C&CS Presents: Deconstructing Environmental Conflict: Bias, News, Perspective, Nov 15 at 1pm EST

Connect and Communicate Series Presents

Deconstructing Environmental Conflict: Bias, News, Perspective

Presented by Sharon Radcliffe, CSU East Bay

November 15 at 1 pm EST (10 am PST)

Register here for the Zoom link!

Teaching students to understand different perspectives and be able to (and see the importance of) checking facts and corroborating viewpoints a, especially when dealing with controversial issues, including those centered around the environment and sustainable living, has never been so important. With an administration constantly butting heads with scientists on such basic issues as climate change and the desirable direction of energy production, students need to feel empowered to analyze, and understand conflict and sort through facts and opinions in order to form their own ideas. In this interactive presentation, the audience will discover some ways of integrating instruction in bias, (word connotations), structure of argument, and perspective into information literacy lesson or course, focusing discussion around recent environmental conflicts including the Dakota pipeline, the Mauna Kea telescope project, and the Flint Water crisis. Techniques for having students work in groups analyzing documents, media, and articles relating to an environmental conflict will be discussed, along with readings related to bias in news. The group approach fits with both a social constructivist and critical pedagogy approach to teaching. A list of sources relating to news bias will be provided, along with articles to read for background on environmental issues, including cultural perspectives. Connections between bias and language will be discussed; including how to derive clues from author’s tone, to infer purpose. How to teach students the importance of finding corroborating evidence will also be discussed. The audience will be able to brainstorm their own ideas on information literacy, evaluating news, and environmental/sustainability topics.

Sharon Radcliffe has been a librarian working in public, academic and special libraries, including the Environmental Protection Agency, for over 25 years. She is currently the Business Librarian at California State University, East Bay where she serves on the Sustainability Committee. She recently attended the Sustainability Across the Curriculum Leadership Workshop at CSU Channel Islands, sponsored by the Association for Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education (AASHE). At CSU East Bay She has helped develop Institutional Learning Outcomes in both sustainability and information literacy and also helped draft course descriptions for the new sustainability minor. She also developed student internship descriptions for the “Academic Core” building project, which will house the new library. She is involved in many ways in promoting sustainability at CSU East Bay through her teaching and work on the sustainability committee. As library faculty library liaison for the College of Business and Economics, she also selects books for the library on sustainability from a business and economic perspective. She has taught many online courses on business research, research methodology, visual literacy, and learning theory for both RUSA and Simmons College of Library and Information Studies.

C&CS is supported by PaLA and the CRD, and we thank them for our support. The session will be made available on the C&CS page after the session. If you would like to participate as a speaker for the series, please let us know! https://crdpala.org/connect-communicate/