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.

This activity was part of a larger class session focused on preparing students for their interdisciplinary research projects. At this point in the semester students did not yet have their own research topics. It also took place outside of a computer classroom where not all students had laptops. Students break up into groups of 3-4 students. You can make as many topics as you want. For a class of 25 I created 4 topic options. Each group receives 5-10 minutes to complete each segment. When the timer is up they switch with a group. No one should receive the paper they start with until the very end. At the end of the activity we come back as a class and discuss how it went and what strategies they might implement in their own research processes. (I first heard about the idea of passing a problem in an interactive way from Sarah Lucchesi and Jenn Sams from Michigan Tech at Lake Superior Libraries Symposium, this is inspired by their idea.)