What does digital citizenship demand of education today?

Five years of Global Citizenship education in Global Studies

Five years is long enough for a bachelor's programme to become more than an idea, and short enough for it to still be questioning itself in real time. A panel discussion brought together key people who have shaped and supported global citizenship education within the interdisciplinary bachelor's programme of Global Studies.

What emerged was an honest, layered reflection on lessons learned after five years of running a programme with a strong orientation towards global citizenship education. 

As panelist Prof. Mazzucato put it, “I think that one thing that the global citizenship approach in Global Studies has, that I think is particular, is how integrated global citizenship is into the whole programme”. This integration matters, because it makes GCED less of a standalone topic and more of a continuous lens, something students return to across modules, field experiences, and classroom debates, not only when the curriculum explicitly names it.

Yet the panel was equally clear that integration does not erase complexity. In fact, it often brings it closer. Much of the discussion revolved around the difficult, sometimes uncomfortable realities of practicing GCED in a curriculum that is international by design but inevitably shaped by unequal worlds. 

Global citizenship education, the panel reminded the audience, is not a finished product. It is a living practice, full of dilemmas, contradictions, and ongoing revision. But it is precisely in that openness, in the willingness to keep asking better questions, that the programme’s strength becomes visible. 

Five years in, Global Studies is not claiming to have perfected global citizenship. It is doing something more courageous: treating it as a discipline of learning, unlearning, and becoming.

Problem-Based Learning as a navigation tool through the noise of the AI era in Higher Education

From curriculum to classroom methods, Elissaveta Radulova asked how institutions might manage the "noise" of the GenAI era while maintaining their educational foundation. Radulova is an Associate Professor in the Political Science Department at Maastricht University. 

Her workshop, Problem-Based Learning as a navigation tool through the AI era, looked at the possibilities and risks of Generative AI, such as efficiency and personalisation, as well as cognitive outsourcing, isolation, and diminished integrity. 

Using Biesta’s model of education, the session argued that the university’s role cannot shrink to skill-training alone: it must also cultivate ethical awareness, critical thinking, and subjectivity. The discussion traced both the promises and the pressure points of generative AI. As Radulova reminded the room, AI is not neutral infrastructure, it runs on data, and “data…is the currency”.

Crucially, the session extended beyond academic integrity into citizenship. Participants explored how navigating AI demands more than technical competence, it requires ethical awareness and digital citizenship, a commitment to the common good beyond individual convenience. The university’s role, then, is not only to qualify students with skills, but to support what Biesta calls subjectification: helping students become thoughtful subjects in the world, not merely efficient users of tools. 

As Biesta reminded the room, “The beauty of the word subject is that it also has the echo of subjectification." Education, the workshop suggested, must prepare students for encounters that challenge them, moments where answers are not automated, and responsibility cannot be outsourced.

Critically exploring GenAI-tools for literature discovery

Anna-Lena Hoh, an Information Specialist for Digital Literacy at the Maastricht University Library, delivered the workshop exploring the fast-growing world of GenAI tools for literature discovery, not writing, but finding research. 

The session, which focused on platforms such as Perplexity, Elicit, and Consensus, raised an important concern: these tools may speed up searches while providing minimal transparency into what they scan, how they rank sources, and what is eliminated. 

Participants examined the transition from traditional keyword-and-database methodologies to AI-driven, question-led discovery, highlighting the possibility that what we gain in ease may be sacrificed in rigor.

In a hands-on format, the group developed evaluation criteria rooted in scientific integrity: accuracy, transparency, reproducibility, and verification. Practical habits, like checking whether cited papers actually exist and returning to original sources, were emphasised, especially because, as one participant noted, “AI always tries to sound very convincing…very pleasing”, even when it is wrong. 

The takeaway was clear: GenAI can support early exploration, but trustworthy research still depends on critical judgment and on learning to question the search itself, not just accept the answer.

“Digital sweatshops”: Does AI lead to neo-colonialism?

Sharon Anyango, a former tutor at the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences and currently a PhD researcher, drew participants into a stark reckoning with the unseen human costs behind the glossy promise of artificial intelligence. 

At the centre was a case study from Nairobi, Kenya, where data labourers, often highly educated but shut out of stable work, are paid as little as $2 an hour to train AI systems by sorting and filtering content, including material that is graphic and violent. 

A short video reportage set the tone, making the room sit with an uncomfortable truth: what looks like frictionless technology is often powered by human endurance, outsourced to where it is cheapest and easiest to ignore.

