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Department of Social Sciences

Get Online Week

"Get Online-Week" is an annual teaching-learning project at the Faculty of Rehabilitation Sciences under the direction of Dr. Bastian Pelka. Students in the Bachelor of Rehabilitation Education design courses on digital topics for target groups at risk of digital exclusion and examine them scientifically.

The background is the so-called "digital exclusion" ("digital divide"): Our society today is increasingly determined by digitalization. Some population groups benefit from this more than others. In some cases, some people are completely left behind. In order to compensate for such consequences of digitization, there are projects all over Europe to reach and include so-called "offliners. Get Online Week, or All Digital Week, is a Europe-wide campaign that aims to do just that. In Germany, the week is organized annually under the banner of the Digital Opportunities Foundation. Since 2015, it has been organized in Dortmund by students at TU Dortmund University under the leadership of Dr. Bastian Pelka. Here, too, efforts have since been made to promote the digital inclusion of people who have not yet been able to take advantage of the benefits and opportunities offered by a digital information society. During Get Online Week, free courses on digital topics are offered every year in the last week of March at interested institutions. The best thing is that the participating institutions have a say in the content and target groups of the courses!

With each additional year that Get Online Week is held, the campaign's reach in Germany is to be increased. Public relations work is thus an important component of the teaching-learning project. In addition to the central goals - competence transfer and sustainability - the project wants to contribute to nationwide digital inclusion and fight against existing injustices in the information society. This requires further educational work on the digital divide in our society. So far, GOW Dortmund has been able to reach around 400 people a year from its Dortmund location.