Professor Pinar Akman and Dr Konstantinos Stylianou involved in creation of Massive Open Online Course on Digital Governance
The Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) has been created by members of the Jean Monnet Centre of Excellence on Digital Governance, who are international legal experts in digital governance.
Digital Governance (DIGOV) is the name of the Jean Monnet Centre of Excellence that has been awarded by the European Commission to Erasmus School of Law (Netherlands), in conjunction with the School of Law at the University of Leeds (UK) and the Law School of Bar-Ilan University (Israel). Centres of Excellence are awarded to outstanding research groups that have a visible societal impact and do cutting-edge research on an international scale.
The School of Law’s Professor Pinar Akman, Professor of Law, and Dr Konstantinos Stylianou, Associate Professor in Competition Law and Regulation, have been involved with the creation of the MOOC, collaborating with partners at Erasmus University and Bar-Ilan University.
The MOOC explores developments and emerging technologies which are used on a daily basis and the impacts of which will extend into the future. The MOOC identifies that new technologies may offer convenience to the users however “they also have disruptive effects on society and pose ... legal and political challenges. These challenges are central to this MOOC on digital governance”.
According to the Coursera course page, the aims of the MOOC are to enable students to be aware of “the impact and effect of emerging technologies on law and politics” and be able to “identify risks and challenges of digitization in relation to EU law, markets and economics”. The programme is designed to help students develop their skills to “break down a concrete case of digitalization impact into a sub problem” and “allocate problems to various fields of science or sub-fields of law”. Most importantly, the creators of the MOOC hope students are inspired by the course and enjoy taking part in the sessions.
Professor Akman and Dr Stylianou are both instructors on the course and will teach classes on competition, regulation and online platforms. Regulation and competition law enforcement in digital markets has experienced an awakening in recent years. “We hope that our module will give students with an interest in the law and governance of digital markets a good overview of the most current and pressing issues” said Dr Stylianou.
“We are thrilled to be offering this comprehensive – and to our knowledge, the first MOOC on Digital Governance – to learners all around the world at a time when digital technologies and their governance are becoming ever more important for both citizens and governments, globally” said Professor Akman.
