Active learning ideas
Evaluating Online Sources and Fake News is a cornerstone of the 3rd Year Digital Media Literacy course. Students develop the critical thinking skills necessary to navigate an information landscape filled with misinformation and disinformation. They learn to look beyond professional-looking web design to interrogate the authorship, bias, and evidence behind online claims.
Activity 01
Provide groups with three news stories on a trending topic: one real, one biased, and one completely fabricated. Groups must use lateral reading techniques to verify the claims and present their evidence to the class.
How do we know if a website or source is reliable?
Activity 02
Display various screenshots of social media posts and websites. Students circulate with a checklist to identify 'red flags' like clickbait headlines, lack of citations, or suspicious URLs, marking their findings on the posters.
What is the difference between misinformation and disinformation?
Activity 03
Students are given a list of sources, from a peer's TikTok to a government report. They individually rank them by reliability, then pair up to justify their rankings and reach a consensus on the top three most trustworthy sources.
How can we effectively fact-check online claims?
A few notes on teaching this unit
Watch Out for These Misconceptions
If a website looks professional and has no typos, it must be reliable.
Modern misinformation is often highly polished. Using a 'mock' professional-looking fake site in a classroom activity helps students realize that design does not equal truth; they must verify the actual content and source.
Misinformation and disinformation are the same thing.
Misinformation is false info shared without harm, while disinformation is shared with the intent to deceive. A sorting activity with different scenarios helps students understand the role of 'intent' in the spread of fake news.
Methods used in this brief
Algorithms and Echo Chambers
This topic explores how search engines and social media algorithms curate the information we see. Students investigate the concept of filter bubbles and echo chambers.
8 methodologies
Copyright and Creative Commons
Students examine the legal and ethical considerations of using digital content created by others. They learn about copyright laws, fair use, and Creative Commons licensing.
8 methodologies