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Digital Literacy FLC (Spring 2021)

Resources from the spring 2021 Digital Literacy Faculty Learning Community at Rowan University.

Identity, Ideological Belief, and Bias: Meeting Theme & Materials

Our identities and life experiences powerfully influence our perceptions of the world and beliefs about it. They also affect what information we encounter online and how we think about that information. The recommended resources for March’s FLC meeting explore the intersections between identity, belief, and information behaviors, including topics like confirmation bias, belief change and motivational interviewing, and the relationship between one’s social positioning and perspective on various social issues.

Discussion Topics:

  • General thoughts or responses to any of today’s resources
  • Teaching experiences with fostering curiosity and openness as a response to polarizing topics. This may include experiences with students who have strong ideological views or who dismiss facts and evidence.

  • Suggested related readings, teaching activities, or teaching strategies 

Resources:

Additional resources:

Emergent Themes

  • False balance/false equivalence/”bothsideness,” in which different perspectives/arguments on an issue are given equal attention despite that one “side” is not well supported by the evidence  

  • Difficulty of having conversations about contentious/politicized issues without time for establishing deeper context and engaging in deeper discussion

  • How people interpret information differently

  • Practices that encourage or discourage dialogue and consideration of other perspectives

  • The important of context, including recognition of systems of power and privilege and the histories behind them

  • Appreciating how our social identities and life experiences influence our perspectives and responses to information, while also recognizing the role systems of power and privilege in our positionalities and not fostering an absolute relativism that is racist or violent to marginalized members of a class community

Teaching Practice

  • Within a classroom grounded on principles of mutual respect and an appreciation of difference, and a recognition of systems of power and privilege, offering opportunities for students to be heard and to explain their viewpoints, particularly when those viewpoints may be unpopular. Attentive listening to students who may be eager to be contrarian often helps to model curiosity and openness.

Teaching Ideas & Activities

  • Watch and discuss political campaign ads from different political positions. Identify ways that each is strategic/manipulative. Showing a more egregious example first may help prepare students to look at other ads more critically. 

  • Select a controversial topic and seek students who support the topic and also select students who don’t support the topic and ask them to switch their beliefs and to convince the student to see their viewpoint

  • The 6 hour experiment: Ask students to not use screens for 6 hours to see how this experiment influences how they navigate the world of information. 

  • “Big Paper: Building a Silent Conversation” (Facing History) - uses writing, silence, and listening to help students explore a topic and different perspectives on it

  • "ACT UP for Evaluating Sources. Pushing Against Privilege": An approach to source evaluation that includes consideration of social privilege, perspective, and biases

Teaching Resources