University of Montana Course Teaches Students How To Cut The B.S. Out Of B.S.

Of the 1,681 courses taught this fall at the University of Montana, JRNL 102Y definitely grabs attention. Not so much for its catalog title, of course, but for its name: Calling Bullshit.

An online course, Calling Bullshit examines why it’s so easy to spread misinformation and untruths and why it’s so hard to combat it, while exploring what citizens can do to become better consumers and producers of factual information.

“The name is definitely provocative, but the class is not about the cussword,” said course instructor Professor Lee Banville, director of UM’s School of Journalism. “It’s about information literacy. People need to be both better sharers of information and better consumers of information.”