The workshop opened with an ice breaker, having students brainstorm three things they look for when deciding whether a news Website is believable. They did a quick pair-and-share, and then I recorded what they said on the white board. Next, I broke them into teams of two and asked each to look at two Websites and complete a worksheet. In our lesson, Source A was a Reuters news article and Source B was a Bipartisan Report article. Both are on the same story, although Source A correctly identifies it as happening in January 2016 while B plays it as if it just happened (October 2016). The worksheet included questions which showed similarities as well as differences. It took about 15-20 minutes for the students to complete the worksheets; then we discussed the answers. Talking points: Source A is a Reuters news report, while Source B is from a muckraking site. Both are on the same story, although Source A correctly identifies it as happening in January 2016 while B plays it as if it just happened (published Oct 2016).
Discuss which criteria made a difference in judging the credibility- and which weren’t important- notably, the domain name, the advertising presence,a nd the date were not significant.
Note that it’s best when the reporter has done the reporting themselves, not just repeating other media outlets’ reports.
Would people on the left be more willing to believe the bipartisan report because it fits into their worldview? We need to be careful to avoid confirmation bias: believing a source is legit because we want to believe what it says.
Opinion journalism is a good and valuable resource but it’s different from NEWS. With opinion journalism, you need to verify the facts in the story. In opinion pieces, they are making an argument and you need to analyze it.

After the discussion, I had students brainstorm three criteria they would now use to evaluate a news source. They shared out, and then I collected them for a quick assessment later.

MGT101 is a course all students must take at Menlo College. In the course, groups are assigned the task of identifying a unique product or service for which they must develop a strong business plan. At the end of the semester, there is a competition to select the most successful plans that are then presented to Venture Capitalists for review and comment. The Librarians worked together to develop this interactive workshop in order to better ensure student engagement in the research process and acquisition of needed skills leading to the successful completion of a solid business plan. We developed this workshop to give students the opportunity to evaluate different resources, and present the findings to their peers. We have found this to be far more successful than a straight lecture format.

This assignment is part of a suite of resource,s including tutorials and library instruction, for the General Education seminar, a course for first-year students meant to introduce them to modes of disciplinary inquiry.