Giving Compass' Take:

• Senior director for Teaching and Learning With Technology at Penn State explains how its programs encourage students to consume and interpret information from digital media sources accurately and critically.

• What is the misinformation problem and how does it negatively affect college students? 

• Read about how social media has exacerbated mistrust in journalism. 

As senior director for Teaching and Learning with Technology at Penn State, I see both opportunities and challenges around where technology and learning intersect. But one of the most pressing barriers I’ve come across—on campus and off—has to do with processing the information we read online everyday, and teaching students how to think critically about sources as well as how to share and articulate credible information.

As educators, our responsibility is to begin to answer questions such as: “How do we help students become better consumers of information, data, and communication?” Fluency in each of these areas is integral to 21st century-citizenry, for which we must prepare students.

What’s more: if we are to discover the next steps for edtech, we must first understand the challenges that students face in today’s digital and tech-enabled environment.

At Penn State, particularly within the Teaching and Learning with Technology, we strive to focus on understanding human problems and using available technology to solve them. In the same way that high-performing athletes achieve success in their sport by practicing skills often, we must provide students with ample opportunities to process information and data and then communicate their new knowledge to appropriate audiences.

When coursework provides students with opportunities to consume information, assess its accuracy and usefulness, derive knowledge from that information, and communicate their findings to an audience, they build skills that will serve them well in their personal and professional lives. If students understand what it takes to publish verified and trustworthy content, they can apply critical thinking to any kind of media that they consume.

Read the full article about digital media by Jennifer Sparrow at EdSurge