Teaching Verification & Fact-Checking

I was approached to teach a course on Verification and Fact-Checking. I did not want to begin with definitions, then move to theoretical concepts, tools, and examples. Before deciding how to teach, I needed to understand who I was teaching.

The first session - a usual icebreaker - quicly became a course design reflexion. I asked questions, mapped the students’ profiles, explored how they relate to information, and took note of how they could benefit from verification and fact-checking.

What emerged from that conversation gave me a much clearer idea of how the course should be built. Three patterns stood out almost immediately.

High Exposure to Information, Low Verification Habit

The students are not detached from news or public discourse. Quite the opposite. Some consume information constantly. Some have trained in journalism or media environments. Others move across multiple corporate and communication spaces with ease.

Yet exposure to information did not automatically translate into a verification routine. 

Maya illustrates this well. She is an early-career freelance journalist with substantial exposure to journalism and fact-checking training. She follows the news closely, primarily through social media and private chat groups, and has spent time in respected news environments. On paper, verification should already be part of her workflow. But that was not yet the case. She even received basic fact-checking training, but had not integrated verification steps as a reflex.

Her profile revealed something important: being exposed to verification is not the same as operationalizing it. Disparate training does not create habit. 

Adam reflected a similar gap from another angle. He has trained in journalism and is deeply interested in history and international relations, yet his primary source of information remains private chat groups. There is nothing inherently wrong with that. In some contexts, closed networks can provide early signals, localized insight, or access to otherwise unavailable information. But they also introduce specific challenges - limited traceability, unclear sourcing, and heightened exposure to strategically framed content. From an operational security perspective, they can also expose user-specific vulnerabilities.

Proximity to media production did not automatically produce more rigorous information practices. That gap between familiarity and method is one of the first challenges any sector reform must confront.

Over-trust in “Credible” Sources

This was perhaps the most revealing issue of the session.

Students often trusted information because it came from a source they perceived as credible or neutral. That detail matters enormously. It points to one of the central objectives of the course: trust should be grounded in verification methods, not institutional reputation.

The two are often associated, but they are not interchangeable.

Sofia’s answers illustrated this clearly. Her academic and professional background places her at the intersection of journalism, international affairs, and linguistics. Yet when discussing where accurate news could be found, her reasoning pointed to well-established outlets and official sources as anchors of credibility.

That instinct is understandable. In many media environments, people are taught to orient themselves through recognized institutions. But fact-checking requires a deeper discipline. It asks not only who said it, but how do we know it is true, what is the evidence, what is missing, and what can be independently verified.

The distinction between trusting a source and testing a claim is one of the central lessons the course now needs to emphasize.

Relevance Beyond Journalism

The third pattern expanded the scope of the course.

Fact-checking and verification are often treated as newsroom skills. The students’ profiles made it clear that their relevance is much broader. Media literacy, open-source research, and investigative habits can strengthen journalism, but they are equally applicable in business, communication, political analysis, and risk assessment.

Lina expanded that perspective further. Her background leans toward marketing and graphic design, yet our discussion quickly showed how relevant open-source investigation can be in her field. Digital environments, communication strategies, reputational risks, manipulated visuals, and AI-generated content all create practical reasons to develop investigative discipline in her field.

Her profile was a reminder that verification is not only about debunking false claims after they circulate. It is also about navigating information ecosystems more intelligently before errors become costly.

Nour raised another essential point. She asked whether the course could balance conceptual knowledge with real-world application, rather than remain theoretical.

At first, that sounds like a demanding expectation. On reflection, it is the baseline. A verification course that remains abstract fails in forming professional that can act under real informational pressure.

What I found most encouraging is that the students were not indifferent. They were already aware that information should be questioned, checked, and challenged.

The issue was not awareness.

The issue was routine.

This is where many courses fall short. They present fact-checking as definitions of misinformation and disinformation, a set of tools, a few case studies, and perhaps a discussion about ethics.

All of that matters. But the question is: in what form, and in what sequence, does it become practice?

I did not want to explain verification.

I wanted to normalize it.