Teaching Fact-Checking 101 to College Students in the Digital Age

Strategic Insights -

As the internet and social media become increasingly embedded in our daily lives, students are facing a tidal wave of misinformation that threatens to erode their ability to think critically and participate in informed civic discourse. At Georgia State University's American Government 1101 course, instructor Mike Evans witnessed firsthand the challenges his students faced in navigating the digital landscape, where conspiracy theories and disinformation were rampant. In response, Evans sought to incorporate fact-checking skills into his curriculum, drawing on the Civic Online Reasoning program developed by Stanford University's research group.

Key Takeaways:

  • The Civic Online Reasoning program teaches a set of strategies based on how professional fact-checkers evaluate online information, including "lateral reading" to assess the credibility of sources and identify potential biases.
  • The program's six short modules can be used asynchronously, allowing students to complete them on their own time, and are closely tied to course content, making it easier for instructors to integrate into their curriculum.
  • A trial of the program in 12th grade classrooms saw a nearly doubling of students' ability to locate quality information compared to a control group.
  • A modified version of the program for Evans' American Government 1101 course showed positive outcomes: students became 18% better at identifying shady sources and 80% said they "learned important things" from the modules.
  • The results of this experiment add to other studies that have demonstrated the effectiveness of incorporating digital literacy into college curricula without disrupting the existing course structure.

Statistics:

  • 3,488 students took a test at the beginning and end of the semester, showing an 18% improvement in their ability to identify shady sources.
  • 80% of students said they "learned important things" from the modules.
  • The program took only 150 minutes of total instruction over the semester, requiring minimal effort from instructors.
  • The study has been uploaded as a preprint on a journal article (awaiting peer review) that documents the experiment and its results.

Sources:

  • Evans, M., Wineburg, S., and Leber, M. (2021, June). A Trial of the Civic Online Reasoning Program in the College Classroom. Preprint.
  • The Conversation (2023, February). College students are bombarded by misinformation, so this professor taught them fact-checking 101 here's what happened. Article: https://theconversation.com/college-students-are-bombarded-by-misinformation-so-this-professor-taught-them-fact-checking-101-heres-what-happened-262409

Note: The citations and references are as mentioned in the original article, and no additional information has been added.