CRITICAL ONLINE RESOURCE EVALUATION

Nowadays, anyone with a smart phone and internet connection can publish whatever they wish rapidly and widely. Therefore, it is no wonder that youth struggle with knowing which information to trust. It seems like as soon as you find one source of information, you find another source that contradicts it. Which source should you trust and why? The repercussions of how you evaluate this information can have enormous academic, professional, financial, social, financial, health, and political consequences.

That’s why we want to find out more about how we can design instruction that helps improve students’ ability to know what to trust and what not to.  Therefore, the purpose of this research project is to investigate how secondary teachers and students understand and engage in the evaluation of online information. Specifically, the goals of this research project are to (a) identify teachers’ pedagogical practices related to online information evaluation, (b) assess secondary students’ online information evaluation practices, and, (c) to develop interventions aimed at improving students’ ability to evaluate online information.

This research has been funded by the Fonds de recherche du Québec – Société et culture (FRQSC).