In recent times there has been a dramatic rise in the spread of misinformation through social media. It is becoming a critical skill to be able to effective analyze an internet news source. Even those that know how to analyze articles often skip steps or overlook red flags in the rush to post a certain article out of a sense of emotional urgency.

This instructor-led training aims to provide a pneumatic device for highlighting the key characteristics of an online article as well as giving some guided group practice with analyzing those characteristics. The facilitator guide contains an array of recommended and optional activities to help solidify the core concepts within the SHADER model, and the participants guide* contains spaces engage with the activities. With a memorable name and some confidence built from practice, the goal is that the learners will readily apply this model in their daily lives on social media and/or share it with others.

*Participants guide is in development

When looking at the practicality of this product, I struggled with two main questions. First, what type of presentation would be best to achieve the goal of media literacy, and second, what type of organization would use this type of training.

With the project having no initial audience, it was tempting to make this project using an eLearning authoring tool such as Articulate Storyline or Adobe Captivate. This platform would allow learners to take the course on their own time and under their own volition. While I may translate this project on one of those platforms in the future, it is important to integrate the group discussion and instructor guidance that can only be provided by the instructor-led training model.

With an instructor-led model, there needs to be an organization that could utilize the training, and have participants with a vested interest in learning the topic. With this in mind, organizations that offer workshops to the general public or to a social group would be a great target for this type of training. Recreation/community centers, churches, universities, and clubs are all possible clients for this type of training. In the corporate sphere, offering SHADER training as an optional PD could be desirable, however, I could only see social media companies that work with the spread of media such as Twitter or Facebook having this training as a required PD.

The design of this training started with the development of the SHADER model. I identified the most important elements of an article, and organized and put them in the order by which you should use it (e.g check the Site first, then the Headline, then the Author etc). From there I detailed how a reader might check each of those elements. For some elements, like Author and Date, its as simple as looking in the right place, but for others, there are many more details and resources. After the skeleton of the course was built, I worked on developing activities to engage the learners and give practice for some of the more complex topics. Choosing different activities doubles as a way for facilitators to augment the length of the training to fit their needs. Last I proofed and finalized the presentation, the facilitator guide, and the participant guide.

Results for this project are still in progress and will be updated when the training is given and feedback is obtained.

Personally, I learned a lot from the process of developing this training. In particular, the importance of the facilitator and participants guide and how those guides can complement the presentation and keep the presentation from being too text-heavy. I also learned many valuable Powerpoint techniques that help with the presentation of some of the dense content within the training.