Do you know what sources your students are using to get their information? Do you feel you're on the same page with students about factual information, whether for current world issues or simply the information shared in class? Can you determine what is real or what is fake? Will your students be able to? This week's webinar focused on building digital media skills with your students. Presented by Kristy Roschke, Ph.D, Managing Director of the news Co/Lab at the Cronkite School, and hosted by Joshua Caulkins, Assistant Director of Undergraduate Programs in the School of Life Sciences, this presentation is timely to our current situation, with misinformation being shared every second.
Instructors often worry about discussing news due to biases, their own or their students', and offending or not including all. Roschke's solution is to ask students where they go for news, to get a sense of where they are coming from and what they are seeing that we may not see. We are all getting information from different places. We are having conversations about topics without having a shared experience of the source. She tells her class to bring in examples on a controversial or current topic. Together they look at the examples, and she lets students drive the conversation.
Roschke also recommends asking your students (and yourself!) to take the time to curate a trustworthy feed of information from these platforms that are consumed on a regular basis.
Everyone has their own credibility scale, and some of the choices are based on personal experience, history and context. You can help students build better credibility scales by recommending sources that have proven to be fair and accurate. The scale doesn’t start at zero, and that’s because there are some news outlets, platforms and sources that deserve even less than no trust.
Another way to consider, is to create case studies using current information, and connecting it with credible sources from your subject area. This will give students practice for going to these trusted sources.
Be sure to share with your students where you go for information in your subject area that is credible. Model for your students why these are credible sources by asking questions such as: who's behind this information, what's the evidence, and who is paying for this information to be shared? Similar to the publishing process that journalists and scholarly journals go through, you can sift through the information you consume to find what is credible.
Post Author
Sarah Prosory is an Instructional Designer within the School of Life Sciences at Arizona State University. She has worked in higher education for 10 years, supporting faculty in law, engineering, and biological sciences. Her experience includes assisting faculty with in-person, blended, and hybrid courses, as well as making the leap to fully online courses. She provides training to faculty and teaching assistants on how to use educational technologies, and shares best practices in course design to improve the student experience.
Digital Media Landscape & Media Literacy
At the start of her presentation, Roschke explained that with an increase in consumers of news and the opportunity to create media, we are headed further down the path for misinformation. Yet, when everything looks the same we relax into not being as skeptical as we should be. Our trust is lowered. And students especially have a hard time discerning the credibility of sources, due to their lack of knowledge and less experience with finding out their source was incorrect. Thus, media literacy, which is the ability to access, analyze, evaluate, create and act on media messages in all forms, is an important skill to develop in students.
What are your go-to sources of news?
In her course, Roschke asks her students to track their media consumption, asking "Where do you go for news?" The results include, YouTube, Reddit, Spotify (for podcasts), local news, Apple News curated feed, CNN, NY Times, and Buzzfeed. It is important for instructors to know where students are getting information from, because students will bring this information into the classroom and peer discussions. A study from Project Information Literacy in 2018 found that 93% of college students got their news from peers.Roschke also recommends asking your students (and yourself!) to take the time to curate a trustworthy feed of information from these platforms that are consumed on a regular basis.
Develop a credibility scale
How do you use news in your classes?
One way to incorporate news in the classroom, is to have a conversation with your students, ask them to name the sources they use, and together determine pros/cons for credible sources. Then require students to use credible sources in their assignments.Another way to consider, is to create case studies using current information, and connecting it with credible sources from your subject area. This will give students practice for going to these trusted sources.
What are the trusted institutions and sources in your field?
Implement SIFT in Your Course
Developed by Mike Caulfield, this process encourages everyone consuming information online to open a new tab and find out what other people are saying about a topic or source of information. All of this can be done within a minute.
- Stop, don't react, don't contribute to the information pollution
- Investigate the source
- Find better coverage
- Trace claims, quotes, and media to the original context: are other media sources saying the same?
Why not rely only on the CRAAP test? Research from Stanford has shown that it is better to look at what others are saying, because the source in question will not tell you if it is credible; they think they are credible.
Suggested Fact-Checking Sites
Resources
- Presentation slides
- Video recording
- In November 2019, Roschke joined us for a similar presentation and wrote a blog post about digital media literacy.
----------------------------------------------------
Sarah Prosory is an Instructional Designer within the School of Life Sciences at Arizona State University. She has worked in higher education for 10 years, supporting faculty in law, engineering, and biological sciences. Her experience includes assisting faculty with in-person, blended, and hybrid courses, as well as making the leap to fully online courses. She provides training to faculty and teaching assistants on how to use educational technologies, and shares best practices in course design to improve the student experience.
Comments
Post a Comment