Evaluating News Sources This interactive lesson explores news sources - particularly, strategies that you can use to evaluate them. Consider these questions: What qualifies as news? Is all content published by a news agency really news? How does geography influence news coverage? What strategies should I use when evaluating news?
Workshop with the goal of helping students recognize that search tools, including Google, YouTube, and library systems, reflect power structures and have biases.
Five lessons on fact and source checking that can be copied and adapted. Based on the SIFT approach:
1. Stop
2. Investigate the source
3. Find trusted coverage
4. Trace claims
Course materials for a 7-week course, taught at the University of Michigan, including assignments and an Open Canvas version of the course, available for re-using.
Model course syllabus and lessons "designed to teach students how to use critical thinking skills to judge the reliability of news and information they need to be productive citizens".
Open source textbook that explores approaches to evaluating the information in social media streams. By Mike Caufield, director of blended and networked learning at Washington State University Vancouver.
October, 2018.
The Project Information Literacy 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.
Research article. Brodsky et al., Cognitive Research: Principles and Implications, 2021.
Student who received a fact-checking curriculum improved their ability to evaluate online information. Instructional materials used in the study are available.
Stanford History Education Group, 2017.
The full report on research assessing the information evaluation practices of students, faculty, and professional fact checkers.
What are the goals of a source of information? Is it propaganda, journalism, entertainment, or something else? Learn more at the Center for News Literacy.