Students' abilities to evaluate the credibility of online texts : The role of internet‐specific epistemic justifications
Abstract
Previous evaluation studies have rarely used authentic online texts and investigated upper secondary school students' use of evaluation criteria and deep reasoning. The associations between internet-specific epistemic justifications for knowing and credibility evaluation of online texts are not yet fully understood among adolescents. This study investigated upper secondary school students' (N = 372) abilities to evaluate self-selected authentic online texts and the role of internet-specific epistemic justifications in students' evaluation performance when solving a health-related information problem. Students selected three texts with Google Custom Search Engine and evaluated their credibility. Students' evaluation performance across the three texts was determined according to the different aspects evaluated (author, venue, intentions, evidence and corroboration) and the depth of their evaluations. Students also filled in the Internet-Specific Epistemic Justifications (ISEJ) inventory previously validated with pre-service teachers. The results revealed considerable differences in students' abilities to evaluate online texts. Students' beliefs in justification by authority and justification by multiple sources positively predicted their evaluation performance similarly in both topics. The findings suggest that the ISEJ inventory is also valid for upper secondary school students. Students should be explicitly taught to evaluate different credibility aspects and scaffolded to deeply engage with online information.
Main Authors
Format
Articles
Research article
Published
2021
Series
Subjects
Publication in research information system
Publisher
Wiley
The permanent address of the publication
https://urn.fi/URN:NBN:fi:jyu-202107144302Use this for linking
Review status
Peer reviewed
ISSN
0266-4909
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1111/jcal.12580
Language
English
Published in
Journal of Computer Assisted Learning
Citation
- Hämäläinen, E. K., Kiili, C., Räikkönen, E., & Marttunen, M. (2021). Students' abilities to evaluate the credibility of online texts : The role of internet‐specific epistemic justifications. Journal of Computer Assisted Learning, 37(5), 1409-1422. https://doi.org/10.1111/jcal.12580
Funder(s)
Research Council of Finland
Funding program(s)
Academy Project, AoF
Akatemiahanke, SA
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Additional information about funding
This research was funded by the Academy of Finland (Project Number: 285806).
Copyright© 2021 The Authors. Journal of Computer Assisted Learning published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd.