Improving university students' web savvy

An intervention study

Datos Bibliográficos

ID5264030
AutoresSarah Mcgrew (0000-0002-8925-1468, Stanford Graduate School of Education Stanford University California USA), Mark Smith (0000-0002-1048-7786, Stanford Graduate School of Education Stanford University California USA), Joel Breakstone (0000-0003-0468-6399, Stanford Graduate School of Education Stanford University California USA), T Ortega (0000-0003-0486-6904, Stanford Graduate School of Education Stanford University California USA), Sam Wineburg (0000-0002-4838-1522, Stanford Graduate School of Education Stanford University California USA, autor de correspondencia)
Año2019
Volumen89
Número3
Páginas485-500
Fecha de publicación2019-09-01
Peer ReviewedSí
Open AccessSí
TipoARTICLE
RevistaBritish Journal of Educational Psychology (JOURNAL)
Identificadores de la revistaISSN: 0007-0998 • E-ISSN: 2044-8279
EditorialWiley (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1111/bjep.12279
PMID30993684
OpenAlexW2940103192
IdiomaEN
Citas recibidas34
Referencias citadas28

BackgroundYoung people increasingly turn to the Internet for information about social and political issues. However, they struggle to evaluate the trustworthiness of the information they encounter online.AimsThis pilot study investigated whether a focused curricular intervention could improve university students' ability to make sound judgements of credibility.SampleParticipants (n = 67) were students in four sections of a 'critical thinking and writing' course at a university on the West Coast of the United States. Course sections were randomly assigned to treatment (n = 29) and control conditions (n = 38).MethodsWe conducted a pre-and-posttest, treatment/control experiment using a 2 × 2 × 2 design (treatment condition × order × time) with repeated measures on the last factor. Students in the treatment group received two 75-min lessons on evaluating the credibility of online content. An assessment of online reasoning was administered to students 6 weeks prior to the intervention and again 5 weeks after.ResultsStudents in the treatment group were significantly more likely than students in the control group to have shown gains from pretest to posttest.ConclusionsResults suggest that teaching students a small number of flexible heuristics that can be applied across digital contexts can improve their evaluation of online sources

Intervention (counseling) · Mathematics education · Psychiatry · World Wide Web · Applied Psychology · Computer Science · Education and Critical Thinking Development · Educational Strategies and Epistemologies · Misinformation and Its Impacts · Psychology