This October, American Councils Media Literacy Programs gathered 51 teachers from across Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH) for Training of Trainers (ToT) Workshops. Workshops were held across five different cities in BiH: Sarajevo, Zenica, Mostar, Tuzla, and Banja Luka, and trained middle and high school teachers in essential media literacy skills. Teachers were equipped with unique media literacy content in Bosnian and English to teach to their own students, including lesson material on the history of media, how to fact-check information using a method developed by the Media Literacy Programs team, and the basics of artificial intelligence tools.
The one-day workshops covered techniques for teaching media literacy by analyzing media activities, explored the ethics of using artificial intelligence tools for educational purposes, and developed creative approaches to incorporate media-focused assignments or concepts into their current teaching curriculum. In addition, participants learned media-based ice breakers and facilitation techniques to better engage students in their classrooms.
After the workshops, each teacher received materials to implement follow-up trainings on media literacy with their students. Participants will report pre-training and post-training surveys of their lessons to track the overall impact of this workshop on their students.
Following the workshops, 97% of surveyed participants reported increased confidence in sharing media literacy skills, teaching critical thinking and responsible media usage to students, and demonstrating essential media literacy skills like finding original sources or fact-checking claims.
In addition, there was an 18.75% increase in the ability of participants to identify an original source of information, and participants’ ability to fact-check a claim increased from 31% in the pre-survey to 64% in the post-survey, showing a 108.33% increase.
One participant from Sarajevo praised the workshops, stating, “The workshop was very useful for me, our educator Hannah was great at explaining things in a simple way, making sure all the [participants] feel great and understand everything.”
Overall, the ToT Workshops in Bosnia and Herzegovina provided a unique and educational opportunity for participants to learn essential media literacy skills, prepare to teach them to others, and experiment with adding media or media literacy into their current curriculums.
About Media Literacy Programs
American Councils for International Education collaborates with the U.S. Department of State (DoS), Public Affairs Sections of U.S. embassies (PAS), foreign ministries, and leading experts to support worldwide media literacy efforts through the Media Literacy Program (MLP). With extensive experience in facilitating trainings, workshops, curricula development, and creative follow-on programming for both virtual and in-person programs, American Councils Media Literacy Program teaches media and digital literacy skills to audiences of all ages. To date, over ten thousand students and educators in 38 countries have benefitted from their programming.