From there, the conversation sharpened into a question that stayed in the air: is this colonialism with a new vocabulary? Through ideas like data colonialism and electronic colonialism, participants traced how digital labour and data extraction can reproduce old hierarchies, only now the raw materials are attention, trauma, and time. 

The session reframed AI as more than a tool, it is a global economy of winners and workers, and the challenge ahead is to build futures where innovation does not depend on invisibility where progress is not purchased with someone else’s silence.

Meeting online threats: supporting critical engagement and well-being online

Whereas Radulova concentrated on instructional architecture, Nino Gugushvili, an assistant professor at Maastricht University in the Work and Social Psychology department of the Faculty of Psychology and Neuroscience, examined the psychological experience of the digital environment itself.

 The session looked at how disinformation and algorithmic curation influence not only beliefs, but also emotions, how people feel online, who they trust, and how they cope. The discussion emphasised a core tension: the most pleasant digital experiences are not always the healthiest or most independent. Examples included TikTok's personalisation tools and digital literacy initiatives such as lateral reading.

As the discussion opened up, attention shifted toward education and what universities can do to support students navigating these threats. Several participants emphasised the importance of creating a classroom atmosphere where students can talk about online behaviour without shame or judgment, “breaking the wall” of hierarchy and making space for honest reflection.

Questions of trust surfaced repeatedly: Do students misuse tools, or are they simply trying to learn more efficiently? Can students trust AI outputs, and do staff feel confident enough to guide them? The conversation pointed to a growing need for shared literacy across generations, disciplines, and roles, alongside new approaches to assessment, transparency, and responsible tool use.

Discover your digital capabilities

Katja Shcherbakova, Project Leader Digital Literacy and AI for educators at Maastricht University Library, conducted a session that began from a simple truth that now shapes almost every classroom: whether they asked for it or not, educators are already working inside an AI-saturated university. Teaching, assessment, collaboration, communication, everything is mediated by digital platforms, and the expectations placed on staff are accelerating faster than the support available.

Shcherbakova introduced an evidence-based self-assessment tool designed to meet that gap with something rare in the AI debate: clarity. Rather than ranking or monitoring individuals, the tool offers educators a structured way to reflect on where they stand across areas like AI in teaching, media and information literacy, and digital wellbeing, while generating anonymised, aggregated insights that can actually shape institutional action. 

In other words, the session reframed “digital literacy” as more than a buzzword: it became a shared language, a map of real needs, and a starting point for building support that matches the reality educators are already living.

Honing global citizenship competences during exchange abroad

Ainsley Loudoun, a doctoral researcher at the School of Business and Economics (SBE), presented a large-scale Canvas module designed to accompany bachelor's students at SBE, during their exchange abroad. As she explained, “this module really aims to complement their broad experiences with structured reflection and guidance”. 

Built on Maastricht University’s Global Citizenship Education framework, the module aims to complement the intensity of international experience with something students often miss while travelling: structured reflection, guidance, and a language for what they are learning as it happens.

The session highlighted both the promise and pressure of designing global citizenship learning at scale in a fully online, fully asynchronous module serving approximately 850 students per year across time zones. Participants explored how to support honest reflection in an AI era, how to teach "without contact", and how to balance personal growth with the collective and democratic dimensions of global citizenship, without turning the learning process into a polished performance.

Digital rights and responsibilities

Sophia Longwe, a Global Studies alumna, currently works as a Project Manager for Policy at Wikimedia Germany. Her session ‘Digital Rights and Responsibilities’ cut through the jargon of "digital citizenship" and grounded the notion in something more tangible: rights, power, and who gets to construct the internet in the first place.

Starting with Wikimedia's non-profit, volunteer-driven, multilingual approach, which is based on free access to knowledge rather than advertising or monitoring, the session used Wikipedia as proof that digital spaces may still be constructed for the common good. It then expanded into the political realities of our online lives, including EU frameworks such as the Digital Services Act and rising forces that threaten to convert regulation into deregulation.

What made the session resonate was its insistence that the digital world has a history and that its inequalities are not accidental. Through ideas like data colonialism and digital injustice, participants were pushed to ask uncomfortable but necessary questions about infrastructure, ownership, and whose voices remain protected or exposed online.

The discussion closed not with resignation, but with a practical call to engage: participate, stay informed, support non-commercial platforms, and defend the principle that public resources, especially knowledge should remain open, shared, and accountable to society.