An Assessment Plan How-to
Credo's IL Strategy Handbook is now ready. It looks at various aspects of creating and expanding an IL probram, including how to ensure continuous improvement through assessment. In addition to the material on assessment provided in the Handbook, take a look at Megan Oakleaf's "Writing Information Literacy Assessment Plans: A Guide to Best Practice."
A Look at How Students Learn about Library Events and Services
The latest issue of Marketing Libraries Journal includes Jylisa Doney and Jessica Martinez's "Leveraging Failure to Inform Practice: How do Students Learn about Library Events and Services?" The journal has also issued a call for submissions, giving you a chance to trumpet your own library marketing efforts.
A Disinformation Blast from the Past
You know disinformation is nothing new. This interesting case from the Smithsonian could help illustrate that point to students.
Can National Policy Affect the Spread of Misinformation?
"Battling Information Illiteracy," a new article in American Libraries by Paul T. Jaeger and Natalie Greene Taylor, looks at the misinformation-related implications of this country's lack of a formal, overarching information policy. It also takes a useful look at librarians' possible role in such a policy.
Faculty Engagement
IL Elevator Pitches to Engage Faculty
Promotion of your IL instructional work to faculty can take many forms, from formal presentations at committee meetings right down to chats in the hallway. Don’t discount the chat approach as ineffective, as it can have many benefits. Not least is that faculty who may find the library intimidating (there are some!) might be more open to hearing what you can do for them in a casual chat than in a committee meeting.
While a friendly conversation might feel unacademic, you can still pack in plenty of information by having a prepared elevator speech ready to go—this means a talk that offers a quick pitch or a few key facts about something important to your role. An IL-related elevator pitch for faculty could include details of what classes you’re offering lately, statistics on how IL instruction can benefit students, and facts from professional development literature. For example, the current issue of College and Research Libraries includes “The Academic Library’s Contribution to Student Success: Library Instruction and GPA,” an account of a study that found a small but statistically significant increase in GPA among students who had taken library instruction.
The business world offers tips on how to create elevator pitches that flow smoothly and include lots of pertinent facts in a short time. In an article in Forbes, Judy Coughlin, CMO and co-owner of Chic CEO, made the recommendations to the left below. Look to the right for recommendations on how you can translate them to your library!
| Elevator Pitch Recommendations | How You Can Implement Them |
| It’s fine for your speech to sound a little like a sales pitch as long as it includes relevant information | “Students who took one or more of our library’s instruction classes showed an increase of half a GPA point last year. I’m free this Friday morning if you’d like to come by and discuss how I could help your class.” |
| Check for jargon and stop words—terms that the person you’re speaking to might not be familiar with and that could make them pause. | Instead of saying, “Library instruction can help your students to detect disinformation online,” Try: “Library instruction can help your students not to be taken in by disinformation—what they might call ‘fake news’” |
| Use a question in your pitch | “I heard you’re trying an annotated bibliography assignment this semester. How’s it going?” |
For more on how to get your short, punchy speech down pat, see this article from The Muse. While it’s not for librarians per se, it has much to offer, from how to use index cards to prepare your points to how to practice your speech—alone, in an elevator. Also, check out this recent Learning Community webinar on “How to Implement the Framework for Information Literacy with Classroom Faculty,” in which Professor Janice Baskin discussed ways to get faculty on board with library work.
Critical Information Literacy in the Classroom
The latest issue of College and Research Libraries is out, and it includes an in-depth look at the issues to be considered when approaching critical information literacy, as well as relevant approaches that are options for the IL classroom. See Amanda L. Folk’s “Reframing Information Literacy as Academic Cultural Capital: A Critical and Equity-Based Foundation for Practice, Assessment, and Scholarship.”
ACRL Releases Environmental Scan
Every other year, ACRL releases a report detailing activity in the nation's academic libraries. This year's document was just released; the section on information literacy is a worthwhile read in its own right, but also offers a solid bibliography of recent articles on use of ACRL Framework for Information Literacy for Higher Education. See ACRL Insider for details.
