Could you explain your course idea?

Informatics and technology have a lot of impact on our society, but are quite challenging to understand. How do we govern certain technologies if policymakers don’t understand how the system works? If something is influencing our life a lot, we should understand how it works. With the course I wanted to build bridges between different academic disciplines.

How are you developing the course?

Debby Gerritsen and Marleen van der Meer, two employees of the Institute for Interdisciplinary Studies have helped me to design the course. One of the first and most important steps when designing a course is to find lecturers who wants to teach it. It surprised me how excited and interested lecturers are when I approached them. That is very motivating and confidence inducing. Dr. Claudio Celis Bueno will be the lecturer of the course, and is currently also helping to design the course.

What else has surprised you?

When I designed the course during the Create a Course Challenge, I had a lot of out-of-the-box ideas when it comes to the format and teaching-methods. It surprised me that many of those ideas could be implemented. For example, I didn’t want pre-defined lectures, but a student-driven approach. Every week a different lecturer from a different faculty will be present to give comments, and a small 10-15 minute presentation. The students give the majority of the presentations. This turned out to all be possible.

Do you have advice for students who want to create a course?

Even if you aren’t quite sure what and how it should look, don’t worry. You don’t have to be know everything about the format of the course or be an expert on the topic. You’ll get a lot of help with the content and design of the course. Don’t stress too much!

Annika’s course “Decoding our future: opportunities and threats of the digital revolution” will be taught in period five and six. Applications will be open to all UvA students at the beginning of December.

This is your final chance to take part in the Create a Course Challenge 2024. Submit your ideas before 9 October.