A collaborative effort
The COR curriculum was developed by the Stanford History Education Group as part of MediaWise—a partnership of SHEG, the Poynter Institute, and the Local Media Association. The MediaWise collaboration is supported by Google.org as part of their Google News Initiative.
The goal of MediaWise is to provide educators with tools to help students evaluate online information. It is based on classroom research that shows that students in COR classrooms gain significantly in the knowledge and skills needed to determine the trustworthiness of digital content.
From history teachers to educational technology specialists to librarians in our district, those who have become familiar with Civic Online Reasoning are using the lessons and assessments to engage students in combating misinformation and to provide a skill set to foster empowered citizenship in the digital age.
Mark Gomez
Research-based curriculum
Our approach rests on peer-reviewed research. Based on observations of professional fact checkers at the nation’s leading news outlets, we identified a set of questions and strategies that should guide online evaluation.
When you come across information online, you should ask:
- 1. Who’s behind the information?
- 2. What’s the evidence?
- 3. What do other sources say?