Running a Paperless Scavenger Hunt
Starting in 2016, Pace University took its Freshman-orientation scavenger hunt online, saving thousands of pages of wasted paper and gaining positive reviews from students. A new College and Research Libraries News article describes how they made the transformation.
Five Things You Should Read about Universal Design
The ACRL Instruction Section's Research and Scholarship Committee has
published its annual list of "Five Things You Should Read About," this time offering resources about universal design.
Threats to Reader Privacy and How Libraries Can Combat Them
Clifford A. Lynch, Executive Director of the Coalition for Networked Information (CNI) and an adjunct professor at Berkeley’s School of Information, has released “Reader Privacy: The New Shape of the Threat,” an essay on “the current range of threats to reader privacy [which] makes some high-level suggestions that research library leadership might consider to address them.” Lynch recommends his paper “The Rise of Reading Analytics and the Emerging Calculus of Reader Privacy in the Digital World” for those seeking a deeper look at the topic.
The Role of Librarians in Creating ICT Literacy
As Lesley Farmer notes in this Educause article, librarians may shy away from offering information and communication technology literacy instruction, but it is something that is increasingly requested.
Creating a Librarian-Faculty Community of Practice around the ACRL Framework
An article in the May 2019 issue of College and Research Libraries News describes a program at the University of North Carolina (UNCW) that "trains faculty and instructors from across the university in the knowledge practices, dispositions, and threshold concepts embedded in the Framework. [...] The program encourages librarians and teaching faculty to view information literacy as a shared responsibility, one that doesn’t end at the library door but is integrated throughout the academic experience.
Using Wikipedia Editing as a Final Project
In "Reframing from the Ground Up," an article in the April, 2019 issue of College and Research Libraries News, Shonn M. Haren, library instruction coordinator at California State Polytechnic University in Pomona, California, describes how her library overhauled its IL program, creating modules that each addressed one of the frames from ACRL's Framework for Infomation Literacy for Higher Education. The new course ended by asking students to edit Wikipedia articles, an activity that made some previously so-so students into "arch-perfectionists."
New Pre-print Examines ACRL Framework Adoption in Community College Libraries
Susan T. Wengler of CUNY’s Queensborough Community College and Christine Wolff-Eisenberg of Ithaka S+R have just released a preprint of “Community College Librarians and the ACRL Framework" Findings from a National Study,” their article that has been accepted for upcoming publication in College and Research Libraries. Describing the results of a national survey that gained 1,201 community college librarian respondents, the authors note that “the often remedial reading, writing, and IL skills of the vulnerable community college student population may challenge community college librarians when integrating the more advanced and theoretical Framework into their instructional work.”
The paper’s literature review offers an interesting overview of works that critique how the Framework was developed and what it offers in relation to community college libraries, noting that ACRL didn’t solicit community college involvement in the development process and the resulting document is “elitist.” Findings include an openness on the part of respondents to future adoption of the framework (adoption is currently low); they also expressed an interest in a version of the document that is more geared toward their students’ needs.
Teaching Students about Privacy? Try this Activity
In a Twitter thread this week, Kate Klonick, an Assistant Professor at St. John's University of Law, described an interesting (and sobering) privacy-related project that she assigned students to complete over winter break. "When you're in a public place, using only Google see if you can de-anonymize someone based on things they say loudly enough for lots of others to hear and/or things that are displayed on their clothing or bags," Klonick instructed the students. Read about the results here.
How Can IL Videos Fit into Flipped Learning? George Washington University Librarians Explain All
Users of Credo's Instruct and View products will be interested in a just-released article in College and Research Libraries News. In Think Before You Flip, librarians Dorrine Banks and Tolonda Henderson discuss how L.D. Fink's Taxonomy of Significant Learning can guide IL work, including instruction that uses information literacy videos.
