Sorting Truth From Fiction: Civic Online Reasoning (edX)

With educators from around the world and faculty from MIT and Stanford University, you will learn quick and effective practices for evaluating online information that you can bring back to your classroom. The Stanford History Education Group has distilled these practices from observations with professional fact-checkers from the nation’s most prestigious media outlets from across the political spectrum. Using a combination of readings, classroom practice lessons, and assignments, you will learn how to teach the critical thinking skills needed for making wise judgments about web sources.

At the end of the course, you will be better able to help students find reliable sources at a time when we need it most.
What you'll learn

Educators—from teachers to librarians—will learn about:

- New knowledge that can be applied in your lessons and resources for your own students.

- How to shift from ineffective information literacy practices towards the kinds of strategies employed by professional fact-checkers.

Syllabus

Unit 1: Search Like a Fact Checker

Unit 2: The Two Big Fact Checker Moves: Lateral Reading & Click Restraint

Unit 3: Evaluating Different Types of Evidence

Unit 4: Adapting Civic Online Reasoning