Information Literacy for Adults 65+
The goal of this project is to explore how adults 65+ can build their information literacy skills to reduce the spread of misinformation in their community. The digital age reflects no set standard for online processing quality information online. As a result, users depend on individual verification behaviors to ensure the reliability of the information, such as asking a friend, looking up the website's domain, comparing information from various sources, or depending on social engagement metrics that reflect how other users are interacting with a piece of information shared online. There are existing tools that help people verify information online but these tools have a number of usability and design issues that make them difficult to be utilized by the general public, especially vulnerable populations such as older adults. To support older adults' online we aim to understand current information seeking behaviors among this community and build a digital reflective tool that supports quality information consumption through a series of co-design sessions. We aim to inform the design of information technology and empower information literacy skills in older adults to decrease the spread of misinformation online.
This project is a collaboration with Dr. Rosta Farzan and Dr. Kuo-Ting (Tim) Huang at the University of Pittsburgh. Within the lab, Jennifer Nwogu works on the project.
