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Over time, students become more and more familiar with reading scholarly sources, particularly in their majors. While learning to read closely and critically is a valuable skill, so is being able to clarify concepts and extract main points and the real-world value of research. Have …

Introduce Mike Caulfield’s “four moves and a habit” heuristic for quickly assessing sources encountered in daily life before spending time critically reading any one source, impulsively liking or sharing a source, or going down an endless rabbit hole to figure out what’s accurate. The moves …

Collaboratively map responses to a timely and relevant news event by reading laterally (quickly seeing how an event or topic is covered by multiple sources to see the range of approaches). On the board, construct a map or chart of various ways news organizations and/or …

A 2018 study of college students’ news-reading habits found over 80 percent encountered political memes and considered them a valuable part of understanding the news. Have students choose a political or social meme and write an interpretation that contextualizes, interprets, and analyzes the rhetorical aspects …

In a culture saturated with talking heads debating one another, sometimes resorting to “alternative facts,” and when proponents of extremist beliefs urge the curious to “research it yourself” once they’ve populated YouTube and the web with material that supports their fringe ideas, the idea of …

When students arrive at Gustavus, they need to become familiar with the campus and with being college students. Once they choose a major or two, they learn how a disciplinary community approaches ideas. But they need to know more than that. As free human beings …