Community Read

Book cover for "Verified"
Community Read Event

Community Read is a program of the Faculty Senate's First Year Experience Committee (co-chairs Kristin Poling and Michael McDonald), similar to NEA's Big Read, to consider vital topics across disciplines.

Our campus Community Read selection for the 2024-2025 academic year is Verified: How to Think Straight, Get Duped Less, and Make Better Decisions About What to Believe Online, by Mike Caulfield and Sam Wineburg, 2023. 

Verified offers an evidence-based approach to web literacy to help readers develop concrete strategies for navigating text, images, and videos--skills even more crucial in an election year, and with increased student reliance on AI images and text. The approach starts with foundational methods, lateral reading and the SIFT method, adding specific techniques for Google searches, deceptive videos, TikTok trends, and stealth advertising. Real-world examples, demonstrate how misinformation spreads, and how to interrupt that spread. 

Research suggests that digital literacy needs to be reinforced across the curriculum. We can make a real difference in how our students navigate information online by campus-wide programming with this book. 

If you are considering adopting Verified in any of your courses, please request an instructor ebook from University of Chicago Press or request a free copy from FYE.

You may also : 

  • Participate (with your students) in fall and winter programming based on this book (see 2024-2024 Events, below)
  • Read the first chapter of Verified online
  • Learn more about the advantages of teaching the SIFT method in this article from the Reporter
  • Listen to this interview with co-author Mike Caulfield on the Teaching in Higher Ed podcast with Bonnie Stochoviak
  • Read this New York Times  article on the unchecked acceleration in disinformation
  • Explore this teaching module on lateral reading from co-author Sam Wineburg’s Civic Online Reasoning program (access free with registration)

A pilot of the book and common assignments occurred in summer 2024. In fall term, First Year Seminars are using the book, with sample assignments created by Mardigian Library and the Hub. Because these skills are crucial in all disciplines, we encourage all instructors to use book selections or related assignments, adapted for each of your classes. Please reach out to the First Year Experience Committee with any questions or ideas.

Our reading last year was Hadha Baladuna: Arab American Narratives of Boundary and Belonging, by Ghassan Zeineddine, Nabeel Abraham, and Sally Howell.  In 2022-2023,we read All We Can Save, 60 essays and poems related to the climate crisis, edited by Ayana Elizabeth Johnson and Katharine K. Wilkinson, part of the All We Can Save Project. In 2021-2022 we read William D. Lopez's Separated: Family and Community in the Aftermath of an Immigration Raid, tracing economic, social, psychological, health, and educational fallout from a 2013 ICE raid in Washtenaw County, Michigan. Dr. Lopez is assistant professor at the UM School of Public Health. Our 2020-2021 book was How to Be an Antiracist, by Ibram X. Kendi. Faculty members created videos on book chapters for class use, now on the UM YouTube playlist, and Mardigian Library posted antiracism resources. Our first selection, 2019-2020, was Rebecca Skloot's The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, the woman whose famed HeLa cells underlie countless medical breakthroughs.