Student Civic Online Reasoning Skills in Higher Education: Cross-National Results and Perspectives

• In Event: Global Citizenship and Values in an Era of Multiculturalism and Technological Advancements: What Education Can Do

Abstract

Societal developments, such as the increase in post-truth attitudes, and technological advancements, such as social media, which shape the online information landscape and new artificial intelligence-supported tools such as ChatGPT, have required higher education to focus more on students’ ability to use information and to evaluate sources in the Age of the Internet. Policymakers and educators are calling for students to develop skills such as critical civic reasoning, which will enable students to competently navigate and process information in any real-world decision-making and judgment situations that they may face in their professional and public life, preferably using scientifically backed knowledge [1;2;3]. This paper presents a set of recently developed and innovative college-level assessments which measure the skills necessary for students to select and evaluate online sources and information and to use them to make justified decisions.

Author

• Olga Zlatkin Troitschanskaia, Johannes Gutenberg University of Mainz