Enhancing Sourcing While Reading: Promising Effects of a Short-Term Intervention Using Epistemic Sensitization and Prompting

• In Event: Sourcing: Identifying and Evaluating Information in the Digital Age

Abstract

Objectives

The goal of the present study was to enhance middle-schoolers’ attention to and use of source information while learning from multiple documents.

Theoretical Frame

Today, students often read multiple documents on the Internet to complete school-related tasks (Haddon, Livingstone, & the EU Kids Online Network, 2012). However, due to the lack of editorial control on the Internet, students need to be epistemically vigilant and critically assess parameters such as source expertise and benevolence. Unfortunately, students often ignore source information, although they perform well after being prompted to identify, evaluate and select sources in simple reading tasks (e.g., Stadtler, Babiel, Rouet & Bromme, 2014). The present study explores whether middle school students can be assisted in putting their competencies into action in a more complex multiple document task. Drawing on previous research (Britt & Aglinskas, 2002; Porsch & Bromme, 2010), we speculated that a combination of epistemic sensitization that raises students’ epistemic vigilance and an explicit prompt to identify and evaluate sources while reading would be more beneficial than prompting alone or no intervention.

Methods

Participants were 159 German ninth-graders (65% female). They were tasked with reading six Internet documents on a controversially discussed health-topic to find out which competing knowledge claims were true. Experimental conditions differed in terms of the external supports participants received. Intervention Group 1 (IG1) received a brief booklet, prior to their Internet search, describing the uncertain nature of scientific information and warning participants against falling for false information (epistemic sensitization). Participants were then encouraged to check for source information each time they visited a new web page (prompting). Participants in Intervention Group 2 (IG2) only received the prompting instructions. The control group did not receive any support prior to Internet search.

Data sources consisted of log-files, post-reading essays in which participants justified their stance on the topic, and a multiple-choice test on source memory.

Results

Analyses of log-files revealed that both IGs visited more ‘about us’ pages, providing information about sources, than did the control group. In addition, there was an incremental effect of the combination of epistemic sensitization and prompting (IG1), beyond prompting alone (IG2). Participants in both IGs included more source references in their post-reading essays than the control group. However, the combination of epistemic sensitization and prompting in IG1 did not yield any incremental effects on source referencing beyond prompting alone. Finally, experimental conditions did not differ in terms of memory for content-source-connections.

Scholarly Significance

Given that attention to and use of source information is notoriously low among students, interventions that promote sourcing while reading are a crucial desiderate (Goldman, 2014). Our study adds to the literature by revealing that it is possible to enhance students’ use of sources while reading with a brief intervention. However, the incremental effect of epistemic sensitization plus prompting was confined to students’ attention to source nodes, whereas mere prompting was sufficient to increase the use of sources to justifying a stance. Further research is needed to determine the stability of results when external support is reduced.

Authors

• Marc Stadtler, University of Münster

• Johanna Paul, University of Muenster

• Anna Potocki, University of Poitiers

• Jean-Francois Rouet, CNRS and University of Poitiers

• Rainer F. Bromme, University of Münster