Just Released in College and Research Libraries: A New Use for Curriculum Mapping
A study by Sarah LeMire and Stephanie J. Graves that was just published in College and Research Libraries News looks at whether “ curriculum mapping techniques commonly used in library instruction could be applied to outreach to explore the synergies and differences between programs.” The Texas A&M University authors found that “Curriculum mapping proved a useful method for creating strategic and intentional instruction and outreach programs that complement rather than compete with each other.” Read more here.
Altmetrics and Information Literacy
The latest edition of the ACRL Instruction Section's Tips and Trends, Kelly Marie Blanchat explains how altmetrics can be used in information literacy instruction and offers a related lesson plan.
On Artificial Intelligence and Augmented Reality
Artificial intelligence and augmented reality are both emerging technologies that pop up in stories about how we’ll live in the future; they also both pose practical and ethical dilemmas for libraries. For more on how AI could affect education and related fields, such as ours, see the White House’s recent release on its new AI initiative. While the release mentions education, details are scant, but a look back at the 2016 White House report “Preparing for the Future of AI” will be useful.
For more on augmented reality, meanwhile, ACRL is offering a free webinar on the topic on April 4 at 11 AM Central Time. During ACRL2019 ULSTULC Online Forum: Introduction to Augmented Reality for and by Librarians, explains ACRL, “Engineering and Data Services Librarian Samuel Dyal will be giving a foundational presentation on what augmented reality is, how people are using it and plan to use it. Research & Instruction Librarian Dina Meky will compare 4-5 related applications. Library Director Bill McNelis and Student Success Librarian Samantha Kannegiser will present the specific orientation that was created with augmented reality, with an emphasis on HP Reveal.”
Put Your Makerspace to Work for IL!
Does your library have a makerspace or are you thinking of adding one? A benefit you might not have thought of is that the facility can be used to advance information literacy. Leah Mann, Library Media Services Instructional Specialist at Lewisville Independent School District, Lewsville, Texas, offers a how-to in the latest issue of Reference and User Services Quarterly.
February 2019 Issue of College and Research Libraries News Released
The latest issue of C&RL News includes "Information Creation as a Process: With an Emphasis on Creation," by Amanda Scully, and a look at research libraries in North Korea.
Make Learning...Harder?
A new Wired article describes an innovative way of getting students to pay attention and remember more: making it slightly harder for them to read. The article discusses an innovative new font called Sans Forgetica, created at Australia’s RMIT Univeriity. According to the psychological theory of “desirable difficulty,” says the article, “we learn better when we actively overcome an obstruction.” Accordingly, Sans Forgetica includes gaps that make readers have to concentrate and is slanted slightly to the left. The quirky font can be used through a free Chrome extension that allows users to make any online text just 
C&RL Releases Study for Libraries that Serve Transfer Students
The January 2019 issue of College and Research Libraries is out, and it includes an in-depth study of librarians' work with transfer students at two- and four-year educational institutions in Colorado. The authors' conclusion states in part, "two-year librarians may not always recognize the role they can play in preparing transfer students with transferable skills and resources," meaning there is an opportunity for greater outreach.
Creating More Public Trust in Scientists
Scientists have long relied on their competency for credibility, but in our current moment that is not enough, says Louise Lief, founder of the Science and the Media Project, in this article from The Medium. It discusses several remedies that may be of interest to those introducing communication principles to science students, including the importance of transparency, cross-disciplinary collaboration and communication, and different incentives (current ways of assessing academic work insulate it from public awareness, says Lief.
A Librarian Examines the World "Literacy"
“Literacy” is probably a term you use multiple times per day. In "Examining the World 'Literacy;" a post on the Journal of the American Association of School Librarians' blog, librarian Georgina Trebbe takes a look at the history of the term and the various kinds of literacies a library may help users to develop. Particularly interesting is the ambitious definition of information literacy Trebbe cites from a 1974 National Commission on Libraries and Information Science report, “the ability “to find what is known or knowable on any subject.”
