Using Cognitive Interviewing to Explore College Students’ Epistemic Aims and Source Beliefs in Online Research on Three Chemistry Topics

• In Event: Poster Session 2
  In Poster Session: Advances in the Study of Epistemic Beliefs and Their Impact on Student and Teacher Outcomes

Abstract

We employed cognitive interviewing to pilot a newly-developed Context-Specific Epistemic Aims and Source Beliefs Questionnaire (CEASBQ), and to understand college students’ epistemic aims and source beliefs. Ten students from an introductory chemistry course participated in a concurrent think-aloud while completing the CEASBQ and a retrospective interview. We found that when doing online research students set epistemic aims of obtaining true information and seeking both factual information and connections of facts. Students valued sufficient justifications, but expressed less initiative in seeking multiple justifications and evaluating evidence. Students viewed multiple sources—textbooks, professors, experimentation—as trustworthy for knowledge acquisition. Importantly, students' epistemic aims and source beliefs were largely specific to the topics in research, which supports the context-specific aspect of epistemic cognition.

Authors

• Ting Dai, University of Illinois at Chicago

• Jennifer G. Cromley, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign