Life Hacking Curriculum: Teaching Information Literacy SkillsDesigned as a Cocurricular at Olin College as part of an

Independent Study Called MetaOlin, Spring 2007

Statistics Skepticism

Goal Through the exploration of ways to “lie” with statistics, plots, and diagrams, come to an understanding of how to be skeptical about the way data is represented (statistics, plots, diagrams), and learn how to locate supporting documents to draw your own conclusions.

Resources How to Lie with Statistics by Darrell Huff and Irving Geis.

Double-Speak by William D. Lutz

We suggest using selections from these resources as both readings before the activity and as handouts afterwards.

Possible Activities

Give all students a different set of data and challenge them to invent ways to present the data in the most misleading way possible. A variant on the above: give each student or group of students the same set of data and assign each team a different bias/slant. Have a competition as to who can best present their slant using the same data set.

Advertising

Goal Explore ways that advertisers leverage statistics (see above) or qualitative descriptions to make a point. Understanding the policies for using statistics in advertising? (i.e. “9 of 10 dentists agree …”); Become a more critical consumer of information.

Resources Clip (or assign students to clip) several randomly selected articles from that day’s magazines and newspapers.

Search for clippings of print ads from sources such as Houtlust (http://blogger.xs4all.nl/marcg/) and video ads from places like Youtube(.com).

Possible Activities

Discuss strategies and methods for statistics usage as they're observed in the clippings. Have students locate the supporting studies or other source materials for the numbers and claims in a given advertisement (“where do these statistics come from?”), and assess the accuracy of the advertisement's claim.

Lie DetectorGoal Become aware of the need to examine the truth behind

claims of a story, and develop skills for doing so.

Resources Before students arrive, bring a number of well-written but factually controversial stories from Wikipedia.org, Snopes.com, or tabloid newspapers and typeset these (copy-paste into a word processor) so that their source is obscured. If desired, insert false sentences (that could plausibly be true) into the middle of these stories. Mark on a key which statements are false and which are true.

Possible Activities

Give students the obscured articles and inform them that these stories may contain both elements of truth and falsehood. Ask students to individually, without consultation of external sources, go through and highlight the material they believe to be false (have students remain quiet if they recognize a hoax they’ve seen before), then compare answers and ask why they identified the material as potentially incorrect. Give students the copy of the key with the false statements marked. Challenge students to “prove,” using any sources they desire, that a statement marked “false” in the key is in fact “true.”

Backing it Up

Goal Prove that something you are asserting is true, even in the face of fire. Learn how to “prove” what you cannot directly show and develop strategies for explaining scientific and technical phenomena to non-technical people.

Resources Before the activity, come up with a list of currently well-accepted but historically controversial scientific facts (evolution, the earth revolving around the sun, etc.)

Possible Activities

Give teams of students a fact and time (15-20 minutes) to assemble supporting evidence for their statement. Have each team present in turn, with the remainder of the students (and any participating teachers) acting as “skeptics” from the time period in question attempting to debunk the statement.

Speedreading

Goal Understand strategies you can use to raise your reading speed and comprehension.

Resources Breakthrough Rapid Reading by Peter Kump (or similar). The pretest and chapters 1-4 of the Kump book are appropriate for one session; later chapters may be used for later sessions if this activity is extended beyond a one week period.

Possible Activities

This module would largely follow the format given in the book. Have students take Kump’s pretest as they enter the room, then practice the strategies illustrated in chapters 1-4. At the end of the session, test everyone’s reading speed again and note improvements.

Note Taking (Shorthand)

Goal Share and discuss note-taking and learning strategies.

Resources Document on Teeline Complete shorthand system (see Boris).Handout on the Cornell Method (http://www.wcupa.edu/_ACADEMICS/cae.tut/TCornell.htm)Frames of Mind by Howard Gardner (discussing multiple intelligences)

Possible Activities

Choose an instructional book (or have students choose a book) from the library and read from it for 10 minutes while having students take notes using their current system (some students may bring laptops). Ask students to share with each other how they take notes. Share the Teeline and Cornell methods as well as Gardner’s theory of various modalities of learning, and have students discuss where they think they fall and what strategies they can use to improve their note-taking, and have each student propose an experiment in note-taking methods for themselves to try during the next week of classes. (What do they think will improve? How will they measure improvement? How will they ensure the validity of their results?) The following week, ask students to share the results of their experiences.

Emailing

Goal Increase email efficiency and reliability while minimizing inbox flooding. Understand the time and effort costs of email.

Resources Getting things done by David AllenThe “Inbox Zero” series from 43folders. (http://www.43folders.com/izero/)

Possible Activities

Have students estimate (and back up their estimates!) how much time they spend on email per day, and how much time the Olin community spends on email per year. Ask students if they can find examples of “good” and “bad” email style in their inboxes, and compile a list of strategies for writing efficient email.

Typing Efficiency

Goal Improve the efficiency and understand the ergonomics of typing. Since information is often conveyed through computer documents, improving the efficiency of the human-computer interface has direct benefits for information throughput.

Possible Activities

Explore typing ergonomics from a medical standpoint, and practice techniques as a group.Learn DvorakSet up text replacement applications.Benchmark test with follow-up test.

Using People to get Information

Goal Learn how to quickly find information by using people as a resource or search engine. Also, learn who’s who around Olin.

Resources The Tipping Point by Malcom Gladwell

Possible Activities

Talk about what kinds of people are useful as resources (mavens, connectors etc.) Find specific Olin examples for people who are useful resources. Discuss pros and cons of finding information via different channels of people. For example, if you wanted to know who served on HB two years ago, you could ask a current HB member or an upperclassman, who knows what and in what form?

Email Etiquette

Goal Learn how to tailor the use of e-mail to the situation at hand. Basically, being aware of the current situation you’re engaged in and using appropriate formality etc. in order to gain the best information.

Possible Activities

Go through actual examples brought by students (especially of hard e-mails to profs, employers etc.).

PowerPoint/ Presentations

Goal Learn how to make an effective presentation with visual media (eg. PowerPoint).

Resources Ask Mark Chang for his “how to give a presentation” presentation.“The Cognitive style of Powerpoint” by Edward Tufte.

Possible Activities

Compare and contrast ‘good’ and ‘bad’ slides and presentations.

Final Topic: Meta Discussion

Goal Show how information literacy was the main topic throughout all of the “topics.”

Possible Activities

Share feedback on the co-curricular itself. This activity, apart from a valuable way to obtain feedback on the cocurricular, is an exercise in information literacy development itself, namely the evaluation component. This involvesthe critical evaluation of the completion of the task or the new understanding of a concept, in this case the entire cocurricular.