This essay uses an example of a library instruction exercise in which otherwise competent online searching goes wrong as a springboard for reconceptualizing digital literacy as an environmental ethics of information. This reconceptualization is presented as a corrective measure for teachers and students grappling with the uses and misuses of AI…

This chapter defines digital primary source literacy, identifies three key competencies necessary for students to develop when working with online archival sources as part of their course work, and provides a case study of a classroom exercise that can be adapted by faculty looking to develop these skills in their students.

Effectively learning to evaluate sources, especially when conducting online research, is an essential skill for middle-grade students. This article argues that supporting students in learning to evaluate sources must involve using critical consciousness skills to do so, or the evaluation is incomplete. In the article, the authors expand the…

Sourcing and intertextual integration skills are critical to the development of young students' digital literacy skills. Sourcing skills include identifying source parameters (e.g., recognizing the author, publication date, publisher) and analyzing the author's expertise. The objective of this study is to investigate which sourcing skills used by…

In secondary school geography lessons, students are encouraged to form argumentatively founded opinions on complex geographical conflicts. For these conflicts, there is no one right solution and the content quality of the argumentation lies especially in the multi-perspective approach to the conflict and the integration of spatial information. The…

Systematic searches are integral to identifying the evidence that is used in National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) public health guidelines (PHGs). This study analyses the sources, including bibliographic databases and other techniques, required for PHGs. The aims were to analyse the sources used to identify the publications…

As adolescents turn to online resources for health information, obstetricians and gynaecologists can play an active role in creating evidence-based resources for sexual health education. The purpose of this study was to assess the effect of a sexual health education website on adolescent girls' reproductive health knowledge and self-efficacy. It…

Using pre- and post- intervention data, this formative study explores instructional moves designed to guide students' critical thinking as they engage in lateral reading and digital source evaluation. Working in a dual enrollment composition classroom, researchers identified and addressed three areas of need: considering context when determining…

The ability to find credible information online is necessary for informed civic engagement in the 21st century. This need is particularly acute for young people, who often turn to the Internet to learn about social and political issues. Preparing students to evaluate online content, particularly as it concerns social and political issues, aligns…

People rely on the internet for easy access to information, setting up potential confusion about the boundaries between an individual's knowledge and the information they find online. Across four experiments, we replicated and extended past work showing that online searching inflates people's confidence in their knowledge. Participants who…

In the United States, the internet is a vital resource for LGBTQ+ youth to meet their sexual and reproductive health information needs, especially those who cannot receive necessary information from family, healthcare providers, and classrooms. In this dissertation, I present three papers that connect content moderation policies and their impacts…

Previous research on document selection has found that college-level readers are generally able to differentiate trustworthy from less trustworthy sources. Yet, a preference for selecting trustworthy sources may depend on features of the reading situation and readers' beliefs in science. In the current study, college students were tasked with…

In a study conducted across an urban school district, we tested a classroom-based intervention in which students were taught online evaluation strategies drawn from research with professional fact checkers. Students practiced the heuristic of "lateral reading": leaving an unfamiliar website to search the open Web before investing…

This study investigates the impact of transnationalism on Chinese international graduate students' literacy practices in online information seeking. Using phenomenological interviewing, weekly diaries, and focus group data, the study found that these students actively engage in recursive, dynamic, and flexible online information-seeking literacy…

This article creates a data-driven framework for the previously unframed concept of "on-the-go sourcing" (spontaneous actions anywhere, anytime or anyhow, whereby one instantly retrieves materials using the most accessible tools to obtain information about encountered matters). This framework was extracted from a pool of approximately…