JoinResearch and Teaching: Building Information Literacy Skills Using Science News Media: Evidence for a Hands-On Approach
News media reports of scientific discoveries are often oversimplified, lacking nuance and context. As a result, citizens need both science literacy and information literacy
skills to both decode the science content in a media report and track down the original scientific literature that prompted the media report. This article evaluates the effectiveness of a scaffolded science and information literacy skill building assignment in an undergraduate environmental science course, modeled after real-world, information-seeking tasks.