Avoiding Bad, Misleading, or Fake News: Evaluating News Sources: Lesson Plans and Assignments
Project Cora and Fake News
In this workshop, students learn how to evaluate whether a news site is reliable. This group activity takes about 30 minutes and can be used for many different audiences by adjusting the examples used.
What is “fake news” anyway? Are we living in a post-truth world? These University of Michigan course materials will provide opportunities to discuss and analyze news production, consumption and evaluation.
A one-shot or seminar class on fake news tied to source evaluation.
In an effort to provide students with an open space to learn about and discuss recent national concerns over “fake news,” the library offered four sessions of the workshop “Keepin’ It Real: Tips & Strategies for Evaluating Fake News”
Evaluating Headlines
Outcome: Using a provided rubric, learners will be able to evaluate news article/video headlines based on their language, tone and credibility..
Materials: Headlines from various sources on a recent news event. The TACT Test for Headlines Rubric
Lesson: Learners will evaluate several news headlines (which can lead to articles, posts or videos) on a current news event. Use the Headline Rubric to lead a class discussion that leads to evaluating the accuracy of a headline on a current news topic. Learners will then break into groups and use the Headline Rubric to evaluate several headlines based on Language, Tone and Credibility to determine if the article/video is likely to provide accurate information. Groups will share their results with the rest of the class.
Activity: Learners will work in groups of 3-5 to evaluate 3-5 headlines or news article headlines from a variety of sources on a current news event. Using the provided Headline Rubric, each group will rate the headlines based on tone, language, and credibility.
Reflection: Groups will share/compare results with the rest of the class. Why did your group rate the headline this way? Which headlines make you want to read the article/watch the video? Which parts of the rubric were the most helpful? How can you use this as you read about news events in the future?
Fake News on Social Media
Opposing Viewpoints in Context covers the topic of Fake News on Social Media. This resource contains academic journals, reference sources, images, videos, and statistics.
Stanford Education Group Activities
In 2016, the Stanford History Education Group published an extensive study based on their year and a half long project to assess students' ability to judge the credibility of online information. The summary of their results could be boiled down to one word: bleak. The study covered students from middle school through college, with each group demonstrating that they are 'easily duped' when evaluating information on social media.
Assessments used in the study are available through the report linked below, and may be used in classes. College level assessments begin on page 15, though other levels can be appropriate for beginning learners of any age.
Evaluating Information: the Cornerstone of Civic Online Reasoning 2016 report of a study conducted by the Stanford History Education Group to assess students' ability to evaluate information available through social media
How Students Engage with News: Five Takeaways for Educators, Journalists, and Librarians - Project Information Literacy
The News Study research report presents findings about how a sample of U.S. college students gather information and engage with news in the digital age. Results are included from an online survey of 5,844 respondents and telephone interviews with 37 participants from 11 U.S. colleges and universities selected for their regional, demographic, and red/blue state diversity. A computational analysis was conducted using Twitter data associated with the survey respondents and a Twitter panel of 135,891 college-age people. Six recommendations are included for educators, journalists, and librarians working to make students effective news consumers. To explore the implications of this study’s findings, concise commentaries from leading thinkers in education, libraries, media research, and journalism are included
- Alison J. Head, John Wihbey, P. Takis Metaxas, Margy MacMillan, and Dan Cohen, “How Students Engage with News: Five Takeaways for Educators, Journalists, and Librarians,” Project Information Literacy Research Institute. (October 16, 2018). http://www.projectinfolit.org/uploads/2/7/5/4/27541717/newsreport.pdf
European Response to 'Fake News'
The Media Literacy Index was created in 2017 and measures the resilience to ‘post-truth’, ‘fake-news’ and their consequence in a number of European countries and offers a useful instrument to finding solutions. This is second edition of the Media Literacy Index (2018) scores and ranks 35 countries in Europe according to their potential to withstand the ‘post-truth’ and its negative consequences.
Spotting Fake News
Image by IFLA [CC BY 4.0
(https://creativecommons.org /licenses/by/4.0)], via Wikimedia Commons
PDF and JPG for English and other languages can be found at https://www.ifla.org/publications/ node/11174
Other Lesson Plans and Assignment examples
Gaming Your News Knowledge
- Bad NewsSpread misinformation via a choose-your-own-adventure setup. Your task is to get as many followers as you can while slowly building up fake credibility as a news site.
- Fake It to Make ItSet a financial goal and write fake news stories to meet it.
- Newsfeed DefendersBecome a social media admin and get your group's profile recognized as a beacon of accuracy and focus with this game.
The Truthful, the Fake, and the Biased
- The Truthful, the Fake, and the BiasedPresentation given on July 29th at OLSSI