Practical activity

Panel discussion

Presentation & objectives

The objective of this session is to explore emerging issues related to digital technology.

The work takes the form of a flipped classroom.

Several study themes are offered to you. During the first time slot (1h15), students work in groups, explore one of the themes through various questions, research and study related documentation, and prepare their own answers in the form of a short presentation. During the second time slot (1h15), each group, in turn, presents its theme, its questions, its answers, and leads a short debate on its theme with the audience.

During this session, your teacher can give you advice to help you organize your work, or even your ideas, but is not considered an authoritative expert on the theme you are exploring (even if she or he has been thinking about it for some time). This is the principle of an inverted classroom: the students teach the teacher.

Organization of the first time slot

Individual work – Duration: 20mn

• Everyone reads (silently) the documentation provided for each theme listed below.

  Each theme gives rise to open questions. Some are suggested. You may have others in mind. The associated documentation may or may not outline certain directions or answers. Keep an open mind. Browse the documentation (titles, keywords, summary). (Please note that you do not have time to read each proposed article in detail at this stage. You will do so in the following time.)

• Everyone prepares (write) one or two questions related to each theme.

Groups creation – Duration: 5mn

• Make groups

  You need a group for each theme. So feel free to divide the number of students in the class by the number of themes to guess how many participants per group are needed. Ok, do you have it?

  A quick way to divide the class into groups is to do it geographically: the first three tables make up the first group, the next three the second, etc. (This is just a suggestion, do whatever you want, effectively.)

• Assign a theme to each group

• Collect questions from others

  Choose an ’external communications manager’ for your group. This one is invited to write his Discord contact name and the theme of your team on the whiteboard of the classroom. Everyone post the questions they prepared during the previous step to the attention of the persons designated for each theme (via Discord). (If someone doesn’t have a Discord account, writing on a piece of paper works too.)

Work in group – Duration: 50mn

• Self-organization

  Each group must: read the documentation, write a short presentation, and watch the clock. So it might be a good idea to organize your team and divide up the roles.

  However, you are free to choose the strategy you prefer to organize work in your team. Does everyone have to read all the documents or do you distribute them…? Do you write your presentation as you go or do you plan time towards the end for this, and how much time…? etc.

• Expected tasks & outcomes

  • Study the proposed documentation.

  • Do your own research to find additional documentation.

  • Try to provide your own answers to the questions proposed for your theme.

  • Select one additional question from those suggested by your colleagues (or a rearrangement of several), and address it.

  • Prepare a short presentation (In English or French). Typically:

    • Title of your theme; names of team members;
    • One or two slides for each question you answer, no more.

  • Watch the clock. No coffee break until the slides are finished!

Organization of the second time slot

• Each group presents its theme, one after the other.

• Duration:

  • 15 minutes of presentation
  • 5-6 minutes of discussion with the audience
  • 2-3 minutes of preparation to connect/disconnect your PC to the projector, changing groups, etc.

• Listen to your colleagues’ presentation. Participate.

Proposed themes

• First theme – Generative AIs

• Second theme – Social networks

• Third theme – Cybersecurity

• Fourth theme – Quantum computing

To go further

To continue this activity, do not hesitate to go to the campus library to consult other books and magazines, or to speak with the librarian who can help you in your research.

Anything you would have liked to see here? Another theme for debate? Any other questions pending for a theme? Other documents of interest on a subject?

Let us know on the Discord server! Maybe we can add it quickly. Otherwise, it will help us improve the course for next year!

To go beyond

Anything you would have liked to see here? Let us know on the Discord server! Maybe we can add it quickly. Otherwise, it will help us improve the course for next year!