The First-Year Writing Program's Approach to Information Literacy

information literacy: the ability to locate, evaluate, and use information effectively, situate information within ongoing conversations, and proactively seek diverse perspectives

​In the First-Year Writing Program, we recognize that the online information landscape is incredibly complex. Fabricated and misleading information is easy (and profitable) to produce and spread, and it is difficult to regulate. Furthermore, social media platforms, search engines, and databases are constantly changing, and they are increasingly governed by inscrutable algorithms. Our online experience is continually in flux, and it is being shifted, tailored, diverted, monitored, surveilled, and designed in ways we can recognize as well as ways we cannot. At the same time, we have more agency and information seeking avenues today than any humans in history, and democratized digital communication channels have empowered more people and communities — particularly among the underrepresented and marginalized — to be heard than ever before.​

While information literacy is a central pillar of the College Composition II curriculum, the First-Year Writing Program is committed to helping students develop the skills and habits of mind associated with information literacy in all of our courses. In order to meet the demands of our contemporary digital information landscape, these skills and habits of mind must be rhetorically-responsive and adaptive to new situations and contexts.

Below, you will find a range of resources to support contemporary information literacy instruction, including overviews of current scholarship and thinking in the field, research on source evaluation and civic online reasoning, and suggested classroom activities developed by Rowan instructors and other teaching professionals. 

CLASSROOM ACTIVITIES
Large selection of sample activities and assignments to encourage thoughtful and rhetorically-responsive information literacy practices (password protected)

EVALUATING ONLINE SOURCES: A TOOLKIT (a Rowan Library Research Guide)
Accessible guide (for students and instructors!) that provides clear, concise overviews of key concepts in contemporary information literacy pedagogy, with tips, tutorials, and teaching activities 

Quick Readings
​Information Literacy in the Current Online Age

How misinformation should shape our approach to online source evaluation

• "Don’t Go Down the Rabbit Hole," Charlie Warzel and Michael Caulfield (2021)
• "Recalibrating Our Approach to Misinformation," Michael Caulfield (2018)
• "To Navigate the Dangers of the Web, You Need Critical Thinking – But Also Critical Ignoring," Sam Wineburg (2021)
• "The Challenge That's Bigger Than Fake News: Civic Reasoning in a Social Media Environment," Sarah McGrew, Teresa Ortega, Joel Breakstone, and Sam Wineburg (2017)
  
  

The "lateral reading" approach to online information evaluation and its benefits over older strategies (e.g. CRAAP test, top-level domains, etc.)

• "Why Can’t a Generation that Grew Up Online Spot
  the Misinformation in Front of Them?", Sam Wineberg and Nadav Ziv (2020)
• "A Short History of CRAAP," Michael Caulfield (2018)
• "Getting Beyond the CRAAP Test: A Conversation with Mike Caulfield," John Warner (2019)
• Overview of Caulfield's recommended approach, SIFT: "SIFT (The Four Moves)," Michael Caulfield (2019)
• Primer on Lateral Reading: "From Digital Native to Digital Expert: To suss out the credibility of digital information, students should go beyond checklists and act more like fact-checkers," Brilee Weaver (2018)
• "Why We Need a New Approach to Teaching Digital Literacy," Joel Breakstone, Sarah McGrew, Mark Smith, Teresa Ortega, and Sam Wineburg (2018)​

Why & how we are misled by online mis- and disinformation 

• "How your Brain Tricks You into Believing Fake News," Katy Steinmetz (2018)
• "What is the Internet Doing to Boomers' Brains?", Michael Hobbes (2020)

RESEARCH
Studies of Student Web Literacy

Effects of ineffective digital information literacy instruction

• "Educating for Misunderstanding: How Approaches to Teaching Digital Literacy Make Students Susceptible to Scammers, Rogues, Bad Actors, and Hate Mongers," Wineburg, Breakstone, Ziv, and Smith (2020)
• "Lateral Reading and the Nature of Expertise: Reading Less and Learning More When Evaluating Digital Information," Wineburg and McGrew (2019)
• "Students’ Civic Online Reasoning: A National Portrait," Breakstone, Smith, Wineburg, Rapaport, Carle, Garland, and Saavedra (2021)

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The effectiveness of lateral reading instruction

• "Lateral reading: College students learn to critically evaluate internet sources in an online course," Breakstone, Smith, Connors, Ortega, Kerr, and Wineburg (2021)
• "Improving college students’ fact-checking strategies through lateral reading instruction in a general education civics course," Brodsky, Brooks, Scimeca, Todorova, Galati, Batson, Grosso, Matthews, Miller, and Caulfield (2021)
• "The Digital Media Literacy Gap: How to build widespread resilience to false and misleading information using evidence-based classroom tools," Pavlounis, Johnston, Brodsky, and Brooks (for Civix Canada) (2021)

Guiding Principles of Information Literacy Instruction in the First-Year Writing Program:

Information seeking (research) is rhetorically situated: what makes a source of information useful and trustworthy is shaped by the context and purpose.

Hard and fast rules about “criteria” for reputable online sources are not rhetorically situated, and are likely to be misleading.

When we teach students about research, we want to encourage them to recognize and seek a range of different perspectives, including marginalized voices that are less often represented in mainstream media.

Determining the credibility and “angle of vision” of a source requires lateral reading: opening up new tabs to situate the information, author, and publication or sponsoring organization in context.

Modeling a pragmatic and flexible understanding of how to navigate information systems will sustain students beyond their university experience.