More colleges are offering classes helping students identify truth in a confusing world

The college students gazed intently at the screen, trying to discern whether the photo was real or created by artificial intelligence.

“It’s almost like a smudged painting,” said Quincy Shepherd, a junior. “There’s just something wrong with it.”

The photo was, in fact, real. Luckily, the Augsburg University students were better at identifying videos and photos that were fake, picking up on clues like people staring at nothing or a woman’s strange gait.

The class, called “Defense Against the Dark Arts,” is among a handful of similar offerings to pop up across Minnesota, aiming to help students recognize and protect themselves from disinformation and misinformation, which many experts say are increasingly powerful in our digital age. Some have provocative titles — the University of Minnesota is offering a “Calling Bullshit: How to Live in a Factual World” class next semester, while Carleton College students can enroll in “Bullshit: How to Spot it and Protect Yourself” this spring.

“Nowadays we are just inundated, particularly with social media, with just facts, or things that might be facts, flying at us from all directions,” said Rob Warren, a U sociology professor teaching a class on spotting disinformation next semester. “People are having a harder and harder time making sense of what’s coming at them.”

Several professors cited the rising impact of AI and the speech of some prominent politicians as reasons the classes are particularly relevant now, though some have been taught for five years or more.

A popular course at the University of Washington provides a blueprint for some instructors to build on; Warren used it as a starting point. Having an expletive in the name gets students’ attention and changes the dynamic, signaling that the class won’t be stuffy and abstract, he said.

Andrew Knoll, a visiting philosophy professor at Carleton College, said he’s generally interested in how people think, and President Donald Trump’s 2016 election made him realize something interesting was going on.

“A hallmark of his political movement has really been performative, blatant public lying,” Knoll said. “The point there seemed to not really be to deceive people but to create this firehose of things ... so that people start having just a difficult time being able to sort out what is true or false.”

He hopes students’ biggest takeaway is that “you should always be looking for reasons to think you’re wrong,” he said.

The classes’ content pulls from many disciplines, including sociology, philosophy, communication arts and psychology. Each takes a slightly different approach to tackle misinformation — or false information — and disinformation, which is incorrect information intended to mislead people.

Erik Asp, a psychology professor at Hamline University, has taught “Belief in the Brain” since 2016. The class addresses how and why people believe or doubt various ideas and what neural structures in the brain are involved.

Human brains are wired to see information as true, he said. Seniors and people with certain kinds of brain damage experience declines in their ability to doubt, though their capability to believe stays the same.

The class deals with religious and political beliefs “as scientific material, as if we’re looking through a microscope,” he said. It’s discussion-based and typically has 20 students.

“It’s the most fun class that I teach,” he said.

Bob Groven, the professor of the Augsburg class, focuses on “the ways in which people can be lied to, manipulated or hurt by using the tools of persuasion,” he said, including how propaganda, social media and AI can deceive.

Students write papers citing examples of communication, such as political ads, and then use theory to conclude whether they’re ethical or not. For the final assignment, they narrow down a problem from class, give an example and pose a solution.

Some students gravitate toward conspiracy theories; he steers them away from UFOs and toward more impactful examples, like the belief that the Bush family orchestrated the 9/11 attacks.

This coming semester, Warren, the U professor, tweaked his curriculum to include how students can talk to people about beliefs that aren’t true, he said. Experts on having hard conversations and writing opinion pieces will visit.

The goal is learning how to counter false information so people will listen, he said, adding that people shut down if you simply say they’re wrong. He doesn’t want the class to be political or perceived as political, because then it could become an echo chamber.

“I want students from all backgrounds, because I think everyone needs these skills,” he said.

Several students who have taken the classes said they appreciated their applicability to real life. At Augsburg, senior Amanda Kauls said she likes how Groven’s class prompts her to think differently about online material.

“I didn’t even think about scams using AI,” she said. “That was a good thing to be reminded about.”

At Winona State University last fall, students demonstrated the practicality of their “Trust and Emotion and the Age of Misinformation” class through a hands-on project.

Students looked at people’s beliefs and how information has been shared from the ancient Greeks through the early 20th century. They explored how things have changed since the internet arrived, said Liberty Kohn, a Winona State English professor.

Then they designed website content for Attorney General Keith Ellison’s office, explaining what misinformation is, who’s behind it and what it looks like, Kohn said, which fits with the attorney general’s emphasis on fraud and scam prevention. Ellison’s office didn’t know exactly what they wanted, so Kohn and the students chose a Q-and-A format. They also explained five common themes used to manipulate people.

Instead of debunking, the website focuses on “pre-bunking” — or spelling out misinformation strategies to look for ahead of time — which research shows is the best way to keep people from buying into falsehoods, said student Jenifer Frick.

“Especially because going into this project ... I had very little or no information about news literacy myself,” he said.

Recent Hamline grad Ezri Farnum said the “Belief in the Brain” seminar made her more empathetic toward people who believe misinformation. We’re all “chronically overwhelmed” by information, some of which is designed to fool us.