Improving university students’ web savvy: An intervention study
Abstract
Background: Young people increasingly turn to the Internet for information about social and political issues. However, they struggle to evaluate the trustworthiness of the information they encounter online. Aims: This pilot study investigated whether a focused curricular intervention could improve university students’ ability to make sound judgements of credibility. Sample: Participants ( n = 67) were students in four sections of a ‘critical thinking and writing’ course at a university on the West Coast of the United States. Course sections were randomly assigned to treatment ( n = 29) and control conditions ( n = 38). Methods: We conducted a pre‐and‐posttest, treatment/control experiment using a 2 × 2 × 2 design (treatment condition × order × time) with repeated measures on the last factor. Students in the treatment group received two 75‐min lessons on evaluating the credibility of online content. An assessment of online reasoning was administered to students 6 weeks prior to the intervention and again 5 weeks after. Results: Students in the treatment group were significantly more likely than students in the control group to have shown gains from pretest to posttest. Conclusions: Results suggest that teaching students a small number of flexible heuristics that can be applied across digital contexts can improve their evaluation of online sources.
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Students can learn to take up and apply online reasoning strategies in a few short lessons.
“This finding is in line with previous research, which demonstrates that students can learn to take up and apply online reasoning strategies in a few short lessons (e.g., McGrew, 2020;McGrew et al., 2019;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., 2019
Cites
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Can Students Evaluate Online Sources? Learning From Assessments of Civic Online Reasoning
McGrew, S., Breakstone, J., Ortega, T., Smith, M., & Wineburg, S. (2018) · Theory & Research in Social Education · doi:10.1080/00933104.2017.1416320 · Cited by 533 · see citing works
Self-citationSource Evaluation, Comprehension, and Learning in Internet Science Inquiry Tasks
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Wineburg, S., & McGrew, S. (2019) · Teachers College Record: The Voice of Scholarship in Education · doi:10.1177/016146811912101102 · Cited by 394 · see citing works
Self-citationWhy Learn History (When It’s Already on Your Phone)
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Science audiences, misinformation, and fake news
Scheufele, D. A., & Krause, N. M. (2019) · Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences · doi:10.1073/pnas.1805871115 · Cited by 878 · see citing works
Students’ Civic Online Reasoning: A National Portrait
Breakstone, J., Smith, M., Wineburg, S., Rapaport, A., Carle, J., Garland, M., & Saavedra, A. (2021) · Educational Researcher · doi:10.3102/0013189x211017495 · Cited by 267 · see citing works
Self-citationLateral reading: College students learn to critically evaluate internet sources in an online course.
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Self-citationMcGrew, S., & Breakstone, J. (2023) · AERA Open · doi:10.1177/23328584231176451 · Cited by 49 · see citing works
“…2020; Breakstone, Smith, Connors, et al., 2021; Brodsky, Brooks, Scimeca, Galati, et al., 2021; Brodsky, Brooks, Scimeca, Todorova, et al., 2021; McGrew et al., 2019) have shown that college students improve in their approaches to evaluating online information, including reading laterally more…”
BackgroundSelf-citationTeaching lateral reading: Interventions to help people read like fact checkers.
McGrew, S. (2024) · Current Opinion in Psychology · doi:10.1016/j.copsyc.2023.101737 · Cited by 41 · see citing works
Self-citationPimentel, D. R. (2025) · Journal of Research in Science Teaching · doi:10.1002/tea.21974 · Cited by 28 · see citing works
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Fendt, M., Muth, X., & Edelsbrunner, P. A. (2025) · Learning and Individual Differences · doi:10.1016/j.lindif.2025.102782 · Cited by 6 · see citing works
- Authors
- McGrew, S., Smith, M., Breakstone, J., Ortega, T., & Wineburg, S.
- Affiliations
- Stanford University (US)
- Corresponding author
- Wineburg, Sam
- Venue
- British Journal of Educational Psychology
- Publisher
- Wiley
- Published
- 2019-04-16
- Volume
- 89
- Issue
- 3
- Pages
- 485-500
- ISSN
- 0007-0998 (ISSN-L)
- 2044-8279
- OpenAlex
- W2940103192
- Cited by
- 131
- References
- 6
- Citations by year
- 2026: 12 · 2025: 15 · 2024: 22 · 2023: 23 · 2022: 21 · 2021: 24 · 2020: 11 · 2019: 3
- FWCI
- 26.86
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
- Locations
- British Journal of Educational Psychology (publishedVersion)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- Funders
- McCormick Foundation
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Developmental and Educational Psychology › Educational Strategies and Epistemologies
- Social Sciences › Arts and Humanities › Literature and Literary Theory › Literacy, Media, and Education
- Social Sciences › Education › Education and Critical Thinking Development
- Keywords
- online information credibility, source evaluation, university students, curriculum intervention, critical thinking, heuristics, information literacy, online information seeking
- MeSH terms
- Heuristics, Academic Performance, Adolescent, Adult, Female, Humans, Male, Pilot Projects, Students, Teaching, Thinking, Universities, Internet, Young Adult
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