Curate and SIFT SoTL

Learning From Our Teaching

What is Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL)

The Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL) involves systematic research on teaching and learning processes, aiming to improve educational practices by making them more effective and engaging. It encourages educators to critically assess their teaching methods, share findings, and adopt evidence-based strategies to enhance student learning outcomes. SoTL fosters a culture of continuous improvement and collaboration among educators, ultimately benefiting both teachers and students.

Doing SoTL on Curate and SIFT

The Curate and SIFT assignment is currently an IRB approved collaborative SoTL project in the Foundations program HUM00230156. The four Summer 2024 pilot faculty along with support staff and a librarian have collected data and are analyzing their experiences using a Lesson Study methodology. The plan is for this work to turn into a more formal presentation or publication in the broader SoTL world of conferences/journals. But this work is also informing communications and trainings for the Fall 2024 and Winter 2025 roll out of Curate and SIFT as a common assignment in all Foundations courses through workshops and resources on our Adopting page on this site.

Upcoming Presentations and Publications

SoTL Commons

The Curate and SIFT SoTL team has had a poster presentation accepted at the SoTL Commons Conference, taking place from February 26-28 in Savannah, Georgia! Here is the abstract for our upcoming poster session.

Download the SoTL Commons Poster

Curate and SIFT: A Common Assignment Lesson Study around Discerning Truth in an AI-Influenced World

Patrick Beaucesne, Autumm Caines, Anne Dempsey, Shelley Jarenski, Nadja Rottner, Jessica Riviere

University of Michigan Dearborn, Michigan, USA

In response to growing threats of misinformation and disinformation in a GenAI era, faculty at the University of Michigan-Dearborn in the Summer and Fall of 2024 piloted a web literacy assignment designed to be included in every first-year seminar. The authors of this poster participated in a lesson study (Wahman, Peplow, Kumar, and Refaei 2020) of the assignment and are sharing their in-progress analysis. The common assignment is titled "Curate and SIFT," based on the method proposed in Mike Caulfield and Samuel Wineburg's monograph Verified (2023), which argues that students and faculty have trouble sorting reliable from unreliable information when searching for sources online. Caulfield developed the SIFT method based on the habits of professional fact checkers who know that traditional digital and information literacy strategies do not work in a context where such "cheap signals" like URLs or authority cues can be easily faked. In addition to student performance on the common assignment, authors used student surveys, student reflection, and critical reflection on their experience as designers or instructors to uncover what students’ learned. While we anticipated reflections on changes in students’ critical thinking (Grand Challenge #1), we found much greater evidence for this assignment promoting increased student engagement (Grand Challenge #2). When students provided the media examples used (“Curate”), individual student engagement and peer to peer interaction appeared to increase. We also witnessed cognitive and emotional development as students experienced challenges, and sometimes dismay, when engaging with their media environments. We will seek feedback and conversation about elements of the assignment, such as how many iterations of SIFT students need to practice. We can also discuss the experience of developing an assignment together as a team of faculty, instructional designers, and librarians.

Our Pilot Group

Faculty

Shelly Jarenski

Shelly is an Associate Professor of English Literature and Affiliate Faculty of the Women’s and Gender Studies, LGBTQ+ Studies, African and African American Studies, and the Foundations Programs at the University of Michigan-Dearborn. She will serve as the chair of the Foundations steering committee in the 24-25 AY. The focus of her teaching and research is American literature and culture, especially American horror and African American participation in America’s frontier mythology. She is a 2024 Hub Affiliate, with a focus on designing online, asynchronous courses and writing assignments in a generative AI era and on developing project based learning for Humanities courses, especially Literature courses. Her affiliateship and her role in Foundations put her in a position of leadership around the Curate and SIFT assignment.

Shelly ran Curate and SIFT in her English 206, Storytelling: Westerns course.

Patrick Beauchesne

I am an associate professor of anthropology in the department of Behavioral Sciences here at UM Dearborn. I am a biological anthropologist by training and my work has emphasized how culture and biology interact to shape health. My work has taken around the world, and I’ve had the good fortune to explore and experience many different cultures.

Patrick ran Curate and SIFT in his Anthropology 101, Introduction to Anthropology course. Patrick provided leadership around Curate and SIFT as Director of the Foundations Program.

Nadja Rottner

Nadja Rottner is Associate Professor of Art History at the University of Michigan-Dearborn. She holds a master’s degree in art history from the Karl Franzens University in Graz, Austria, and a Ph.D. in modern art history from Columbia University, New York (2009). She writes in the fields of modern and contemporary art with an emphasis on American and Latin American art after 1945. In her writing, teaching, and curatorial work, she engages with experimental artistic practices located at varying intersections between the visual, literary, and the performing arts, between art and technology, art and science, as well as art in transnational contexts. She is the co-editor together with the late Peter Weibel of two related books entitled Ruth Vollmer, 1961-1978: Thinking the Line and Gego, 1957-1988: Thinking the Line (Hatje Cantz, 2006). In 2012, she edited Claes Oldenburg for the October Files series (MIT Press, 2012). She published Cardiovista: Detroit Street Photography for the University of Michigan-Dearborn in 2015. She is the author of Claes Oldenburg’s Theater of Vision: Poetry, Sculpture, Performance, and Film, Routledge, New York and London, 2024. Her most recent book project addresses Venezuelan conceptualism in the 1970s. She regularly contributes texts to exhibition catalogues, and as a German-English bilingual author she has written for journals such as Getty Research Journal, Oxford Art Journal, Modern Drama, Art Journal, Konsthistorisk Tidskrift: Journal of Art History, Camera Austria, Eikon: International Zeitschrift für Fotografie und Medienkunst, NKA: Journal for Contemporary African Art, Flash Art, Artforum International, Essay’d.

Nadja ran the Curate and SIFT assignment in her Foundations 3302, Multimedia Art course.

Anna Muller

Dr. Muller is a Professor of History at the University of Michigan-Dearborn. From 2010-13, she worked for the Museum of the Second World War (in Gdansk) as a curator responsible for the sections on concentration camps, the Holocaust, and eugenics. Her book on the life of women in prison cells in post-war Poland, titled If the Walls Could Speak, was published in 2017 with Oxford University Press.

Anna ran Curate and SIFT in her History 309, Russian and Ukrainian Revolution course.

Our Pilot Group

Librarian

Anne Dempsey

As the Student Engagement Librarian, I collaborate with students, faculty, and staff in the Foundations Program and Composition and Rhetoric to provide research education and research support. I also work to make sure all our students (particularly those new to campus) feel welcome and connected to the library. I'm always happy to help with your library, research, or information related questions or needs!

I have a Masters of Library and Information Science (MLIS) from the University of Maryland-College Park and a BA in History from George Washington University. Prior to joining the Mardigian Library I was a librarian at a liberal arts college and an English teacher in Japan.

Anne contributed to the design of the Curate and SIFT assignment template and supports faculty in teaching students the SIFT method through presentations and the creation of online resources.

Our Pilot Group

Staff

Jessica Riviere

Jessica earned a Ph.D. in German Literature from Vanderbilt University, where she taught the first four semesters of German language courses as well as classes in European Studies. She was a faculty adviser for the College of Arts and Sciences at Vanderbilt before moving to Columbus, OH to work in the teaching center at Ohio State University. She started at the Hub in August of 2020. Jessica's dissertation work focused on women's essayistic writing in German at the time of the French revolution. As an educational developer, Jessica's research centers on best practices in graduate education, including supporting graduate student instructors.

For the Curate and SIFT pilot Jessica is providing SoTL guidance and research assistance

Autumm Caines

Autumm Caines is an Instructional Designer in The Hub for Teaching and Learning Resources. She has earned an M.A. in Educational Technology from The Ohio State University and B.S. in Communication Technology from Eastern Michigan University. She is a is a first-generation high school graduate and a Michigan native from the Dearborn area graduating from Melvindale High School. For close to fifteen years, Autumm has worked with faculty and administrators creating online learning experiences, faculty development, and university wide technology integrations.

Autumm provides instructional design leadership for the Curate and SIFT common assignment.

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