What’s the problem you’re addressing in your curriculum?

Misinformation and disinformation has become an increasingly bigger problem in recent years. The internet has enabled us to share information at light speed, but it’s also made it super easy to amplify information that might be false or even damaging.

Part of what enables this is that people don’t have the tools to identify whether information is true or not. This curriculum aims to address that problem by giving students the tools to identify misinformation so that they don’t become amplifiers of it.

Why do you see it as a significant issue to address?

We’ve seen in recent years that internet misinformation can affect elections, change people’s behaviors, and put people’s lives in danger. Children are growing up in a world that is increasingly affected by misinformation and disinformation, and it’s important that they learn how to identify it so that they can be better informed citizens.

The specific example used here, around the Gas app, is also timely — this misinformation started circling in the one to two months. Using a timely example also can help students connect with the material and make it feel more relevant for them.

What age level children are targeted, and why?

The lesson was targeted towards middle and early high school students, since that’s the primary demographic of the Gas app. That’s also a demographic that’s spending more and more time online, so they’re more likely to be exposed to misinformation and disinformation while not being experienced enough to have the tools to identify it.

Hopefully, a lesson like this can nudge students to encorporate these sorts of fact-checking practices into their increasing amount of time online.

What are the specific learning objectives for this unit?

The main learning objective of this unit is to teach students how to do their own research on the accuracy of a piece of information they come across while online.

That’s a combination of critical thinking skills and internet research skills. It requires being skeptical of a new piece of information or news article they might come across, so they remember that it might be a good idea to check on it. Then, it requires being able to identify which sources are trustworthy (and why), and when to be skeptical of things they read online.

Ideally, this unit teaches students those skills and makes them more confident in their ability to research a piece of questionable information by cross-checking it with multiple trustworthy sources.

What is an overview of your curriculum? What is the format you’ve selected, and why did you select it?

I produced this curriculum in the form of a self-paced website that I coded. The website includes interactive elements like quizzes and open response questions.

I chose this format because I think that it’s an effective way for students to be able to self-pace their learning. They might do this activity in a classroom with a teacher present, but they can each think about their own answers at their own pace without feeling pressured by the pace of the class. Also, format for answering questions allows students who might not be comforatble participating in front of their classmates to still participate at their own pace.

In addition, the website format means that a parent could have their child go through this curriculum at home without needing to have a facilitor (like a teacher) present to walk the child through it. That means that the lesson has a further potential reach because it doesn’t just have to be taught in classrooms.

In the conclusion, the lesson focuses on how students can use these media literacy skills to avoid damaging their credibility in the eyes of their peers. Even if a student doesn’t care about the impact they may have on others, they likely care about how they’re perceived by those around them. By flipping the incentive, hopefully more students are motivated to fact-check information as an act of self-preservation.

How could your unit’s success be evaluated or assessed?

After having students go through the lesson, we could give them another social media post (similar to the Snapchat screenshot in the lesson) and have them determine whether they want to re-share this post or not.

In addition to just an answer, we’d want them to write their reasoning. The actual answer is a 50/50 guess, but the reasoning behind it is important. We’d assess whether they accurately identified which sources they came across were trustworthy, and importantly, why they seemed trustworthy. We’d also look for signs that they evaluated the reporting itself (not just the source’s name at face value) and whether it made sense and seemed responsibly reported (critical thinking skills).