Lambeth College is an education institution that encourages inquisitive minds, celebrates curiosity and supports scepticism. We expect research to be properly conducted, facts checked and opinions reached after reviewing and accessing information sources.
Education isn’t about telling people what to think but is about critical thinking, how people can approach information presented and protect themselves. Our educational role is to enable students to thrive in digital environments, be better citizens, and on a professional level to follow the scientific reality and peer reviewed facts and practices. In the real world, nurses or health and social care workers will struggle if they reject the science behind vaccination and engineering graduates if they believed in a flat earth, at least if they plan to work on CrossRail and the tunnels to align.
The concepts of misleading news articles, bias and conspiracy theories are not new but the arrival of COVID-19 and the resulting lockdowns and economic damage has created a perfect breeding ground for expansion of all of the above as well as removing some of the traditional checks to them. Existing resources including the UK’s government Prevent agenda and the ones around Digital Safety and Referencing go some way to aiding students in checking for Fake News but not in addressing conspiratorial thinking and theories. A project was set up to fill this gap and produce resources that can be deployed within the LSBU Group and beyond to aid support students and staff.
Research was conducted with different student cohorts from October to February and the results of these surveys and consultations has fed directly into the creation of support resources around behaviours online, mental health, fake news and conspiracies. These include Mythbuster sessions for all students, digital support resources for students and vocation specific resources for teachers to deploy and a computer game (Look After Yourself), based around dealing with anxieties and set in the college.
Resources to help you bust these myths!
- Snopes.com
- FullFact.org
- BBC Bitesize
- Report fake news here
