A Three‐Tiered Framework for Proactive Critical Evaluation During Online Inquiry

Abstract

Recently, many have released calls for the need to help students evaluate online information. Additionally, many have offered strategies, lists, and other heuristics for helping students evaluate. However, educators lack a method for organizing these various practices into a systematic framework that captures the complex (occurring within online inquiry) and multifaceted (having multiple components) nature of evaluation. Such a framework can guide students as they evaluate information online. The author proposes such a framework that positions readers as proactive judges engaging in iterative evaluation of relevancy and credibility within and across three tiers (content, source, and context) and multiple texts while researching a topic of interest during online research and comprehension. The author also offers three instructional practices for engaging students in the framework, as well as an example of one student using the framework with support from his teacher.

Students' abilities to evaluate the credibility of online texts: The role of internet‐specific epistemic justifications

“…In our analysis, we focused on central aspects of the evaluation of credibility: evaluation of the source of the online texts, more precisely the author, venue and their intentions (e.g., Bråten, Stadtler, et al, 2018), evaluation of evidence (Forzani, 2020; Sinatra & Lombardi, 2020) and corroboration (Kohnen & Mertens, 2019; Wineburg, 1991). As argued by Forzani (2020), triangulation across different credibility aspects assists students to gain a fuller understanding of the credibility of an online text. Abilities to evaluate various credibility aspects allow students the flexibility to apply different evaluation criteria depending on the text under exploration.…”

Constraints and Affordances of Online Engagement With Scientific Information—A Literature Review

“…The goal-directed and effortful evaluation of online information may further be constrained by several context features of scientific information in digital media environments (Breakstone et al, 2018;Forzani, 2019), such as genre, presentation of information (such as the use of distracting imagery), or other users' endorsements. Unfortunately, individuals often use only superficial or unreliable indicators for determining the credibility of online information (Coiro et al, 2015;McGrew et al, 2018).…”

“…Differences were also observed in the prevalence and types of functional evidencebased argumentive idea units in individual final essays, and they favored the students who engaged online in discussions with peers holding an opposing view. Here, engagement in online discussions with individuals holding opposing or sameside views may have fostered an epistemological understanding of recognizing that the other is reasoning from a perspective different from one's own, but that this perspective is still worth examining (Iordanou and Kuhn, 2020), or that it is important to take a step back and re-evaluate one's own understanding (Forzani, 2019). However, most people typically show difficulties with being able "to construct fully justified dual-position arguments and to explain and reconcile differences between accounts" (Barzilai and Ka'adan, 2017, p. 223).…”

Constructing Meaning Online: Teaching Critical Reading in a Post‐Truth Era

“…At the same time, such checklist‐style approaches have been critiqued and iterated on over the years. Forzani’s (2020) framework for evaluation, for example, asks students to consider websites in context and triangulate information from different sources and viewpoints.…”