Critical Thinking

Private Bits: Privacy, Intimacy, and Consent

This sex-positive privacy literacy workshop engages participants in exploring how sex tech impacts intimate privacy and intimate relationships. Workshop content is contextualized with the theoretical frameworks of artificial intimacies (Brooks) and consentful tech (The Consentful Tech Project) and the concept of intimate privacy (Citron) and presented through a privacy literacy lens. Participants will identify artificial intimacies in order to assess real-world examples and their impact upon intimate privacy; evaluate the privacy of digital bodies under conditions of data promiscuity using a consentful tech framework; and understand intimate privacy and the impact of technology on intimate relationships and wellbeing.The workshop is designed for a 60-minute session, but can be extended to fill the time available.Includes workshop guide, presentation slides, learning activities, inclusive pedagogy tool, and assessment instrument.

Information Literacy Frame(s) Addressed:

License Assigned: 
CC Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike License CC-BY-NC-SA

Dark Patterns: Surveillance Capitalism and Business Ethics

This workshop engages participants in exploring corporate data collection, personal profiling, deceptive design, and data brokerage practices. Workshop content is contextualized with the theoretical frameworks of panoptic sort (Gandy), surveillance capitalism (Zuboff), and the four regulators (Lessig) and presented through a privacy and business ethics lens. Participants will learn how companies make money from data collection practices; explore how interface design can influence our choices and behaviors; and discuss business ethics regarding privacy and big data.The workshop is designed for 75-minute class sessions, but can be compressed into 60-minute sessions. Includes workshop guide, presentation slides, learning activities, and assessment instrument.

Information Literacy Frame(s) Addressed:

License Assigned: 
CC Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike License CC-BY-NC-SA

#follow: Ethical Reflections on Influencers & Marketing Tactics

Powerpoint to accompany social media influencer/business information literacy activity, exploring roles and responsibilities of consumers and content creators, debates regarding influencer marketing tactics and misleading advertisements, and ways to distinguish sponsored content. Created by Mia Wells and Laureen Cantwell. Accompanies chapter "Bad Influence: Disinformation and Ethical Considerations of Influencer Marketing Campaigns on Social Media Platforms," from the book Teaching About Fake News: Lesson Plans for Different Disciplines and Audiences (Eds.: Benjes-Small, C. M., Wittig, C., & Oberlies, M. K.; 2021; ACRL).
Discipline(s): 
Business

Type of Institution:

License Assigned: 
CC Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike License CC-BY-NC-SA

Privacy and Dx (Digital Transformation) Workshop [Peer/Professional]

This workshop engages academic librarians and higher education professionals in considering the implications of Dx (digital transformation) for privacy, especially intellectual privacy, in higher education. The session is designed to reveal how student, faculty, and staff data and metadata are collected, along with the potential implications of such data collection. Participants assess how this data is used in order to make informed, intentional choices to safeguard student and employee privacy. The session includes a guided close-reading activity to critically examine educational technology and productivity software privacy policies and terms of service. This workshop session scaffolds from the Intellectual Privacy Workshop [Peer/Professional] and Privacy Workshop [Peer/Professional].

Information Literacy Frame(s) Addressed:

License Assigned: 
CC Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike License CC-BY-NC-SA

Intellectual Privacy Workshop [Peer/Professional]

This workshop introduces intellectual privacy and related concepts for academic librarians and higher education professionals. The session is designed to explore the interrelationship between intellectual privacy, surveillance, the chilling effect, open inquiry, and free expression. In lieu of a prescriptive approach, participants analyze readings, case studies, and the Social Cooling infographic to consider how surveillance within the academy and society at-large can impact inquiry and expression. Privacy, the chilling effect, FERPA, and the implications of data capture and surveillance in academic libraries and higher education are considered. Participants collaborate to develop considerations and principles for data use in academic libraries and higher education based on these concepts and case studies. This workshop session scaffolds from the Privacy Workshop [Peer/Professional] and is designed for synchronous or asynchronous delivery.

