Slide deck for chapter "Establishing the Fake News-Pseudoscience Connection in a Workshop for Graduate Students" 

This PowerPoint and associated learning activity accompany "Chapter 20: Mediated Lives: A Cultural Studies Perspective to Discussing “Fake-News” with First-Year College Students" in Teaching About Fake News: Lesson Plans for Diverse Disciplines and Audiences (2021).  In this lesson, students learn about mediation, fake news, and how internet content is catered to specific demographics of social media users.  In the activity to follow, students create their own clickbait headlines for multiple imagined audiences. 

For our classes on mis/disinformation, we chose to focus on having students analyze memes that present some sort of “factual” information. So, think memes with text on them that purport to give information to the reader. We do our best to choose memes that are not political in any way. We have students first look critically at the meme to suss out the elements of authority, motivation, content, potential for fact-checking, and more. What follows is a breakdown of our assignment.

A toolkit with various instructional materials to teach media and news literacy. Includes an online activity "Fairness and Blanace" where students watch a short video on journalistic standards and answer discussion questions. Then, students can take one or both interactive tutorials on "Lateral Reading" with a focus on fact-checking and/or "Evaluating Information" based on an information need. Also includes a video on the "Anatomy of a News Website" with reflective questions and in-class assignment ideas for librarians or instructors. 

A step-by-step lesson plan for an activity that addresses three frameworks and produces an asset, the infographic, the student-creators can use again, if they wish. It alerts students to authoritative data from the U.S. Census bureau. It can be useful for a one-shot session in the IL101 classroom or a library workshop introduction to visual literacy and presentation of data.

Toolkit for teaching all about peer review through a disciplinary and critical information literacy lens. Includes a video, discussion questions, three interactive tutorials for various disciplines, and assignment ideas.

Infographic on the parts of an research article in the arts and humanities. Includes article information, abstract, body of the article, and references. Created by Tessa Withorn and Dana Ospina at California State University Dominguez Hills.

Infographic describing the parts of a research article in the sciences and social scienes, including the article information abstract, introduction or literature review, meths, results, discussion, and references.

An infographic handout on coginitive bias in information practices. Examples include confirmation bias, availability bias, and authority bias. 

Background: Students will be working in groups on a research paper about the environmental health impact of a natural disaster (e.g. Hurricane Katrina, Love Canal, 9/11 attacks and first responders, etc.). They must use at least 3 peer-reviewed sources, but their paper must also address the who, what, when, where, and why of the event. They are also asked to address environmental justice and discuss the long-term environmental consequences of the event.Learning Outcomes:After the session, students will be able to:Describe the information lifecycle around a natural disaster/eventUse advanced search strategies to find scholarly sources on a health problem/eventInformation Lifecycle Card Sort Activity Directions: In your group, analyze eight (8) sources about Hurricane Katrina and move the cards in a timeline to place them in chronological order.Then, include guidance and hands-on practice for finding reference sources for background, government sources, and research article to meet students' information needs.