FORMING STUDENTS' SKILLS IN EVALUATING THE RELIABILITY OF INFORMATION IN INTERNET SOURCES
Keywords:
internet sources, information reliability, lateral reading, SIFT, civic online reasoning, misinformation, university students, foreign language educationAbstract
University students increasingly rely on internet sources for academic work, yet many of them judge online information by its appearance, popularity or position in search results. This article addresses the pedagogical problem of forming students' skills in evaluating the reliability of information in internet sources, with a focus on English-language content used in foreign language education. On the basis of the civic online reasoning research, the SIFT method and the concept of lateral reading, the author defines the structure of the skill (motivational, cognitive, operational and reflective components), develops criteria and levels of its formation, and proposes a four-stage methodology. The methodology was tested with 54 undergraduate students over one semester using a pre-test/post-test design with five performance tasks based on authentic web materials. The mean composite score increased from 9.8 to 16.4 out of 25 (t(53) = 12.41, p < .001, dz = 1.69). The share of students at the proficient and advanced levels grew from 19% to 63%, and the proportion of students who first verified an unknown site by leaving it (lateral reading) rose from 7% to 48%. The findings demonstrate that the skill can be formed purposefully when students practise short, repeated verification routines on authentic internet materials and reflect on their own evaluation decisions.
References
1. Blakeslee, S. (2004). The CRAAP test. LOEX Quarterly, 31(3), 6–7.
2. Breakstone, J., Smith, M., Wineburg, S., Rapaport, A., Carle, J., Garland, M., & Saavedra, A. (2021). Students' civic online reasoning: A national portrait. Educational Researcher, 50(8), 505–515.
3. Brodsky, J. E., Brooks, P. J., Scimeca, D., Todorova, R., Galati, P., Batson, M., Grosso, R., Matthews, M., Miller, V., & Caulfield, M. (2021). Improving college students' fact-checking strategies through lateral reading instruction in a general education civics course. Cognitive Research: Principles and Implications, 6, 23.
4. Caulfield, M. (2019). SIFT (The four moves). Hapgood. https://hapgood.us/2019/06/19/sift-the-four-moves/
5. Kozyreva, A., Lewandowsky, S., & Hertwig, R. (2020). Citizens versus the Internet: Confronting digital challenges with cognitive tools. Psychological Science in the Public Interest, 21(3), 103–156.
6. McGrew, S., Breakstone, J., Ortega, T., Smith, M., & Wineburg, S. (2018). Can students evaluate online sources? Learning from assessments of civic online reasoning. Theory & Research in Social Education, 46(2), 165–193.
7. McGrew, S., Smith, M., Breakstone, J., Ortega, T., & Wineburg, S. (2019). Improving university students' web savvy: An intervention study. British Journal of Educational Psychology, 89(3), 485–500.
8. Pennycook, G., & Rand, D. G. (2019). Lazy, not biased: Susceptibility to partisan fake news is better explained by lack of reasoning than by motivated reasoning. Cognition, 188, 39–50.
9. Vosoughi, S., Roy, D., & Aral, S. (2018). The spread of true and false news online. Science, 359(6380), 1146–1151.
10. Wineburg, S., & McGrew, S. (2019). Lateral reading and the nature of expertise: Reading less and learning more when evaluating digital information. Teachers College Record, 121(11), 1–40.
