Abstract

This study investigated how high school students evaluated online information on social and political topics. Eighteen juniors and seniors, at a school that attempts to leverage technology to personalize learning, thought aloud as they completed online reasoning tasks. Three themes emerged from analyses of think-aloud data. First, students assembled ad hoc lists of surface features (e.g., a website’s layout or top-level domain) that they used to render decisions about whether content was trustworthy. Next, they judged the usability of an article as a way to decide whether it was reliable. Finally, they interpreted the presence of data as conferring credibility on online posts, regardless of the quality of the source. These students spent a great deal of the school day in front of computers, yet this study suggests that students relied on evaluation tactics best suited for vetted print information—not the open web.

摘要

这项研究调查了高中生如何评估有关社会和政治话题的在线信息。在一所试图利用技术实现个性化学习的学校里，18 名大三和大四的学生在完成在线推理任务时大声思考。三个主题来自于对大声思考数据的分析。首先，学生们组装了表面特征的临时列表（例如，网站的布局或顶级域），他们用来做出关于内容是否值得信赖的决定。接下来，他们通过判断文章的可用性来判断它是否可靠。最后，他们将数据的存在解释为赋予在线帖子可信度，而不管来源的质量如何。这些学生在上学的大部分时间里都在电脑前度过，