Digital Smarts - Students Terrible at Evaluating Online Sources

A new study has found that middle-school students in the U.S. are struggling to critically evaluate online information about science. University of Connecticut researcher Elena Forzani found that less than 4% of seventh-grade students who participated in the study could identify the author of an online source, evaluate that author's credibility, and determine whether the source was reliable. Girls tended to be better than boys at identifying and evaluating the author, and affluent students (identified as those who are not eligible for free or reduced-price lunch) performed significantly better than their peers. This study is important to highlight because these are the kinds of skills that are critical for true digital literacy, especially with the emphasis of Common Core and the Next Generation Science Standards.