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Analyzing Generic Critical Online Reasoning Skills During Practical Training in Medicine, Law, and Teaching

Sat, April 13, 1:15 to 2:45pm, Pennsylvania Convention Center, Floor: Level 100, Room 116

Abstract

Objectives
The Internet is crucial for accessing information today, but presents challenges in finding reliable content, e.g., due to algorithms reinforcing existing beliefs and prejudices[20,14]. Developing Critical Online Reasoning (COR) skills is essential for evaluating online information and identifying trustworthy sources[16, 24]. This is particularly important for graduates and aspiring professionals in fields like medicine, law, and teaching who rely on the Internet as their primary research tool during their practical training[19,8].
The pre-post panel study presented here investigates the change of the generic COR facets (GEN-COR; to solve general everyday online information problems[8]) among graduates and professionals from medicine, law, and teaching based on both process (logs) and performance (written responses) data measured before and after an online training session following the pre-survey[11].
Framework
According to the theoretical conceptualization[9], COR consists of three interrelated facets: (i) Online Information Acquisition skills (OIA, for inquiry-based learning and problem-solving), (ii) Critical Information Evaluation skills (CIE, for analyzing online information, especially in terms of its credibility and trustworthiness), and (iii) information utilization skills for Reasoning based on Evidence, Argumentation, and Synthesis (REAS; for weighing arguments and perspectives while considering possible misinformation and biases).
Methods & Data
In short, GENCOR tasks lasting 20 minutes, 77 young professionals in their 1st practical year from various German locations were asked to conduct an open-ended web search, evaluate online information/sources, and write an open-ended response to a given question, e.g., whether e-bikes promote health. Their browsing histories during their web searches were recorded. Moreover, their sociodemographic characteristics and media use behaviors were surveyed as background information.
The three COR facets were rated at each measurement point using validated scoring schemes which included analysis of task responses, search processes, and search results, i.e. web pages used[8]. ‘Mean source reliability’ (Tables 5-6) refers to the rating of the accessed unique web pages of a participant. To assess reliability, all pages visited during the 1st and 2nd measurements were evaluated by three raters, and their reliability was assessed using previously established criteria. A page view was considered unique if it was either a different subpage or a completely different homepage (Table 4).
Results
There were significant differences among young professionals regarding the reliability scores of the online sources visited, the number of websites visited during research, and their GEN-COR performance at the 1st and 2nd measurements. For instance, young medical professionals performed best in terms of reliability in the mean comparison for the sources visited in both measurements and visited the most unique websites on average. Teaching and law trainees visited more low-credibility sources like social media sites and online stores (reliability score: 1 of 5 points), and online encyclopedia (reliability score: 2 of 5) to solve the tasks at the 1st measurement, but achieved better scores after the online training at the 2nd measurement.
Significance
This study indicates that COR skills can be developed in post-university education. However, the key personal and contextual factors influencing COR skills and their promotion in practical training require further investigation in follow-up studies.

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