Nava Tintarev
Many educators consider problem-based learning (PBL) to be one of the most innovative
instructional methods in education. PBL is an instructional method that initiates students’
learning by creating a need to solve an authentic problem. A common motivation for
applying PBL to education is to enable students to take ownership for their own learning.
Learners in these settings, with the support of a facilitator, inform their own learning and
independently seek additional resources. This is largely a positive development, and these
learners can make the best out of the rich availability of online resources to support their
opinions and arguments.
However, there has also been a surge in the number of resources online that are misleading
or false. These sorts of sensationalized resources are often widely shared, and the issue of
”fake news” in particular has received a lot of attention. Stopping the proliferation of
unbalanced information is not just the responsibility of the platforms used to spread it.
Those who consume online resources also need to find ways of determining if what they are
reading is true. SuSPECT therefore addressed ways of helping learners not only assess the
veracity of online resources, but also develop more nuanced and balanced thinking.
Concretely, it addressed the far-reaching objective of helping learners develop more
balanced thinking for material they find online.