Task-Oriented Learning With Multiple Documents

• In Event: Reading in the Digital Age: Affordances and Consequences for Learning, Judgment, and Performance

Abstract

Purpose/Objectives
To investigate the effects of author expertise and content relevance on students’ selection, processing, and use of documents for more- or less-familiar topics.
Theoretical Framework
Reading in the digital age typically involves reading multiple documents that vary in terms of source credibility and content relevance (Magliano et al., 2017). The Multiple-Document Task-based Relevance Assessment and Content Extraction (MD-TRACE) model of Rouet and Britt (2011) describes the source and relevance assessment processes involved in selecting, processing, and using multiple documents to complete a particular task. Additionally, the Content-Source Integration (CSI) model of Stadtler and Bromme (2014) suggests that source credibility may be especially pertinent when learners deal with less-familiar topics. Presumably, in such situations, it is difficult to assess the validity of content directly by asking “What is true?”, making indirect assessment by asking “Who to believe?” more pertinent or necessary.
Method
One-hundred and ninety high-school students were randomly assigned to a more-familiar topic or a less-familiar topic, presented with a list referring to 20 web texts, and asked to select the texts they would use when writing a letter to the editor. The 20 items on the list varied with respect to author expertise and content relevance. Within each topic, participants were randomly assigned to one of three instructional conditions: one asking them to evaluate whether the sources were credible, one asking them to evaluate whether the content was appropriate, and one control condition. After participants had selected the web texts they wanted to use, they accessed those texts and used them when writing their letter.
Results
Content relevance had strong and nearly identical effects on selection, processing, and use of documents for both topics: participants selected a greater number of more relevant documents, spent more time reading these documents, and used more information from these documents in their written products. However, participants valued author expertise to a greater extent when they dealt with the less-familiar topic than when they dealt with the more-familiar topic: when they dealt with the less-familiar topic, they selected a greater number of documents from higher-expertise sources, spent more time reading these documents, and used more information from these documents in their written products. Finally, instructions to focus on source credibility affected the value placed on author expertise when students selected, processed, and used information for the less-familiar topic.
Significance
The impact of topic familiarity has not been specified in the MD-TRACE model (Rouet & Britt, 2011). However, consistent with the CSI model (Stadtler & Bromme, 2014), our findings indicate that less-familiar topics may set the stage for an indirect assessment strategy and make the need for external information from credible sources more salient. With respect to practice, our findings demonstrate that students can be explicitly prompted to evaluate source credibility when selecting, processing, and using multiple documents to complete particular tasks, particularly for less-familiar topics. However, to yield lasting and transferable effects, brief source orienting instructions will probably have to be embedded in more comprehensive classroom-based instruction targeting sourcing skills (Bråten et al., 2017).

Authors

• Ivar Braten, University of Oslo

• Matthew T. McCrudden, Pennsylvania State University

• Elisabeth S Lund

• Eva Wennås Brante, Oslo University College

• Helge I. Stromso, University of Oslo