When it comes to evaluating information that flows across social channels or pops up in a Google search, young and otherwise digital-savvy students can easily be duped.
This is among the findings in a report from the Stanford History Education Group (SHEG), which shows an inability by students to reason about information they see on the Internet.
Students, for example, had a hard time distinguishing advertisements from news articles or identifying where information came from.
“Many people assume that because young people are fluent in social media they are equally perceptive about what they find there,” says Professor Sam Wineburg, the lead author of the report and founder of SHEG. “Our work shows the opposite to be true.”
The researchers began their work in January 2015, tackling the question of “civic online reasoning” because there were few ways to assess how students evaluate online information and to identify approaches to teach the skills necessary to distinguish credible sources from unreliable ones.
The new report covered news literacy, as well as students’ ability to judge Facebook and Twitter feeds, comments left in readers’ forums on news sites, blog posts, photographs and other digital messages that shape public opinion.
The assessments reflected key understandings the students should possess such as being able to find out who wrote a story and whether that source is credible. The authors drew on the expertise of teachers, university researchers, librarians and news experts to come up with 15 age-appropriate tests — five each for middle school, high school and college levels.
“In every case and at every level, we were taken aback by students’ lack of preparation,” the authors wrote.