Annika Iselhorst (20) wins Create a Course Challenge with a course on new technologies
German political science student Annika Iselhorst (20) is the winner of the Create a Course Challenge 2023, an award from the UvA Institute for Interdisciplinary Studies (IIS) for students with new interdisciplinary curriculum ideas. Last week, she competed against four other finalists who came up with new courses on the theme of future change.
During a gathering around the stage of the UvA discussion platform Room for Discussion in the E-building on the Roeterseiland campus, students pitched five ideas, including cyberfeminism, the intersection of quantum principles and social sciences, and the concept of “going viral.” Iselhorst won the Challenge with the course “Decoding our Future: Opportunities and Threats of the Digital Revolution,” which seeks to motivate students to think about new technologies and associated issues.
- Anna Vrtiak (Digital Business master's student) and Lisa van Oosten (Information Science bachelor’s student) designed a course on digital surveillance and cyberfeminism;
- Computational Social Science student Luca Bausani focused on the intersection between quantum principles and social science;
- Psychology students Evita Shrestha and Sascha Kraft wanted students to learn to look at the concept of community from a transdisciplinary perspective;
- Master’s student Shreya Shreemani Kumar (Finance) wanted students to study the concept of “going viral” from an ethical and social perspective.
In Iselhorst’s course, students research new technologies—their development, the people involved, and opportunities to use them—and engage in critical discussions. “We look beyond popular topics like AI and big data, and look at nanorobots and neurotechnology, for example,” Iselhorst said. “Because the course is interdisciplinary, students can provide perspectives from different backgrounds.” Ultimately, students write a recommendation for policymakers.
Iselhorst developed the course because she felt she was learning too little about technology in her political science studies, even though politics ultimately has to regulate technology. “Governments still have many questions concerning the latest technologies. Some autonomous systems, such as rescue drones, for example, are useful for putting out forest fires, but what if that same technology is used to shoot people from the air with drones? What are the rules, who is allowed to own these technologies, and where are the limits? Within the European Union, for example, you have the GDPR data privacy law, but different regulations apply in the United States. For some things, there doesn’t seem to be any legislation at all yet, like with the targeted advertising of political parties on social media. Countries often do not yet know how they should or want to regulate that.”
The jury praised Iselhorst’s course in part for its ability to actively involve tech companies in education. It was also notable that four of the five course ideas had an interface with the technological revolution, IIS employee and jury member Linda de Greef pointed out afterward. According to her, jurors had expected the theme to generate many ideas around sustainability, but “the digital world probably resonates well with this generation of students.”
Iselhorst will work with educational developers at IIS next year on her elective course so that it can be taught in the first semester next academic year. Last year, political science also provided winners of the Challenge: Wytza Walstra and Sascha Brons received the prize for their course on food forestry.
