This lesson was created by a Chemistry professor for his Honors college Chemistry course. It has been enhanced for IL and adapted for our college's QEP (theme: critical thinking). It was also adapted throughout attending a Backwards Design class as an example (Library Juice Academy) thus the GRASPS instructional design tool was used.

Content will be uploaded into their online course shell (in the course management system) for them to view prior to an in-person library session. This will include a short library orientation video and another short using library resources video – both of which I created in the last year.

Students will attend a face-to-face library session – a full 75-minute class.

This lesson was created by a Chemistry professor, Dr. Perdian, for his Honors college Chemistry course. It has been enhanced for IL and adapted for our college's QEP (theme: critical thinking). It was also adapted throughout attending a Backwards Design class as an example (Library Juice Academy) thus the GRASPS instructional design tool was used.

Content will be uploaded into their online course shell (in the course management system) for them to view prior to an in-person library session. This will include a short library orientation video and another short using library resources video – both of which I created in the last year.

Students will attend a face-to-face library session – a full 75-minute class.

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.