Session 4B: Research Influencers: Recreating Summarizing, Analysis and Critical Thinking (Workshop)

Moderator: Justin Bibler

3:30PM – 5PM Pacific Time

Students want to have agency and ownership over their learning. Gen Z and Gen Alpha’s lives are framed within digital narratives of their own making. Instead of fighting this form, I have developed extensive projects on how to scaffold research the “traditional” way and pair that with documentary interview practices. While compiling answers to a research question (finding and summarizing sources), students then are given rhetoric and filming tools on how to disseminate information they learned to society at large using man-on-the-street techniques. Students then have to work on conceding viewpoints by asking probing questions and playing devil’s advocate. Later, students reinforce this knowledge (research and man-on-the-street perspective) by editing their interviews and splicing them with news anchor type commentary. Having a hands-on digital project has forced students to bring text to life, scrutinize print sources so that they know how to describe the topic at hand to the average citizen on the street, and then forces them to take an “influencer” approach on their position of the research regarding the topic. This workshop would feature student projects, instructions, rubrics and hands-on practice to those attending.