Students' Abilities to Evaluate Credibility of Online Texts When Solving a Problem Regarding Vaccination

• In Event: Marriott Roundtable Session 7
  In Roundtable Session: Civic Literacies: Reading and Writing for Public Engagement

Abstract

This study investigated students’ (N=167) abilities to evaluate credibility of online texts when solving a problem regarding vaccination. Students selected three texts with the Google Custom Search Engine and evaluated their credibility. Texts included in the search engine varied in terms of their usefulness. Students’ evaluations were scored for five aspects of credibility: author, venue, motives, evidence and corroboration. The quality of students’ evaluations across the texts was determined by taking into account the number of the evaluated credibility aspects and the depth of the evaluations. Students scored highest for evaluating the venue and lowest for corroboration. The quality of evaluations was associated with the success of selecting useful texts, reading fluency, topic knowledge and epistemic justification by multiple sources.

Authors

• Elina Katriina Hämäläinen, Jyvaskyla University

• Carita Kiili, Tampere University

• Eija Räikkönen, University of Jyväskylä

• Miika Marttunen, University of Jyväskylä