Now that I’ve seen all of the presentations (including my own team), I have a lot of thoughts that I am sure will just make my own paper more difficult! I have also gotten away from my early efforts to search for a way to link my love of pop music with blog posts, so I will go back to that in an effort to ameliorate my current mood!
Team 4 was the first team to present. They chose an e-learning course with a very clever name, ‘Hoarding Frogs in a Wheelbarrow’ (which does not sound easy!). It sounds like an interesting premise for a learning event and I think the observation that it is curated by only one person, thereby leaving it open to bias, is a valid one.
The team’s individual projects are as follows (Chaddock, 2022, para. 8):
- “Alisha: How does engagement through social presence affect cognition?
- Ben: How does the resource utilize constructivist and behaviourist learning methods?
- Melissa: How do misinformation and bias affect resource quality (credibility & accuracy), especially when community members are encouraged to contribute?
- Sharmila: How do we define quality? Who gets to define quality?”
I really resonate with Melissa’s question about bias. Misinformation and bias relate quite closely to regulatory capture that I am investigating in my own research. I work in the nuclear industry and if I do the same search that Caulfield (2017) mentioned, but starting with ‘is radiation’, I get Figure 1:
His solution to combat misinformation with info-environmentalism is a good one, I think. As experts in our fields, we can combat online misinformation with the concrete examples he gave; updating Wikipedia, posting factual information, and answering questions on fora (Caulfield, 2017).
I want to take this to my own project and consciously work to spread factual information in an effort to combat the misinformation that is so prevalent.
References:
526.1.3 – Team Blog – Ben’s Blog. (18 April, 2022 From https://malat-webspace.royalroads.ca/rru0206/2022-04-18/
Caulfield. (23 October, 2017) Info-Environmentalism: An Introduction. From https://er.educause.edu/articles/2017/10/info-environmentalism-an-introduction