Teaching Social Problems in the Era of "Fake News"

• In Event: 2222 - Teaching and Learning Symposium Roundtable Session
  In Informal Discussion Roundtable: Table 06. Teaching Sociology in the Age of Trump

Abstract

Many challenges face faculty teaching Social Problems in today’s educational climate. Among those challenges is the explosion of information on the Internet. So much information is available online; much of that information, however, is false or misleading. Students often lack the skills to critically evaluate and interpret information. This subsequently impacts their ability to think sociologically about social problems. We found that most of our students entered the course at a very low level of information literacy as measured by disclosed questions on an assessment from the Stanford History Education Group (2017), which inspired us to spend extensive time on information literacy in the class and infuse information literacy along with critical thinking skills throughout the course. As such, the course was totally redesigned to respond to this need to address information literacy by (1) having students answer questions on the Stanford History Education Group assessment and peer score the responses, (2) giving students a framework to evaluate sources, (3) incorporating debates where they had to use peer reviewed sources, and (4) restructuring chapter applications that required students to more directly apply sociology from the class and focus less on unsubstantiated opinions.

This roundtable will be useful to faculty in particular who teach Social Problems. It should also be helpful to any faculty members who want to incorporate more critical thinking and information literacy in their Sociology classes. We will share the instructional strategies we used to place information literacy at the forefront in an era when “fake news” seems to be ever-present.

Authors

• Ada Haynes, Tennessee Tech University

• Jacob Kelley, Tennessee Tech University