Fact checking and getting it right
Students do almost all their research (for almost everything) on the Web. Most of today’s undergraduates have been doing this since they were in elementary school. You might think they would know how to distinguish between a reliable source and an unreliable one.
Sorry. No.
On this really old (2001) page, How Teachers Can Weave the Web into Reporting Classes (archive PDF copies: Part 1 and Part 2), former journalist Mike Reilley provides 12 weeks worth of teaching tips. What I really like about this is that Mike is talking about REGULAR reporting courses, not some special sidelined “online” reporting course.
I especially like his first exercise, in which he splits the class into two teams. One team gets to use the Web to fact-check a story. The other team has to use a current almanac. Which team will finish first? The students are shocked when the book team wins the race.
Most of my undergraduate students seem to have no faith in printed books. They rarely go to the library. Students in the university library are almost all checking e-mail at the public workstations. Very few are checking out books. When I was an undergraduate, we had to wait in line to check out books. Now there is no line.
We need to teach them how to use books, and how to gauge when a book will be better than the Web.
We also need to teach them how to gauge when finding and talking to a live expert will be better than copying and pasting some factoid from the Web.
I’m making these notes to myself because sometimes I lose track, in my frustration with what the students don’t know. I lose track of what my job really is, and I must remind myself: If there’s something they don’t know, and they need to know it, then I’ve GOT to give them some kind of tool or incentive to learn it.
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