The new course tackles issues inherent to our digital age: How to be media literate and cope with a tsunami of information, much of it misleading.

News-Decoder has released a new online course on Media Literacy to help young people sort fact from fiction and critically assess media content that consumes more and more of their time.

The course, developed by News-Decoder’s Managing Editor and Strategy Officer Lauren Heuser, teaches fundamental skills and behaviors that permit young people to understand what they are reading, seeing and hearing as they are bombarded with information from news sites, friends, entertainment platforms and companies.

The new online course is one of three offered on News-Decoder’s e-Learning platform and joins courses on writing and interviewing that help students develop their communication and research skills.

Sage Silberman, one of two Student Ambassadors at the Chadwick School in the United States, took the writing and interviewing courses at the start of the current school year.

“The writing course taught me the steps to write an interesting, passion-driven article,” she said. “And the course on interviewing taught me how to lead a concise yet insightful interview.”

News-Decoder’s e-Learning courses teach students anywhere in the world journalistic skills and behaviors that make them better global citizens. The media literacy course enables students at partner schools to weigh the accuracy and agendas of media content they encounter throughout the day.

What does it mean to be media literate?

News-Decoder sees media literacy as having the skills to parse the information one sees and to think critically about its accuracy, claims and agendas.

The course, which takes approximately 30 minutes to complete, is divided into seven lessons: media sector, media owners, types of media content, media content quality, fake news and media literacy best practices.

By the end of the course, students are able to:

• Identify the critical functions of media in society
• Identify conditions that need to exist for media organizations to thrive
• Evaluate the state of the media sector in different countries
• Recognize the most common media ownership models around the world
• Think critically about the agendas of media owners
• Distinguish between common types of media content
• Evaluate the quality of common forms of media content
• Understand what constitutes fake news and know how to watch out for it
• Incorporate best practices into one’s daily media habits

At the end of each News-Decoder online course, students can test their knowledge by taking a short quiz. Any student who completes a course receives a certificate.

Are you ready to become media literate? Visit our e-Learning page and take the course today!

Savannah Jenkins is News-Decoder’s Communications Manager. A dual American-British citizen, she completed a double major in International and Comparative Politics, History, Law and Society at the American University of Paris. She initially joined News-Decoder in 2018 and has experience working for non-profit and for-profit organizations. Jenkins recently completed a stint volunteering in Greece, where she provided emergency relief to refugees.