Please join us on on Wednesday, December 4th, from 11am to 1 pm, for an Open House for students and faculty participating in the Fact or Fiction Course Cluster. Each year, faculty in programs across the curriculum design courses and assignments aligned with Illinois Wesleyan University’s Annual Intellectual Theme, a strategic initiative designed to bring the campus community together around a common intellectual experience. Experiences such as these have been identified as a high-impact educational practice and provide important opportunities to advance the library’s mission to “[foster] inquiry and the pursuit of knowledge, intellectual and ethical integrity, excellence in teaching and learning, and respect for diverse points of view.”

Fact or Fiction is IWU’s intellectual theme for 2019-20, and invites multidisciplinary study of the critical need in the contemporary political environment for “an informed citizenry … equipped to discern between fact and fiction.” Students in Fall 2019 cluster courses such as Human Nature (Gateway 100), Human Nutrition (HLTH 230), Artificial Intelligence (CS 338), and Visual Ethnographic Methods (ANTH 380)  explored issues of inquiry, critical thinking, and the construction of knowledge as part of the “Fact or Fiction” discussion, as well as the connections between these issues and the intellectual skills and concepts associated with The Ames Library’s information literacy program. At this week’s Open House, more than 100 students from 15 different courses will present research and creative work based on the annual theme.

With one-hour sessions scheduled to begin at 11 am and 12 pm, we encourage all members of the IWU community to join us at the Course Cluster Open House to learn how our students have engaged with the ideas and issues at the heart of the “Fact or Fiction” discussion and how this experience supports our mission as a liberal education institution to “[foster] creativity, critical thinking, effective communication, strength of character and a spirit of inquiry.”