The Misinformation Play Pack

Timeline: 6 months (December 2023 - May 2024)

Collaborators: Two Ph.D. students, with mentorship from UW professors Jin Ha Lee and Jason Yip.

Audience: Librarians, K-12 educators, and teens (ages 12-18).

Responsibilities: 

• Curriculum Development

• User Research: Rapid Prototyping

• Graphic Design & Media Production

• Narrative Design/Writing

• Web Design

Tools & Methods: 

• Technologies: PowerPoint, InDesign, Photoshop, Illustrator, Minecraft: Education Edition, WordPress, Creative Commons. 

• Educational/Design Theories: Critical Information Literacy, Active Learning, Radical Change Theory, Participatory Design.

Misinformation is a serious challenge for libraries and schools as they provide equal, fair access to information. As misinformation is more popular, young people are increasingly susceptible to harmful or inaccurate information on digital platforms. Effective educational interventions are essential to help them navigate being online.

The need to create an empowering educational intervention against misinformation motivated the Game Research Group to create these resources, with essential goals affecting both groups of stakeholders: How do we equip educators with tools to combat misinformation and help teenagers gain the knowledge and skills needed to evaluate it?

The initial goal of the project was to take existing learning objectives and develop prototypes of learning artifacts, which would then be evaluated by teen users. 

Using backwards design as a methodology - developing activities and assessments based on learning objectives - I created 3 full lesson plans and prototypes of 3 activities. The learning objectives I iterated on were:

• Identify causes of misinformation on the internet.

• Understand the differences between misinformation and disinformation.

• Develop strategies for recognizing misinformation in their everyday lives.

After prototyping, the team ran four co-design sessions with teen users at the Seattle Public Library and foundry10, where we tested activities and facilitated discussions about misinformation in their daily lives, with the goal of identifying gaps or issues in the curriculum, that the team would then take time to review and edit.

The Misinformation Play Pack is an open educational curriculum featuring:

• Scaffolded Modules: Each set of lesson plans, themed around artificial intelligence, social media videos, and conspiracy theories, features individual modules that can be used all together or individually in one-shot educational settings.

• Realistic Scenarios: All scenarios are reflective of real-world problems with misinformation, which our teen testers helped define.

• Interactive Activities: Problem-solving, discussion, and critical reflection are prioritized alongside hands-on engagement, an approach backed by research in Radical Change Theory - the practice of promoting digital literacy through direct engagement with technology.

• Flexible, Open Modules: While our testing and research was done around the Seattle area, we made all resources editable once they're downloaded by an educator, so that the topics and examples can be modified for different regions and age groups.

After our final round of testing and updating the Misinformation Play Pack curriculum, we published the three modules to the web. These are all fully available online from a page on the Game Research Group's website.

This project was very meaningful to me. Misinformation is everywhere on the Internet now, and being "information literate" is becoming increasingly important as people are more and more exposed to it. Supporting the Game Research Group on this project, a research group that was one of the main reasons I chose UW for graduate school, was a real privilege.

As an instructional designer, it was fulfilling to know that my work helped bring clarity to a pressing issue, had a real impact on young people, and made it easier for other educators to develop meaningful learning experiences. In a way, this curriculum isn't just about increasing awareness of misinformation, but increasing young people's well-being as they navigate our increasingly digital world. The backwards design methodology - taking the learning objectives and building material from them - made it all the more meaningful and engaging. This is the kind of work I'm proud to do.

I later presented on this project at the MLIS program's Capstone symposium in 2024, and at the 2025 Washington Library Association (WLA) conference, which were both fantastic experiences!