Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Navigating Online Information Spaces With Lateral Reading: Lessons Learned From Two Librarians Working With Students And Educators, Andrea Baer, Daniel G. Kipnis

Libraries Scholarship

As online content’s credibility has gotten harder and harder to evaluate, librarians and other educators have been growing their strategies for teaching online source evaluation. One of those strategies is “lateral reading,” the practice of quickly evaluating a web source by seeing what others on the web say about that source. On the surface, lateral reading is quite simple. However, effective lateral reading often requires complex thinking. How will you search for information about a source? Which search results will you click on and how will you evaluate those sources? How will you decide what you trust and to what …

Never Judge A Website By Its Cover: A Mixed-Methods Investigation Into The Effectiveness Of A Tutorial On Lateral Reading, Andrea Baer, Daniel G. Kipnis

Libraries Scholarship

This poster will provide results of an IRB-approved study that assessed the effectiveness of an online tutorial on evaluating sources through lateral reading. Students who used lateral reading strategies were much more likely to accurately identify questionable sources as such. As students gained practice with lateral reading, the accuracy of their evaluations overall improved. Final reflection activities suggest that students' learning deepened as they considered ways that they might revise their evaluation strategies and how they might apply lateral reading strategies in their everyday life. In line with other research on lateral reading, this brief instructional intervention appears to have …

Diving Below The Surface: A Layered Approach To Teaching Online Source Evaluation Through Lateral And Critical Reading, Andrea Baer, Daniel G. Kipnis

Libraries Scholarship

As online environments have in many ways changed how information (including misinformation) is created and distributed, many educators have recognized a need for teaching new strategies for evaluating online sources for credibility and potential bias. Educators like Mike Caulfield and research groups like the Stanford History Education Group (SHEG) have stressed the need for “lateral reading,” a habit of fact-checking when initially evaluating a source. When reading laterally, a person doesn’t spend extensive time initially examining what a source says about itself; instead, they quickly move off of the site in question to look at what others have said about …

An Interactive Tutorial: Evaluating Online Sources Through Lateral Reading, Andrea Baer, Daniel G. Kipnis

Libraries Scholarship

Critical evaluation of online sources has become a necessary skill in everyday life. With the prevalence of fake news, pseudoscience, and deep fake videos, how can a person determine if a source is legitimate? While in some cases it’s fairly obvious when a source is suspect, at other times determining a source’s credibility isn’t so straightforward.

Recent research indicates that both university professors and college students have difficulty recognizing misleading online sources that at first glance look reputable. The close reading skills that are key to much of academic work differ from the online evaluation strategies needed when quickly determining …

Small Actions, Grassroots Efforts, And Community Building: Inspiring Fresh Perspectives On Teaching Information Literacy In Uncertain Times, Andrea Baer, Daniel G. Kipnis

Libraries Scholarship

In this workshop two academic librarians will share about their grassroots approach to fostering civic and digital literacies through their work in teaching “lateral reading” and online source evaluation. We will reflect on how a small action, creating an online research guide, was a seed for growing roots - connections and relationships - and for expanding our own teaching and our educational outreach. While we’ll touch on work with lateral reading, our primary focus will be reflecting with fellow librarians on small actions as regenerative responses to burnout and as starting points for more collective engagement in civic literacy education. …

Click Restraint For Critical Online Source Evaluation, Andrea Baer, Daniel G. Kipnis

Libraries Scholarship

We turn to the Internet everyday for information about little things like when a local store opens, as well as about much bigger issues like how to manage critical health conditions or who to vote for. The search results we see first aren’t necessarily the most relevant; they may appear at the top of a list because that site has been visited often or because a company or organization has figured out how to “game the system” through “search engine optimization” (SEO). So how, in an effort to better understand an issue and to find trustworthy information, do we and …

Information Literacy In The Age Of Covid-19: Two Research Guides Implemented At Rowan University Libraries, Benjamin H. Saracco, Andrea Baer, Daniel G. Kipnis

Libraries Scholarship

This lightning talk will provide an overview of two projects faculty librarians undertook in response to the emerging information literacy needs of various stakeholders at Rowan University. The two projects include: a Covid-19 and misinformation online guide and a Covid-19 online research-focused guide for healthcare practitioners.

While these projects were created for different University populations with distinct informational needs (teachers, students, the general public, medical practitioners/researchers), a common theme across these projects was librarians quickly filling information gaps in response to the global Covid-19 pandemic.

Presented at Virtual Academic Library Environment of New Jersey (VALE) virtual conference January 7, 2022.

Trust, Criticality, & The Open Web: Three Approaches To Teaching Lateral Reading, Andrea Baer, Daniel G. Kipnis, Rachel Flynn, Yan He

Libraries Scholarship

Presentation presented at 2021 ACRL conference.

Learning objectives:

• Become familiar with the practice and importance of lateral reading (LR) and the skills and mindsets it involves.
• Become familiar with different approaches to teaching LR and challenges of learning and teaching about it.
• Reflect on the potential relevance and applications of LR in your own teaching context.

Description:

Lateral reading - the process of moving off of a webpage to see what others say about it - has become critical for effectively evaluating online sources. While lateral reading appears simple, teaching it reveals layers of complexity, which include deciding where …

Teaching Lateral Reading With An Online Tutorial: Preliminary Study Findings., Andrea Baer, Daniel G. Kipnis

Libraries Scholarship

Challenges to Digital Literacy Education Stanford Cyber Center Policy

The internet is now the most common source of political news for almost half of Americans, and social media is now the primary source of news for those under 30. Yet today’s youth have little capacity to evaluate the credibility of digital sources, with colleges across the country often relying on severely outdated guidelines supporting digital literacy education. Join Stanford’s Sam Wineburg, Washington State University’s Mike Caulfield, and Rowan University’s Andrea Baer and Dan Kipnis, in conversation with the Cyber Center’s Kelly Born, about the many challenges and opportunities facing media …

Teaching Online Source Evaluation: Going Beyond Craap Using Lateral Reading, Andrea Baer, Daniel G. Kipnis

Libraries Scholarship

Lateral reading is the process of initially evaluating a web source by quickly moving off of the web source to see what others say about it. Research on “lateral reading” from the Stanford History Education Group (SHEG) and from Mike Caulfield has informed how many librarians think about teaching source evaluation. In this talk, we will share our experiences in developing a pilot online interactive module about lateral reading strategies.

Presentation for 2020 New Jersey Library Association College and University Section (CUS) Summer Workshop.

Uncharted Waters: Navigating with a compass for Adaptability