From C&RL News: Apps for IL Instruction, Students Views of the Research Process
The latest edition of College and Research Libraries News is out, and it offers several articles of interest to IL librarians. On the tech side is “Is There an App for That?: A Review of Mobile Apps for Information Literacy Classes,“ in which Abbie Basile, engineering and physical sciences librarian at Old Dominion University and Sherry Matis, research librarian I and user experience coordinator at Virginia Wesleyan University review Padlet, Socrative, Mindomo, and Answer Garden. The authors describe each app and discuss how it can be used in instruction.
Also helpful to IL librarians is an article that looks at student views of the research process, identifying problem areas. In “Exploring Information Literacy Assessment: Content Analysis of Prefocus Essays,” Jesi Buell, instructional design and web librarian, and Lynne Kvinnesland, information literacy librarian, both at Colgate University, examine how students tackle and feel about research, as described in essays they wrote about the process. The “Lessons Learned” section, which discusses issues such as student anxiety and reluctance to ask for librarian assistance, is well paired with Lisa Janicke Hinchilffe, Allison Rand, and Jillian Collier’s “Predictable Information Literacy Misconceptions of First-Year College Students” in order to understand how students experience library use and what might need to change.
Reference Consultations and Student Success Outcomes
A new article from Reference Services Quarterly cites reference interactions as drivers of information literacy skills and student confidence. Robin E. Miller, Associate Professor and Assessment and Instruction Librarian at the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire, discusses a student-data collection program at the university that helped show that students who participated in reference interactions had higher GPAs than others. Miller also addresses the questions of how, and even whether, student reference data should be collected.
Academic Library Assessment: Barriers and Enablers for Global Development and Implementation
In the November 2018 issue of College and Research Libraries News, Martha Kyrillidou, research associate at the School of Information Sciences at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, discusses global benchmarking for academic library assessment as one factor that could help fight library inequality across the world.
Resources
Resources for Choose Privacy Week, May 1-7, 2019
Happy Choose Privacy Week! ALA offers several resources that can help educate patrons about their privacy rights at https://chooseprivacyeveryday.org. "Privacy in a Box," for example, offers information and resources for conducting privacy-related programs at various kinds of libraries, while the organization also offers a recording of a recent webinar on conducting a privacy audit.
For a deeper dive, try this dissertation that offers multiple case studies of the privacy protections students can expect regarding their cell phones. It could spark a lively classroom discussion, as related practices at some educational institutions can be both surprising and alarming. (See chapter 6 to quickly access case studies.)
A Primer on Graduate Seminar Papers
If you teach graduate students who are expected to write seminar papers, try this primer by Jessie Reeder, Assistant Professor, 19th Century British Literature, at Binghamton University. Reeder tweeted about the primer this week; in response to one of the replies, she notes that she will create an online, Creative Commons-licensed form of the document, but for now the attachment should still spark ideas for graduate students who are tasked with this kind of assignment.
Join a Twitter Chat on #InclusiveInfoLit
On Friday, April 19th at noon central time, CARLI (Consortium of Academic and Research Libraries Illinois) will host a Twitter chat about cultivating learning environments for students with diverse identities. The hashtag is #InclusiveInfoLit.
See https://bit.ly/2UmPyDD for instructions on participating in a Twitter chat and for questions that will be posed during the chat, including:
- What approaches or strategies have you used in the past to use to create a more inclusive InfoLit classroom?
- How do you safeguard against your own hidden/unconscious bias and help students become aware of their own potential bias?
- Do you have any favorite resources (books, articles, blogs, etc.) that inform your approach to inclusive pedagogy?
The ACRL Frame "Information has Value": On Screens Near You!
If you are using the ACRL Framework for Information Literacy for Higher Education in your work, you’re challenged with teachings students the ins and outs of how the articles, books, and websites they use in their research come to be. Particularly when considering the frame “Information has value,” students must learn about the business of scholarship—who produces it, what they produce, who controls what makes it to library shelves, and where the money goes.
