Fake news, old news: Using mass media and archives critically as source material

This panel will explore the following topics:

• Helping students assess different credibility sources (Daniel McCormac)

  Students producing media texts that rely on personal experience, emotion and perspective to be engaging and dramatic often will not see the relevance of academic research, expert testimonial or data to backing up the assumptions or claims that underpin their projects, or the conclusions that they expect audiences to draw from them. Reflecting on student work we will explore ways that faculty and librarians can help students appreciate the role of different types of credibility material in work that is not of a traditionally academic nature.

• Joining forces to put the spotlight on fake news (Jasmina Najjar & Nabila Shehabeddine)

  Given the fake news deluge and issues students face as a result, in the Spring 2016- 2017 semester, Jasmina Najjar (Communication Skills Instructor and Program Coordinator at the American University of Beirut), challenged her Advanced Academic Writing students to write an argumentative essay about fake news. The purpose behind this was boost their information literacy skills while getting them to engage in academic discourse about a topic making headlines in more ways than one! For added effectiveness, she joined forces with Nabila Shehabeddine (an Information Services Librarian at the American University of Beirut) to ensure students were appropriately equipped to better identify fake news. By combining academic writing with information literacy, awareness was raised and students were empowered with a more critical mind-set. This panel discussion shares how this collaboration took place and opens the door to discussion about ways to join forces to empower students by helping them navigate the sea of fake news.

• Archival literacy: Integrating primary sources into the curriculum (Demetra Papaconstantinou)

  Archival literacy is a type of instructional service that is based on the presentation and understanding of primary sources and archival practices. It can take many different forms, adapt to different educational levels and learning objectives and cultivate partnerships and professional developments among archivists, librarians, faculty and technologists, at a wide range.

  Key archival concepts and skills such as the “materiality” of archival records and the interrogation of evidence for credibility and trustworthiness, are significant not only as learning goals, but also for their relevance to our current experience with online information which often makes the role of historians and history books seem redundant, and the difference between primary and secondary sources unclear.

  Archival practices engage with primary sources through a process of active inquiry, almost identical to that of an archaeologist’s experience in the field. This kind of inquiry that uses all the senses, stimulates classroom discussions, and fosters historical empathy, can contribute to a more holistic, creative and effective learning experience and assist active learning pedagogies.