NSF Convergence Accelerator Track F: Adapting and Scaling Existing Educational Programs to Combat Inauthenticity and Instill Trust in Information

Massachusetts Institute Of Technology, Cambridge MA

Investigators

Abstract

Learning how to find information and assess its quality is essential to making informed personal and civic decisions -- and to the health of a democracy. This project will shift attention from public education--leveraging existing effective, low-cost k-12 interventions--to education of the public. Through a three-year road map, and with partners in academia, industry, nonprofit, and government, a multidisciplinary human-centered design process for adapting effective interventions to new contexts will be produced--based on the team’s expertise in the sociology of information, effective web reading practices, curriculum development, and online delivery at scale. Effective approaches will be disseminated through an open software platform that integrates educational interventions and assessment. This approach will be tested with populations often excluded from information literacy efforts and who may be more vulnerable to misinformation campaigns, such as rural and indigenous communities with limited access to high-speed internet, military veterans, older adults, and military families. The project’s Phase I output will be to co-design, test, adapt, and scale misinformation interventions that have proven effective within educational settings to the broader public. In Phase I, the project will work with Humanities Montana, a convener of libraries and cultural institutions and advocate for engaged citizenship, to adapt proven educational interventions to serve rural, low-income citizens, including indigenous populations, in libraries and other community settings. In Phase II, this design process will be used to create targeted interventions for a range of groups outside the formal educational system who are vulnerable to misinformation campaigns. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.