A new, open-access documentary can inform your work in this area; it’s also engaging enough to assign to students, especially those who are advanced enough in their information literacy knowledge to question the system. The documentary, Paywall: The Business of Scholarship, produced by Jason Schmitt, is timely, given that it delves into the controversial profits earned by scholarship giant Elsevier, a company currently in the news as having been dropped by the University of California as a vendor. Coverage of Elsevier serves as a jumping-off point for Schmitt to urge the wider adoption of open access works, a world that students definitely need to know about, especially those considering careers in the sciences.
Free Course on Thriving Among Disinformation
Hosted by the University at Buffalo and featuring instructors from several New York higher education institutions, a new MOOC, Empowering Yourself in a Post-Truth World, will start on March 18. The university say says that the free course “addresses a number of issues present in today’s information and news environment.”
Free Tools for Creating Timelines
From time to time we like to highlight free resources that you can introduce to students during IL sessions. This new post at Richard Byrne's Free Technology for Teachers blog introduces tools for creating timelines, even timelines that include embedded video.
Research Involving Community College Students Reveals Good News
A new study from the Jack Kent Cooke Foundation, "Persistence: The Success of Students Who Transfer from Community Colleges to Selective Four-Year Institutions," includes positive findings about this group of students in comparison to their four-year-college classmates who didn't transfer from community college.
Advanced English Writing: An Infographic
This infographic from Grammar Check offers succinct tips for students who are looking to improve their writing. The tips include easy-to-implement ideas such as changing sentence length and avoiding redundancy and dangling modifiers.
OER Guidelines and Tutorials: How to Create Open Educational Resources
Infodocket recommends a resource by Leibniz Information Centre for Economics that describes how to create OER resources and get faculty using them.
Register for Library 2.0's Instructional Design Conference
If instructional design has you puzzled, or you want to hear the latest best practices in the field, register for Library 2.019: Shaping the Future of Libraries with Instructional Design. Full details have yet to be announced for the free, online event that is organized by Library2.0, but registration is already open, as is the conference's call for proposals.
How Do Students Use the Library? PIL Explains All
In this infographic, Project Information Literacy (PIL), " a nonprofit research institute that conducts ongoing, national studies on what it is like being a student in the digital age" and home to a range of resources that can help in your work, offers a succinct look at how students use the library and perform research. In a sobering statistic, the infographic notes that 80% of students don't ask a librarian for help; also of concern is that students find research more difficult than ever. On the positive side, PIL has found that students use the library as a place of refuge.
Book Reviews
Booklist Review of Information Literacy and Libraries in the Age of Fake News
This review, by Credo’s Henrietta Verma, appeared in the February 7, 2019 edition of Booklist Online.
Information Literacy and Libraries in the Age of Fake News. Agosto, Denise E. (editor). Oct. 2018. 184p. ABC-CLIO, $65 (9781440864186); e-book (9781440864193). 028.7.
Coverage of how to dispel disinformation is becoming common in our professional literature, but this collection stands out for several reasons: it takes a more optimistic stance than many resources on the topic by including many practical recommendations and some encouraging case studies, and it covers unique tactics for public, school, and academic libraries. The introduction to the book and some of the essays mention why disinformation is problematic and ways in which it manifests. Editor Agosto (Teens, Libraries, and Social Networking, 2011) cites helpful statistics—on the news-consumption habits of the American public, for example—that provide useful fodder for presentations on “fake news,” even if the data and the issues they illustrate are not news to librarians. The optimism manifests in the book’s useful focus on easy-to-implement steps that will aid patrons in discerning what is truthful and what needs at least a more careful examination. Particularly helpful is the fact that the essays situate the fight against disinformation as part of libraries’ perennial goals and that the authors address the problem in relation to professional guideposts such as the ACRL Framework for Information Literacy for Higher Education and ALA’s Library Bill of Rights. Highlights include Mark Winston’s discussion of information literacy as a way to advance economic equality, Shannon M. Oltmann’s examination of intellectual freedom in the age of disinformation, and Caitlin Shanley and Kristina M. De Voe’s discussion of data literacy as a vital skill. A worthwhile purchase.
