Multiple-documents literacy: Strategic processing, source awareness, and argumentation when reading multiple conflicting documents

Abstract This study used think-aloud methodology to explore the strategic processing of 51 Norwegian undergraduates reading about an unfamiliar scientific issue in multiple conflicting documents presented in a Google-like environment. After reading, participants rated the trustworthiness of the sources and wrote essays on the issue. Findings indicated that students displayed reading behaviors falling in the main categories of identifying and learning important information, monitoring, and evaluating, with behaviors in all three categories involving the linking of information across different documents. Moreover, students' strategic processing while reading the documents was related to their evaluation of the trustworthiness of the sources and their inclusion of source citations in their essays. Specifically, more use of evaluation strategies was associated with less trust in biased and more trust in unbiased sources, and more use of evaluation strategies as well as cross-document linking strategies was associated with more explicit source citations and connections between sources and contents in the essays. Finally, students' strategic processing during reading was related to their written argumentation, with evaluating, monitoring, and cross-document linking positively related to argumentative reasoning about the scientific issue. We discuss how the findings may contribute to current theory on multiple-documents literacy and provide directions for further research in the area.

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