Every day, we must process multiple informational claims: our attention is precious, so we should not waste it on dubious content. To be effective, media and information literacy tools must work quickly. Our media and information literacy learning methods were co-designed by university researchers and school teacher-librarians. UCMETHOD aims to improve the discernment and verification skills of students, using lateral reading and Wikipedia. The research team is led by Prof. Mathieu O’Neil from the News & Media Research Centre in the Faculty of Arts & Design and Assoc. Prof. Andrew Ross from the Faculty of Education. Dr Rachel Cunneen (Faculty of Education) participated in an earlier iteration of the program. Dr Megan Deas (Faculty of Arts & Design) is the project manager.
Anne Harding Conference Centre, University of Canberra
The UCMETHOD team will be hosting a two day conference in association with the Faculty of Education and the News & Media Research Centre.
Event LinkAbbotsleigh Senior School, Wahroonga NSW
Mathieu O’Neil and Andrew Ross will present their proposals for Stage 3 and Stage 5 media and information literacy methods to effectively counter misinformation.
Event LinkFour lesson plans have been co-designed by UC researchers and teacher-librarians in the Australian Capital Territory and New South Wales. Stage 3 lesson plans are suitable for students in Year 5 and Year 6, and Stage 5 lessons are suitable for students in Year 9 and Year 10.
Lesson posters and slides are freely available above in the LESSONS section.
To enquire about translating these resources into other languages, please get in touch via the CONTACT form.
Newman, E., Ecker, U., O’Neil, M. & Tay, L. (2026) Information Resilience: A framework for misinformation interventions, Australian Government Office of the Chief Scientist.
O’Neil, M., Cunneen, R. & Deas, M. (2025). A remedy for epistemic pollution? Public and professional reactions to fact-checking with Wikipedia in Australian classrooms. In Checking the Factcheckers: A Global Perspective (pp. 1-19). Routledge.
O’Neil, M., Heppner, H., & Ross, A. S. (2024). Civic information literacy tools. Digital Commons Policy Council. https://doi.org/10.60836/smyk-8669
O’Neil, M., Ackland, R., & Cunneen, R. (2023). Building Resilience with Information Literacy and Information Health. Digital Commons Policy Council. https://doi.org/10.25916/d15n-g243
O’Neil M., Cunneen R. & Ross A. (2023) Reclaiming Resilience: Fact-Checking in the Classroom with Wikipedia, Synergy, October, SLAV.
O’Neil, M. & Cunneen, C. (2023) Transparency is the new objectivity: Fact-checking in the classroom with Wikipedia, Asia-Pacific Journalism Review, Issue 2, March, pp. 84-87.
O’Neil M, Cunneen R, Carrigy B, Cheater R, Margetts W, O’Brien M & Turner K (2022). Six fact-checking lessons for kids. DCPC/N&MRC, University of Canberra.
To contact the UCMETHOD project team please complete the fields below: