Digital Empathy – Fostering Human Connections Online

• June 19, 2025
• Andrew

Lesson Plan developed during the DigCompHub project’s 4th Mentoring cycle.

Empathy in digital environments
by Martina Conti, teacher of Italian as a foreign language for foreign learners at CPIA 3 Rome inspired by DigCompHub MLR4 Digital Empathy – Fostering Human Connections Online

Target audience: adult learners with basic digital skills and A2 (CEFR) level language skills or higher.

Objectives:
1. Develop students’ linguistic-communicative skills to be able to articulate a request, either between people or to a machine, which can be answered positively or negatively.
2. Broaden intercultural skills by making students reflect on their awareness of their own culture and that of other students, as well as that of the host country.

Duration: approximately 120 minutes.

Required materials:
A. Cards with gestures typical of Italian culture and text written underneath, to be cut out or to be shown after the image of the gesture, if it is shown in Powerpoint. The pictures should show physical contact as a form of emotional support (e.g. holding hands, hugging, caressing).
B. Plasticised faces/emoticons with magnet for sticking them on the board. At the end of the lesson, write sentences with the emotion (e.g. I am angry/ I am sad/ I am disappointed/ I am amazed).
C. Whiteboard with Internet connection for the activities proposed later (connect to Amazon, a chatbot, etc.) and to show the MLR4’s video translated into Italian by Heygen’s lipsinc AI application (or other). Click here for the document.