The DOI matches its Crossref record; 41 of the 42 references it cites were found in a registry or an index.
Can Students Evaluate Online Sources? Learning From Assessments of Civic Online Reasoning
Abstract
To be an informed citizen in today’s information-rich environment, individuals must be able to evaluate information they encounter on the Internet. However, teachers currently have limited options if they want to assess students’ evaluations of digital content. In response, we created a range of short tasks that assess students’ civic online reasoning—the ability to effectively search for, evaluate, and verify social and political information online. Assessments ranged from paper-and-pencil tasks to open Internet search tasks delivered via Google Forms. We outline a process of assessment development in which middle school, high school, and college students in 12 states completed tasks. We present a series of representative tasks and analyses of trends in student performance. Across tasks and grade levels, students struggled to effectively evaluate online claims, sources, and evidence. These results point to a need for curriculum materials that support students’ development of civic online reasoning competencies.
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“I followed a process similar to McGrew et al. (2018) to design and iterate on each assessment and associated rubric, with feedback from Mr. Lewis and another researcher.”
From Learning to evaluate sources of science (mis)information on the internet: Assessing students' scientific online reasoning (2025) · cites this paper as McGrew et al. (2018)
In the citing paper
“Researchers have demonstrated that the COR framework supports high school students with effectively evaluating information on websites and social media posts by providing them with stronger heuristics and strategies for making decisions about what information to pay attention to online (Breakstone et al., 2021;McGrew et al., 2018;McGrew, 2020;Wineburg et al., 2022).”
From Learning to evaluate sources of science (mis)information on the internet: Assessing students' scientific online reasoning (2025) · cites this paper as McGrew et al., 2018
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Self-citation
Metadata
- Authors
- McGrew, S., Breakstone, J., Ortega, T., Smith, M., & Wineburg, S.
- Affiliations
- Stanford University (US)
- Corresponding author
- McGrew, Sarah
- Venue
- Theory & Research in Social Education
- Publisher
- Informa UK Limited
- Published
- 2018-01-08
- Volume
- 46
- Issue
- 2
- Pages
- 165-193
- ISSN
- 0093-3104 (ISSN-L)
- 2163-1654
- OpenAlex
- W2782804901
- Cited by
- 533
- References
- 42
- Citations by year
- 2026: 65 · 2025: 62 · 2024: 76 · 2023: 84 · 2022: 66 · 2021: 69 · 2020: 65 · 2019: 29 · 2018: 17
- FWCI
- 102.42
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
- Locations
- Theory & Research in Social Education (publishedVersion)
- Funders
- Robert R. McCormick Foundation
- Spencer Foundation
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Education › Educator Training and Historical Pedagogy
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Developmental and Educational Psychology › Educational Strategies and Epistemologies
- Social Sciences › Education › Literacy, Media, and Education
- Keywords
- evaluating online sources, information literacy, digital citizenship, citizenship education, assessment development, online information evaluation, political information, social information, student achievement trends, grade level differences, curriculum materials
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