Civic Online Reasoning by Stanford University

WHAT IS IT 

The Civic Online Reasoning curriculum provides free lessons, videos, and assessments to help educators teach students to effectively search for and evaluate social and political information online. Developed from Stanford History Education Group’s research with professional fact checkers, these classroom-tested materials give students the opportunity to practice applying fact checker evaluation strategies to real world examples. Students learn to use Wikipedia wisely, evaluate claims on social media, determine website reliability, identify trustworthy evidence, and more. 

WHY WE LKIE IT 

EMPOWERMENT—All COR resources have been field tested in real classrooms, gleaning input from educators and students. 

FLEXIBILITY—Materials address real life situations, such as evaluating claims on social media and making wise use of online resources. Lesson plans are self-contained and do not require extensive background knowledge, meaning they can be integrated without significant prep. 

CURIOSITY—Civic Online Reasoning modeled their curriculum resources on strategies used by fact checkers at major news organizations. Resources are designed to address the most common student errors and build practices of media literacy and foundations for thoughtful democratic engagement. 

UTILITY—Once students have learned the fact checking strategies, educators can integrate these practices throughout the day. 

TIPS 

Use the catalog of videos to quickly reinforce media literacy best practices.

Research has shown that recognizing and responding to unproductive evaluative approaches is essential for supporting media literacy. This research article offers meaningful analysis on this topic.