NCompass Live: How to Choose Your News: Educating College Students on Identifying Bias
Channel: Nebraska Library Commission
Date: 13/12/2017

Recorded on December 13, 2017
NCompass Live - 

In a culture that is increasingly filled with biased argumentation and rhetoric, it is critical for information professionals to educate our students and patrons on the nature and pervasiveness of bias in everyday information consumption. In order to teach students how to recognize bias, the Composition II Instruction Team at Criss Library developed a learning module centered on determining political bias in online news articles. Based on student feedback and incorporating active learning activities, the module was adapted throughout the spring semester.

Additional feedback led to the development of a workshop focuses less on political bias in particular, and more on bias as a whole: what it means, and how to identify it. The goal is to help students across campus and disciplines understand how to be more sophisticated consumers of information, both in academia and in everyday life. The presenter will discuss the evolution of the instruction module through the semester and how the workshop was developed. The presenter will also discuss how student feedback informed this evolution, describe the feedback received about the workshop, and how the instruction team plans move forward from here.

Presenter: Erin Painter, Reference Associate, Dr. C.C. and Mabel L. Criss Library, University of Nebraska, Omaha.