Educating Critical Online Readers (EduCrit)

The Internet is rapidly becoming the defining technology for literacy and, as a result, it is essential for educators to teach students to become critical consumers of online information. The increasing spread of misleading and false information accentuates this need. This project aims to: 1) develop and validate an assessment that measures students' skills to critically evaluate online texts; 2) develop and test the efficiency of two instructional programs that are targeted to enhance students' ability to critically evaluate online texts; 3) understand the role of motivational factors in learning critical evaluation skills, and 4) to understand whether there are gender differences in how students benefit from the motivational components that are incorporated into instruction. The Assessment for Critical Evaluation of Online Texts will be developed and tested with 400 sixth graders. The instructional programs will be developed and their effect will be tested with 540 sixth graders.