Booklist Review of Merrilee Proffitt’s “Leveraging Wikipedia: Connecting Communities of Knowledge”
This review, by Credo’s Henrietta Verma, appeared in the October 4, 2018 edition of Booklist Online. The collection of essays by librarians and educators describes innovative classes and projects that use Wikipedia to advance information literacy.
Leveraging Wikipedia: Connecting Communities of Knowledge. Proffitt, Merrilee (editor). Feb. 2018. 263p. ALA Editions, paper, $68 (978083891632); e-book 97780838917329). 030. Review first published October 4, 2018 (Booklist Online).
It is time librarians moved beyond decrying Wikipedia as something to warn against, say the authors of this useful theory and practice combination. The site is better viewed, they explain, as an information literacy tool, a way to expand awareness of the social construction of information, a means for libraries to collaborate with cultural institutions, and more. One of the most useful entries comes last; it is by Proffitt, the collection’s editor, a senior program officer at OCLC Research, and she discusses her path from a fledgling, mistake-making Wikipedia contributor to an experienced Wikipedian, along the way experiencing the possibilities and tensions inherent in the Wikipedia-library relationship. The preceding 14 entries build toward Proffitt’s story by offering compelling views on the various ways in which information workers have embraced, improved, and drawn from Wikipedia. In “Connecting Citizens and the Military,” for example, chief librarian Theresa A. R. Embrey discusses how staff, interns, and volunteers at Pritzker Military Museum and Library in Chicago have used information from the library’s collection to fill Wikipedia’s coverage gaps. “Minding the Gaps,” by Kelly Doyle, Wikipedian in residence for gender equity at West Virginia University Libraries, covers the reasons for and the dangers of Wikipedia’s editors being mainly white males from the Western world, and how to change that. On the more technical side are entries on the semantic web (“Wikipedia and Wikidata Help Search Engines Understand Your Organization”) and metadata (“Bringing Archival Collections to Wikipedia with the Remixing Archival Metadata Project Editor”). Many librarians will find something of interest in this wide-ranging work; the entries are also excellent springboards for library-school discussions. A worthwhile purchase.
Booklist Review of Nicole A. Cooke's Fake News and Alternative Facts: Information Literacy in a Post-Truth Era
This review, by Credo’s Henrietta Verma, appeared in the August 20, 2018 edition of Booklist Online. For more on fighting disinformation, see Verma’s review of Michelle Luhtala and Jacquelyn Whiting’s News Literacy: The Keys to Combating Fake News and the Know News report mentioned below.
Cooke, Nicole A. (author). June 2018. 48p. ALA Editions, paper, $35 (9780838916360); e-book (9780838917503). 306.4. REVIEW. First published August 20, 2018 (Booklist Online).
This primer by Cooke (Information Services to Diverse Populations, 2016) prepares librarians to take advantage of what the author notes is a prime opportunity. The ubiquity of fabricated news and the public’s new awareness of it can be used, she notes, to promote the importance of media literacy and librarians’ related expertise. The report provides clear overviews of related topics such as the public overconfidence in internet use, emotional aspects of news consumption, and critical evaluation of information with regard to the producer’s power; it also offers a clear lesson plan for a media-literacy class and links to further such resources. Cooke helpfully emphasizes the uncertainty of what anyone knows about how disinformation works and discusses not only deceptive acts but also how the business practices of legitimate sources have led to our current, muddled environment. Both public and academic librarians can benefit from this work. Cooke’s lengthy bibliography will assist those who wish to delve deeper; these users will also appreciate Simmons College’s recent white paper “Know News: Understanding and Engaging with Mis- and Disinformation.”
