As artificial intelligence, or AI, becomes smarter and more deeply embedded in how we access information and algorithms increasingly dictate what information we consume, how can we train students to spot and respond to misinformation? And what ethical considerations do we need to think through along the way?  

To address these vital questions, SAGE Publishing — the parent of Social Science Space – will hold its Third Annual Critical Thinking Bootcamp on August 9. The free three-hour virtual event, starting at 9 a.m. ET, will offer insights, guidance, and resources to help librarians, professors, and other staff to engage in critical thinking in and out of the classroom. The sessions will spotlight trends in personal technology affecting our media ecosystem and offer educational tactics to help students combat misinformation. 

Experienced librarians and social and behavioral scientists (detailed below) will speak on:  

• “Why Algorithms Matter: Algorithm Literacy for Search, Research, & Bias Awareness | Whether through search, research, or the messages and media we consume daily, we receive information via algorithms built and designed by humans with preexisting biases. However, by nature algorithms are invisible, making our ability to critically interact with them difficult. This session will help increase your algorithmic literacy and the role you can play in mitigating algorithmic bias across campus.
• “The Rise of AI: Challenges and Opportunities | Artificial intelligence (AI) is expected to impact nearly every industry in the coming decades and significantly reshape the workforce and the classroom. Students will need training with a broader, interdisciplinary outlook to understand the impact of AI and think critically about its societal implications. In this session, the panelists will discuss how to build curricula that draw from areas as diverse as computer science, psychology, and information studies and the myriad ways AI will affect higher education.
• “Technology & Ethics: Practicing & Teaching Technoethics | As academic professionals, what is our role in addressing the ethical concerns that arise with technology? While the subject of ethics is often discussed in relation to technology, how can we place it within both our pedagogical practice and policy? The panel will evaluate existing policies for tackling ethical issues in tech and offer suggestions for the future.

Time for discussion, Q&A, and networking will be provided. The recording, slides, and toolkit will be distributed to all registrants. 

Speakers

Nicole A. Cooke (Keynote) | Nicole A. Cooke is the Augusta Baker Endowed Chair and an associate professor at the University of South Carolina. Her research and teaching interests include human information behavior, critical cultural information studies, and diversity and social justice in librarianship. She was the 2019 Association of Library and Information Science Education Excellence in Teaching Award recipient, and she has edited and authored several books, including Information Services to Diverse Populations and Fake News and Alternative Facts: Information Literacy in a Post-truth Era.

Alexis Bonnell | Alexis Bonnell is the emerging technology evangelist for government and strategic business executive at Google. She is also a senior visiting fellow for the Krach Institute for Tech Diplomacy at Purdue. Bonnell was one of the founding members of the internet’s original trade association. She led companies transitioning to a digital existence, and brought digital transformations to warzones and global emergencies at the United Nations. At the United States Agency for International Development, she led transformation and knowledge management, co-founded the U.S Global Development Lab, and served as chief innovation officer. Bonnell has led more than a dozen large-scale digital and organizational transformation initiatives and is an expert in organizational behavior and culture, and human-centered design. At Google, she dedicates her time to helping public servants catalyze their missions with technology, solving the world’s toughest challenges. and specializes in the public sector’s use of emerging technologies like AI and AI governance.

Dan Chibnall | Dan Chibnall is the STEM librarian at Drake University in Des Moines, Iowa, and has been in that role since July 2016. Prior to that, he served as the user services and instructional design librarian at Grand View University for 10 years. His focus is on embedded librarianship, information literacy, science communication, information behaviors, and helping students become better researchers. Chibnall teaches courses on the relationship between science fiction and science, misinformation and personal information behaviors, and science communication’s role in educating the public about the role of science in everyday life. He is currently the past-president of the Iowa Library Association. He received his MLS from the University of Missouri-Columbia in 2005.

Renée DiResta | Renée DiResta is the technical research manager at the Stanford Internet Observatory, a cross-disciplinary program of research, teaching and policy engagement for the study of abuse in current information technologies. Renee investigates the spread of malign narratives across social and media networks. Her work examines the ways in which distinct actor types leverage the information ecosystem to exert influence, from local activists promoting health misinformation and conspiracy theories, to well-resourced full-spectrum information operations executed by state-sponsored actors.

Brooklyne Gipson | Brooklyne Gipson is an assistant professor of communication at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. Gipson is an interdisciplinary scholar whose areas of research include digital and social media environments, Black feminist digital/technology studies, and the intersection of race, gender, social media, and power. Her work examines how social media platforms facilitate civic engagement within Black communities. Her current research takes an intersectional approach to analyzing how anti-Black discourses manifest themselves in everyday discursive exchanges within Black social media spaces.

Mata Haggis-Burridge | Mata Haggis-Burridge is a professor of creative and entertainment games at Breda University of Applied Sciences, where they have worked since 2010. Their work focuses on video game content, creation, and culture within the arts and commercial entertainment context. Topics range between social impact (such as diversity representation), storytelling methods and creative expression, to detailed practical studies of design, technology, and content implementation. Haggis-Burridge is a writer for commercial video games, a member of the Writers’ Guild of Great Britain’s video game committee, on the steering committee for the Dutch ‘Kunst ≈ Onderzoek’ platform, treasurer for Breda Game City, and an external expert of Creative Media Europe. They completed a PhD in literature in 2006.

Sarah Morris | Sarah Morris is the head of instruction and engagement at the Emory University Libraries and has been in her role since 2018. Prior to that Sarah worked as an assessment librarian and a first-year experience librarian. Since 2016, Sarah has focused much of her research and teaching on misinformation, modern media ecosystems, and the Internet and society. She has developed curricula on these topics in partnerships with the Mozilla Foundation, has taught both workshops and for-credit classes on misinformation, and has provided professional development training for librarians on misinformation with ACRL and the Library Juice Academy. She edited a Cookbook volume with ACRL on critical thinking skills, which was published in 2020, and the recent SAGE title Check That Fact. Morris received her MSIS degree from the University of Texas at Austin and also holds an MA from the University of Chicago.

Rosalind Tedford | Rosalind Tedford is the director for research and instruction at the Z. Smith Reynolds Library at Wake Forest University. She has been teaching information literacy classes since 2003, and since 2016 has been focusing her teaching on helping people understand the cycle of mis- and disinformation online and how they can be better consumers of information. She teaches for-credit classes to WFU students and has also taught numerous workshops and lifelong learning classes on the topic.