructionist theories.
3. The development of collaborative and participatory research methodologies and diapositives.
4. The philosophical work of Charles Sanders Peirce and its relationship with psychology.

The academic space defined by these axes is intentionally interdisciplinary, drawing from Psychology, Education, Anthropology, Linguistics, Semiotics, Philosophy, and Aesthetics. In recent years, I have focused specifically on childhood studies, although my reflection on educational practices aims to understand them beyond the traditional view of childhood as the exclusive period of human learning.

From a theoretical-methodological standpoint, I approach these lines of research through qualitative, ethnographic, and historiographic lenses. I have developed research projects utilizing ethnographic and micro-ethnographic/linguistic-ethnographic strategies, narrative analysis, and, visual methodologies, as well as historical and theoretical analysis.

My research agenda is centrally focused on contemporary social transformations and digital media and technologies have been a recurrent concern across numerous research projects and publications.  I am also actively engaged in scientific organizations and dissemination on those topics.

I am also co-leader of the UAM research group "Infancia contemporánea / Contemporary childhood" (www.infanciacontemporanea.com).

David Poveda 

I work in the School of Psychology of the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid. I teach undergraduate and graduate courses on developmental and educational psychology, migration and education, gender, development and education and within the CIVIS alliance on digital and technological transformation. I have also been actively involved in advising and training in relation to qualitative and ethnographic research methods. My research covers several topics and I have been involved in research funded by Spanish public research programs, the European Union or international organizations. This work gravitates around three interrelated themes: (1) Children's linguistic and semiotic practices in a variety of socio-educational contexts; (2) Understanding diverse social conditions (i.e. cultural, institutional, ethnic, gender/class-based, of family type or geographical location) under which developmental and educational processes take place and social inequalities are produced in contemporary childhood; (3) Methodological issues connected to research on these topics. My research agenda is centrally focused on contemporary social transformations and digital media and technologies have been a recurrent concern across numerous research projects and publications.  I am also actively engaged in scientific organizations and dissemination. I was editor-in-chief of the journal Linguistics and Education between 2015-2018 and was part of the management board of EDiSo (Asociación de Estudios sobre Discurso y Sociedad) between 2019-2023. At the moment I am co-chair of Hub 5 focused on Digital and Technological Transformation within the EU CIVIS University Consortium (civis.eu). I am also co-leader of the UAM research group "Infancia contemporánea / Contemporary childhood" (www.infanciacontemporanea.com).