Heather Lincoln and Kay Griffiths present on delivering fake news workshops to finance and business students

1. Library
Services
Teaching activities for
business news and fake news
information literacy
Heather Lincoln: Business Liaison Librarian
Kay Griffiths: Business Senior Library Assistant
Imperial College London
Fake News Conference – London South Bank University
5th June 2018

2. Aim and rationale
• Business and ‘fake’ news teaching offered to 300+ MSc Finance students.
One hour ‘hands-on’ session part of a series to support students’ final
project research
• Five sessions of 40 students: Business Databases for the Applied/Research
Project: Finding relevant literature, news and mergers and acquisitions
information
• New College Learning and Teaching Strategy: importance of critical thinking
and integration of professionalism alongside information ethics. Use of
appropriate learning technologies encouraged
• Aim to develop ‘Process not Product’ teaching and highlight concepts of
evaluating information sources
• Information literacy and critical thinking essential for business student
academic integrity and professional business careers
Mellon, C. A. (1984) Process Not Product in Course-Integrated Instruction: A Generic Model of Library Research, College and Research Libraries, 45, 471-478, [Online] Available
from: http://crl.acrl.org/content/45/6/471.full.pdf+html [Accessed 20th October 2013]

3. Business news activities
1. Content, bias and authority:
• Factual reporting or opinion piece?
• political viewpoint?
• reliable source or might some sources need further investigation?
2. Fake news and the role of social media
3. Comparison of newspaper database with Google search
These topics incorporated into a session which also covered searching
for academic articles and mergers & acquisitions information

4. 1. News source activity: Content, bias & authority
Initial Activity: database demo + student hands-on
search for news topic.
Asked: Where would you go to find the information
you need?
Aim: highlight quick Google searches don’t always get
best results for academic research/students often
think no further than a basic web search
Developed into an exercise where…
We used AB Tutor software to share Word doc. to students’ PCs that
contained reference list of news sources (with hyperlinks) on a
specific topic.
Students followed the links/considered each news article as
potential information sources for their project:
• Communications of the ACM academic article from EBSCO
• FT.com
• Forbes
• The Slate
• CNBC
We discussed the sources with
focus on: content, bias and
authority
• We received a few
questions about the
validity of opinions in
news coverage
• Students participated
positively, with the
interactivity

5. Five Minute Task
Look at the reference list and follow the links to look at the
resources within it. Are these they types of resources you would
include on your Applied/Research Project?
Would you use
what you have
found as business
intelligence for
your Masters
degree?
Does what you have found pass an
evaluation on the quality of information?
PROMPT Test
P= Presentation
R=Relevance
O=Objectivity
M=Method (clear how data collected?)
P=Provenance (how was it published?)
T=Timeliness
Would you use
what you have
found to inform a
business decision
in your
professional
career?

6. 2. News source activity:
Fake news & the role of social media
Activity: Presentation, discussion and questions on:
• fake news and its features in business students’ information
searching context
• the role of social media in fake news
• how filter bubbles and echo chambers in social media might affect
search results and news feeds
• importance of the validity of information for students’ academic
integrity and professional careers

7. 3. News source activity:
Newspaper database vs. Google/Google Scholar
Activity: Database demonstration & hands-on online search by students
• Looked at results of news story search (Amazon buying Whole Foods):
using Google (quick search) vs. Factiva newspaper database
• Applying search techniques in Google Scholar highlights how
information can be found in a more focused way (e.g. filetype:pdf)
Activity: Presentation & class discussion on:
• Google & Google Scholar ranking of results by commonly viewed
material/via Google account’s search history
• Benefits of using a proprietary database (refine results set, historical
data, additional features - e.g. M&A and financial information, etc).

8. Reflections
Students fed back that being introduced to different sources of
information/how to check or distinguish between sources was useful
Small amount of feedback that there was too much focus on
company news (for the more quantitative-focused Finance students)
The reference list activity would need to be regularly refreshed as
• links might break
• topic may lose currency
Could further develop activity on the role of social media
Need to do more research into how these IL skills are incorporated
into students’ assessed modules

9. Library
Services
Questions or comments?
h.lincoln@imperial.ac.uk
k.griffiths@imperial.ac.uk
Business, Engineering and Natural Sciences Liaison Team,
Imperial College London