I had the opportunity last week to participate in a conference here at Mason: Innovations in Teaching and Learning. With co-presenter Julianna Miner, we presented to a group of peers on a topic we are both passionate about: helping our students identify and appreciate evidence-based arguments and texts. In other words: avoiding Fake News. Our presentation was titled: “Is it true? Helping Students Assess Information Credibility.”
I became interested in this topic, like so many people, during the debacle of 2016 news. I brought in a lesson plan for my students on Fake News, and to my surprise, it worked perfectly with the curriculum of Advanced Composition.
In our talk at ITL, we discussed the results of a recent study from Stanford, and how we used that to inform our instruction. I focused on giving students a lesson plan based on rhetorical analysis of online texts–a crucial skill we teach in Advanced Comp.
I’m sharing our presentation below. I hope you make use of it, and the data we reference! Our goal was to give our peers some useful tools to put into practice right away in their classrooms.
ReadyMiner2017FakeNewsPresentation
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