About Lonely Classroom

Lonely Classroom (LC) is a curated compendium of online digital and media literacy resources sponsored by the American Democracy Project (ADP) and the American Association of State Colleges and Universities (AASCU) and created by Paul Cook, of Indiana University Kokomo, and Erin O’Hanlon, of Stockton University. LC seeks to provide users with a dynamic, routinely updated, and expertly curated panoply of teaching tools to help forward conversations in the classroom about digital literacy, digital media, mis- and disinformation, media literacy, online news literacy, algorithmic literacy, and more. 

More than simply a static list of links or teaching resources on digital literacy, LC places a particular emphasis on providing instructors with high-quality teaching tools, readings, and other resources for the higher education classroom that can be used in courses across the academic disciplines.

Modeled spiritually after Lonely Planet, the popular series of travel guides, LC takes seriously the challenges that teachers face when trying to find high-quality teaching tools on the open web. Nearly all instructors can relate to that familiar feeling of “loneliness” when prepping for a lesson, looking for resources on the open web, and feeling, well, a little lost—we want Lonely Classroom to help make teachers feel a bit less lonely.

To that end, LC is curated, collaborative, databased, open-access, and multidisciplinary. 

Curated. Resources on LC are arranged as “tiles,” with each tile listing detailed information about the tool including how it might be used in the classroom, its developmental level within higher education (i.e., first-year, second-year, etc.), its disciplinary foundations, and uses, categorical information (what kind of resource is it and what is its purpose?), and more. In addition, each resource tile will feature a brief description and video that would explain how this resource or tool has been used in classrooms before and/or how it might be used in the future (in the case of brand-new resources). 

One of the primary advantages of LC is that teachers wouldn’t be on their own, as is often the case with static lists of hyperlinks (i.e., “here’s a resource, figure out how to use it”); instead, instructors and curriculum designers would have the backing and support of the site through high-quality curation. There will also be an interactive system for user ratings and reviews, not unlike Apple Podcasts or Yelp!, where users will be able to evaluate the resources and write their own curations.

Collaborative. The project is collaborative in the sense that anyone can suggest a contribution to the site, with each contribution going through a rigorous process of approval.  

Databased. Searchable, rankable,  

Open-access. Hosted by the American Democracy Project (ADP) in partnership with the American Association of State Colleges and Universities (AASCU), LC is an open-access resource that anyone can use. It’s free and it always will be. Moreover, LC will retain a Creative Commons license that will allow users to… 

Multidisciplinary. The project is intended to provide higher education professionals from across academic disciplines with curated digital literacy tools that pertain to their discipline. One of LC’s guiding lights is the notion that to be truly effective, digital and media literacy should not be approached as a “one-off” lesson or an “add-on” to an already jam-packed curriculum, as is often the case; rather, to be effective, they must be integrated authentically into students’ major coursework. For example, students in an introductory biology class might learn about scientific pre-prints and the often-cumbersome process of knowledge production in the life sciences to better understand how scientific information flows and functions in a postdigital age. Students in history might learn about the role that mis- and disinformation have played over the centuries—long before the invention of the internet and social media (or even the printing press). Students in the health sciences would learn about the various ways in which vaccine hesitancy has been fueled by online mis- and disinformation and the larger network of information disorder and information pollution that now characterizes so much of online content.