Wayfinding the Library—Wading Through Bias, Sponsored Content, and Book Reserves

Type of Presentation

Individual paper/presentation (20 minute presentation)

Target Audience

Higher Education

Randy HoweFollow

Location

PARB 128

Proposal

Finding truth in media can be hard for today’s undergraduate college student. Decoding and fact-checking mediated information across today’s myriad channels is undeniably cumbersome, yet vital for true understanding. This presentation describes a library-oriented exercise set up as a wayfinding activity for one class meeting of a university course. The project addresses this information literacy issue, among a set of other issues felt important by the course’s professor in cooperation with a library media colleague. For the record, wayfinding concerns the organization of sensory cues from the environment in an effort to reach a desired destination. Engaged in this activity, students were first to read an article titled The Challenge that is Bigger than Fake News by McGrew, Ortega, Breakstone, and Wineburg. From information described in the article, they were then dispatched to the library to search for sponsored content in print publications. They then applied civic reasoning principles to identify who was behind the information presented, evaluate this evidence, and investigate the same topic in other sources, such as in comparable information in Wikipedia, as well as from a book source in the library that they deem as relevant with credible information. Concepts of lateral reasoning, search engine results for competing search engines, and the value of book reserves were covered in additional parts of the exercise. Progress was documented throughout, reported back to the professor by means of email and selfies. The development, implementation, and results of this assignment will be the main topic of this session.

Short Description

A professor-librarian partnership that created a wayfinding assignment designed to educate undergraduate students on how to scavenge their campus library for credible information is discussed. Focus will be on student responses to sponsored content, as well as concepts of lateral thinking and competencies associated with civic online reasoning. This exercise was one part of a larger course, attentive most on the knowledge visualization theories and principles. How this instruction and activity fit into this larger context will be explained.

Keywords

information literacy; sponsored content; lateral thinking; civic online learning; wayfinding

Publication Type and Release Option

Presentation (Open Access)

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Feb 21st, 1:45 PM Feb 21st, 3:00 PM

Wayfinding the Library—Wading Through Bias, Sponsored Content, and Book Reserves

PARB 128

Finding truth in media can be hard for today’s undergraduate college student. Decoding and fact-checking mediated information across today’s myriad channels is undeniably cumbersome, yet vital for true understanding. This presentation describes a library-oriented exercise set up as a wayfinding activity for one class meeting of a university course. The project addresses this information literacy issue, among a set of other issues felt important by the course’s professor in cooperation with a library media colleague. For the record, wayfinding concerns the organization of sensory cues from the environment in an effort to reach a desired destination. Engaged in this activity, students were first to read an article titled The Challenge that is Bigger than Fake News by McGrew, Ortega, Breakstone, and Wineburg. From information described in the article, they were then dispatched to the library to search for sponsored content in print publications. They then applied civic reasoning principles to identify who was behind the information presented, evaluate this evidence, and investigate the same topic in other sources, such as in comparable information in Wikipedia, as well as from a book source in the library that they deem as relevant with credible information. Concepts of lateral reasoning, search engine results for competing search engines, and the value of book reserves were covered in additional parts of the exercise. Progress was documented throughout, reported back to the professor by means of email and selfies. The development, implementation, and results of this assignment will be the main topic of this session.