Conference Slides
Beyond Fake News: Strategies for Evaluating Information in an Era of "Alternative Facts"
At the Virginia Library Association Conference on September 27, 2018, Nancy Speisser of South University and Henrietta Verma of Credo discussed how to teach students to read laterally and fact check in order to weed misinformation from the resources they use for research assignments. Please see the slides here; the presentation drew upon Mike Caulfield's blog post "How 'News Literacy' Gets the Web Wrong"; both that post and his online, free textbook Web Literacy for Student Fact-Checkers are well worth a look.
Slides from the Georgia International Conference on Information Literacy
The Georgia International Conference on Information Literacy, which took place in Savannah in September, included a presentation on IL assessment by Karen Doster-Greenleaf and Sarah Kirkley, both of Georgia State University. “Sharpening Your Aim: Building an Instructional Assessment Toolkit” included tips for alleviating anxiety regarding assessment and building formative and summative assessments, all using an “assessment toolbox.” See the presenters’ slides here; they have also made available their learning outcomes checklist and an overview of the learning domains that you should be aware of when you are constructing lessons and assessments.
Other presenters included Jenny Dale of the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, who discussed why authentic assessment is important in information literacy and how it is best performed, and Dr. Jim Shimkus from the University of North Georgia on using TILT (Transparency in Teaching and Learning) in IL.
Disinformation and Media Bias
MOOC from the University at Buffalo: Empowering Yourself in a Post-Truth World
The University at Buffalo recently offered a six-week online course called “Empowering Yourself in a Post-Truth World.” The class is still free online and is now self-paced. The university explains that the course will help users to “consider the importance of facts and expertise in reinventing a truthful world based on inclusive communities of trust. This course will empower you to be a reflective consumer and a creative, responsible producer of information, and to raise and share your voice in this post-truth milieu.”
Free Infographic on Information Laundering
Like money laundering, information laundering involves cleaning something nefarious up to make it look legitimate. The Alliance for Securing Democracy explains the term further on its site and offers a handy infographic for your patrons. (See the PDF-download button on the right of the Alliance's page.)
A Disinformation-busting Newsletter
The News Literacy Project's "The Sift" newsletter is well worth signing up for if you talk to students about disinformation. Each issue packs in an amazing amount of detail on recent social media and regular media stories, saying whether they're true or not and offering related classroom-discussion ideas.
How Fact-checking Went Wrong on YouTube
A Washington Post article explains that, "A new YouTube tool for battling misinformation failed in a highly public way on Monday, wrongly linking video of the flaming collapse of the spire at Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris to the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks."
Truth on the Ballot: A New Report from PEN America
Misleading and outright false information is obviously of huge concern when it comes to our elections. PEN America’s recent report Truth on the Ballot discusses the issue of disinformation as a political tactic. It is a follow up to another report that could be useful in your classes, Faking News: Fraudulent News and the Fight for Truth.
Information Literacy Can Combat Fake News, says Ohio University Study
The relevant article is paywalled, but this report discusses Ohio University professor Dr. M. Laeeq Khan’s research showing that information literacy, more than age, social class, or gender, determined which of the 386 students in his study could detect misinformation.
The Supreme Court of the United States Facebook
In order to combat problematic posts on its behemoth social network, Facebook is considering the creation of a 40-person oversight board, which CEO Mark Zuckerberg compares to the U.S. Supreme Court. In this Wired article, Issie Lapowsky considers possible pitfalls ahead for the plan.
Forbes Reviews a Game that Teaches Disinformation-Detection
In this Forbes review, Helen Lee Bouygues test-drives the game NewsFeed Defenders with her eight-year-old daughter. Produced by ICivics, a group founded by Sandra Day O’Connor and the Annenberg Public Policy Center, NewsFeed Defenders aims to help children recognize online disinformation. Bouygues finds the game better suited to young adults, however, making it a possibility for those of you teaching college students.
Vanessa Otero on Media Bias
You may remember Vanessa Otero, creator of the Media Bias Chart and owner of Ad Fontes Media, from the insightful and timely live webinar she did with us earlier this year.
In this interview with Credo, Otero discusses what bias is, whether it’s always bad, and how to make students care about finding reliable information.