Before They Hit “Search”: Teaching Students to Critically Evaluate Information Online
You’re about to turn your students loose with a computer and a research topic. You’ve explained the differences between .org, .com, and .gov. But will they be able to evaluate whether or not a source is credible? Relevant? Will they recognize bias? While students may be able to locate information, do they have the skills they need to find relevant, credible, and reliable information? Teaching digital literacy requires teaching students how to locate and evaluate information online.
Online Research Is A Problem-Based Task
Reading online is different from reading offline. Once students go online to do research, they have unlimited information at their fingertips, much of which is unedited, published to promote products or agendas, or otherwise commercially influenced (Leu, Kinzer, Coiro, Castek, & Henry, 2004; Drew, 2012). Research shows that students are poorly equipped to evaluate whether that information is relevant to their topic, comes from a credible source, and is trustworthy (Ladbrook & Probert, 2011). Teachers can guide students by designing online literacy instruction as a problem-based learning task.
Strategies for Teaching Evaluating Online Information
Teachers face challenges when teaching students to vet what they find online. According to Julie Coiro, Associate Professor of Education at the University of Rhode Island, these challenges include teaching them how to read search engine results and websites, verify and/or refute claims, determine credibility, and separate fact from opinion (Coiro, 2014).
In a blog post on Edutopia, Coiro suggests explicitly teaching students with these steps:
- Discussing the dimensions of critical evaluation: relevance, accuracy, bias/perspective, and reliability.
- Modeling and practice.
- Prompting.
- Helping students recognize bias and consider multiple perspectives.
Using these steps as a framework, here are some strategies and activities suggested by Coiro and others for teaching online evaluation:
1. Establish A Common Language
Students and teachers need a shared language by which to communicate. The table below, from Coiro’s site, provides a starting point for discussing the dimensions of critical evaluation.
| The following definitions can serve as common language for you and your students as you begin sharing strategies for how to read critically on the Internet. |
Source: http://www.lite.iwarp.com/CoiroCritEval.html#relevancy |
2. Model online information evaluation.
In their article in the Reading Teacher, authors Zheng, Duke, and Jiménez propose a series of problem solving questions they’ve entitled the WWWDOT Framework (2011).
The WWWDOT Framework
By focusing students’ attention to six dimensions necessary for evaluating information, the WWWDOT framework provides a system students can easily remember and follow. Questions students should ask:
Who wrote this and what credentials do they have?
Why was it written?
When was it written?
Does it help meet my needs?
Organization of the site?
To-do list for the future.
3. Provide opportunities for practice.
Hoax Sites
Find the fun in teaching critical evaluation! Professor Donald Leu of the Neag School of Education at the University of Connecticut used the fictitious creature the Pacific Northwest Tree Octopus, supposedly endangered, to test students’ critical evaluation skills. He and his team asked seventh grade students to review the site and determine its credibility. 47 out of 53 “higher performing online readers” believed the hoax. Some continued to believe the tree octopus exists even after it was revealed to be untrue (Leu et al., 2007 as cited in Castek, Coiro, Henry, Leu, & Hartman, 2015, p. 326).
Source: http://zapatopi.net
“One Click”
Another strategy proposed by Leu and authors Lisa Zawilinski, Elena Forzani, and Nicole Timbrel in a chapter entitled “Best Practices in Teaching the New Literacies of Online Research and Comprehension” is called “One Click” (2014). They suggest starting with a topic you’re currently studying in class. Conduct a search using the topic word and print out copies of the results for each student or pairs of students. Have students see if they can find the best link for questions you ask, such as “Which link will take me to a site where they will try to sell me something?” Students will need to make inferences based on information in the links. Ask them to explain how they were able to make those determinations and discuss the strategies they used. After one or two sessions, have them to come up with “One Click” questions that will help them more efficiently locate relevant information that is more likely to be credible and reliable (Leu, et al., 2014). You can also point students in the right direction before they hit “search” by directing them to resources at Google: Search Education at http://www.google.com/ (Leu, et al., 2014).
4. Help students recognize bias and consider multiple perspectives.
Teach students to become “healthy skeptics” and recognize bias (Castek, et al. 2015). First, let them know that all websites have a perspective and are biased. Have them identify that bias. Then, when using information by an author on a website, investigate that author to determine his/her bias (Castek, et al., 2015). Give them the tools they need to question the source of information and cross-check its veracity. Here are two activities you can use:
Reverse Wikipedia
Use Wikipedia to teach online evaluation. Select an entry for any topic and have students find one claim at home, made on Wikipedia that is disputed by others. Have students bring in both sources and the disputed information to class. Discuss with students strategies they could use to determine credibility (Leu, et, al., 2014). You can introduce this activity by asking a “factual” question. Leu, et al. (2014) suggest presenting this problem as a question, such as “How high is Mt. Fuji in feet?” After finding one answer, show students how they can locate a similar yet different answer. Model how to determine which answer is trustworthy and why.
Source Plus
When preparing their list of references, have students explain how they determined the credibility of each online source they used (Leu et, al., 2014). With the Common Core State Standards’ emphasis on argument writing, have students present a claim for each of their sources, providing reasons and evidence for its selection.
Solving the Problem of Online Evaluation
In an era of “fake news” we need to help students not only comprehend what they read, but identify, evaluate, and defend their sources. Teaching literacy today must include instruction in critically evaluating information online.
References
Teaching New Literacies 