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INTERVIEW & OBSERVATION
I interviewed Colin before he started his module and asked him a few questions about how he chooses learning experiences. He mentioned that he is always interested in taking courses, attending webinars and reading books on topics related to content moderation because there are few of these sources that are specifically on content moderation itself. While he is not a fact checker, he thought this course would be helpful because knowing more about fact checking and spotting misinformation would help him build skills related to the identification of fake news or fake content (V., personal communication, May 30, 2022). He did not have many concerns about the course, other than that it might be simpler than he would like. He did say that he expects online courses to include multimedia, even if they aren’t very interactive (V., personal communication, May 30, 2022).
Once he was ready to start the module, Colin clicked on the course thumbnail to open the course and laughed because on the course overview page is the first place that he saw the audience of the class listed, which is seniors. Despite not being the intended audience of the learning experience, Colin decided to continue because he thought it would be helpful to see how “knowledge around disinformation is disseminated to less media savvy people” and he might learn some techniques for more effectively interacting with colleagues that are sharing misinformation (V., personal communication, May 30, 2022).
Interview and Observation: Text
(Mahadevan, 2021).
Interview and Observation: Welcome
Throughout the learning experience, Colin spoke aloud, like he was walking the both of us through the module. I did not answer him, I just let him talk and observed his progress through the second module, which was on types of misinformation. The first page of module 2 had the learning outcomes, a time estimate of 25 minutes, and an outline of the lesson content. He skimmed this page quickly and went into the first linked section of the module, Misinformation Can Come in All Forms.
Interview and Observation: Text
(Mahadevan, 2021).
Interview and Observation: Welcome
Misinformation Can Come in All Forms covers the most common ways misinformation can be found online and learners can click topic areas to see examples. Colin clicked on all 5 topic areas and carefully read the text, analyzed the memes, photos, watched the deep fake videos, looked at the screenshots from other platforms and clicked on examples of fake news websites.
While he was clicking on these media examples, he was a little annoyed because he could tell that the social media images were fake, but he did not know why, and the fact checking team never explained how they determined they were fake. He also said that he really wanted to know how the memes were made. He said that “I understand [the course is] for seniors, and it is trying to make them more critical, but as a professional I would be interested in how the research behind it worked and how you can tell this picture is from somewhere else” (V., personal communication, May 30, 2022).
Interview and Observation: Text
(Mahadevan, 2021).
Interview and Observation: Welcome
This module was full of links to external sources, and Colin clicked on all of them. One of the first he clicked was to a New York Times article, which was behind a paywall. He was disappointed as he thought it sounded interesting. Another external link was to PolitiFact, which excited him, as it is a site that he consults frequently. He read the summary of the article, watched the video, and then as he skimmed through the PolitiFact article he highlighted information on his screen. He then looked around the PolitiFact website and saved an article for later.
Back onto the Poynter course site, an article on “pink slime” was linked to, which was a term Colin had never heard. He clicked on the link, but did not spend much time on the site, as it was very low-level information and did not tell him much. The term was not defined, so he pulled open Wikipedia to find out what it was, and he read the key points aloud.
The next article linked to was on using satire to spread fake news on social media, and some of the headlines made him laugh aloud. He spent a few minutes reading over an infographic on how satire becomes fake news. The article also included a link to a network of news sites, with downloadable data that they collect on fake news.
Interview and Observation: Text
(Mahadevan, 2021).
Interview and Observation: Welcome
Back on the Poynter website, under False News Websites he came across the second mention of “pink slime” websites, this time in a video from a MediaWise Ambassador. This video did give a brief explanation of what pink slime sites are, but it introduced new ideas, such as reverse image searches and lateral reading, which were never expounded upon. This puzzled Colin, “what seniors would know what a reverse image search or lateral reading is?” (V., personal communication, May 30, 2022). Since the topic areas are collapsed and you must click on the titles to see the media, Colin could not see that the pink slime video was included, until he had made his way to the end of this course page and had already done some research on his own.
The last section of this module is titled Activity: Checking Your Filter Bubble. Colin breathed a sigh of relief, “at last, an activity!” The activity was clicking on an external link that leads to The Markup website, and a tool that lets you compare Facebook feeds from different audiences. He spent time going through all the audiences and comparing, for example, the feeds of boomers vs millennials. When he was done using the tool, he looked around The Markup website and bookmarked it for later, he thought the articles looked interesting.
Interview and Observation: Text
(The Markup, 2022).
Interview and Observation: Welcome
Back on the Poynter course site, Colin realized that visiting the split screen tool was the activity and he seemed disappointed that the activity did not require him to do anything other than look at a tool and read additional text.
Overall, the introduction module and module 2, which I observed, were estimated to take 45 minutes in total to complete. Colin clicked on all the resources and analyzed what he was presented with, and these two modules took him almost 2 hours to work through.
After Colin finished module two, I conducted a longer interview, where I asked him if the course met expectations, as well as what he thought of how multimedia was used.
Colin was not overly impressed with the module, he said that while it was very professional in appearance, it could have been better designed (V., personal communication, May 30, 2022). In our first interview Colin mentioned that the course might be useful for some of his colleagues or might give him tips for speaking with colleagues that share misinformation. Checking back in with him after the learning experience, Colin was no longer of this opinion, as the course is not directly related to their jobs, was too simple for someone in the field of content moderation, but too detailed for colleagues not specifically interested in this or related topic areas (V., personal communication, May 30, 2022).
Module two of the course was brimming with links to external articles, videos, and tools. Colin acknowledged that having external articles helped to prove the point that before sharing information you should verify it using additional sources, however, he found it frustrating to always be going in and out of the course site. He mentioned that having all sources inside the course site would be more convenient and that there should be a list of articles which you could refer to if you wanted to dig deeper into a specific topic (V., personal communication, May 30, 2022).
Colin found the multimedia components engaging and he thought that the module used multimedia well, it had a good mix of text, video, images, and audio. The videos looked very professional, which was a pleasant change from most of the webinars and courses he attends. He would have liked more or longer videos, as he found the videos included in the module to be too introductory. He felt that “some of the content in text could have been presented and developed in videos with examples, instead of just a two-minute video about a very broad topic and then you have to click and go through different resources” (V., personal communication, May 30, 2022). Observing him I did notice that he spent significantly more time outside of the course site than in the actual module.
If he had the chance to change something about the learning experience, Colin said that he would prefer a module that goes more in depth and does a better job of explaining terms. He also thought that it might be helpful to have a quiz at the end of the module.
Colin plans to finish the rest of the course because it shows fake content and how it works, and even if it is quite simple, he does find the topic interesting (V., personal communication, May 30, 2022).
Interview and Observation: Text
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