Information Literacy Frame(s) Addressed:

License Assigned: 
CC Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike License CC-BY-NC-SA

Privacy Workshop [Peer/Professional]

This workshop delivers an action-oriented introduction to personal data privacy for academic librarians and higher education professionals. The session is designed to reveal the professional and educational technology systems in place to collect and analyze online behavioral data, and to unveil the real-world consequences of online profiling in contexts like academic integrity surveillance, student surveillance, and public health (COVID-19). In lieu of a prescriptive approach, participants analyze case studies to observe how online behaviors impact real-world opportunities and reflect on the benefits and risks of technology use to develop purposeful online behaviors and habits that align with their individual values. Developing knowledge practices regarding privacy and the commodification of personal information and embodying the core library values of privacy and intellectual freedom, the workshop promotes a proactive rather than reactive approach and presents a spectrum of privacy preferences across a range of contexts in order to respect participants’ autonomy and agency in personal technology use. Adapted from the student-facing Privacy Workshop.

Information Literacy Frame(s) Addressed:

License Assigned: 
CC Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike License CC-BY-NC-SA

Digital Shred Workshop

The Penn State Berks Privacy Workshop Series focuses on privacy issues for students in the past, present, and future.  The Privacy Workshop spotlights privacy practices and concerns in the current moment; Digital Leadership explores future implications of past and current digital behaviors; Digital Shred provides tools to evaluate and mitigate the damage of past digital behaviors; and Digital Wellness focuses on privacy across the lifespan - bringing together the past, present, & future by finding a balance of technology & wellness, while aligning habits and goals.  Each workshop is grounded in theory – countering approaches that overpromise user control in the face of information asymmetries and the control paradox – and embrace students’ autonomy and agency by avoiding prescribed solutions, and instead encouraging decision-making frameworks.In the Digital Shred Workshop, students will be able to:Reflect on and describe their digital privacy priorities in order to articulate the benefits and risks of their digital dossierApply a growth mindset to critically examine their current data exhaust // digital footprint and recognize when change is neededDevelop a Personal Data Integrity Plan that makes routine the process of auditing and updating their digital dossier in alignment with their privacy valuesDescribe “digital shred” and its importance. 

Information Literacy Frame(s) Addressed:

License Assigned: 
CC Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike License CC-BY-NC-SA

Privacy Workshop

This workshop delivers an action-oriented introduction to personal data privacy designed for new college students. The session is designed to reveal the systems in place to collect and analyze online behavioral data, and to unveil the real-world consequences of online profiling in contexts like sentiment shaping, consumer preferences, employment, healthcare, personal finance, and law enforcement. In lieu of a prescriptive approach, students analyze case studies to observe how online behaviors impact real-world opportunities and reflect on the benefits and risks of technology use to develop purposeful online behaviors and habits that align with their individual values. Developing knowledge practices regarding privacy and the commodification of personal information and embodying the core library values of privacy and intellectual freedom, the workshop promotes a proactive rather than reactive approach and presents a spectrum of privacy preferences across a range of contexts in order to respect students’ autonomy and agency in personal technology use.

Information Literacy Frame(s) Addressed:

License Assigned: 
CC Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike License CC-BY-NC-SA

Critical Thinking in Action: Sustainability

Students will be exposed to various entry points of a sustainability topic in various formats.This lesson is to serve as an introduction to different types of sources that can be used to learn about and research topics - including multimedia sources, Internet, and scholarly articles - and the attributes of different kinds of sources. They will take notes as they hear/read the sources using Elements of Thought (based on Paul-Elder's critical thinking model) and reflect in small groups to evaluate the credibility of the sources and what next steps they will take to further research. This is a face-to-face, in-class activity. The duration of the in-class activities for this lesson is approximately 60-75 minutes. Length and difficulty of content should be considered when selecting the examples.It is highly adaptable for content and theme although it was designed, originally, for a faculty member whose first-year composition class is themed around sustainability. Instructor will select various source types to explore a single topic. Possible sustainability-themed examples include: food deserts, clean water in the US, bee colony collapse, etc.Source types should include:One short-form video product (I.e. TED Talk, video essay, documentary clip, recorded speech, or other topical video informational product)One published essay, opinion editorial, or commentaryOne informative (unbiased) article or reference entry.

Resource Type(s):

Discipline(s): 
InterdisciplinaryOther
License Assigned: 
CC Attribution License CC-BY

Evaluate a News Story

In light of the proliferation of fake news and just plain erroneous news, this assignment tries to give students tools and strategies for evaluating the information that comes to them via social media and other outlets. Students identify one news story and thoroughly investigate it, including using CRAAP criteria, searching for other articles on the same topic, and checking factchecking sites.News stories to evalute were updated July 2019.

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Information Literacy Frame(s) Addressed:

Discipline(s): 
Not Discipline Specific
License Assigned: 
CC Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike License CC-BY-NC-SA

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