ABSTRACT
Our research addresses the role of external representations in reasoning and problem solving by examining the epistemic processing of texts and pictures about a biology topic, which are presented on multiple Internet pages. Epistemic processing is intended as processing that takes into account the source, reliability, and accuracy of information (Hofer & Pintrich, 1997). It is manifest in evaluative processes of the trustworthiness of an informational source and the veracity of its content, especially in the context of web page reading. As such, epistemic processing reflects an important aspect of critical thinking (King & Kitchener, 2002; Kuhn & Weinstock, 2002) activated by a reader who deals with multiple documents on the same topic. Since the beginning of the new millennium, the World Wide Web has become
a tool used by almost anyone – at least in western and many eastern countries – to search information on a huge variety of topics. Although it was not originally developed for educational purposes, the Web is now the biggest source of information for students, who rely on it, rather than on printed material, more and more for academic and school assignments. Undoubtedly, this is an important aspect of the democratisation of our current cultural context. At the same time, however, the infinite body of information made available on this potentially global learning environment by a simple click of the mouse, poses questions of locating, selecting, and evaluating the sources of information, as well as about the information itself, which requires new and complex skills. First of all, information sources must be located. The information must then be read, extracted, integrated, and synthesised into coherent material which can be used to build new knowledge (Kuiper, Volman, & Terwel, 2005). These crucial processes, however, do not cover all those required to use Internet-based material effectively. Navigating the Web to learn more about a topic is not only a question of formulating efficient search queries and applying appropriate reading strategies. It is also a question of evaluating the credibility of websites and the veracity of
the information provided. Epistemic processes about the knowledge accessed and learning from the Web must be activated to deal with multiple sources and to follow up only the most reliable of these (Stadtler & Bromme, 2008). In this chapter we focus on the latter question to examine whether university
students take into account the authoritativeness of sources when reading Internet pages on a biology issue and whether their epistemic processing is related to individual characteristics. In particular, epistemic processing was addressed indirectly by the analysis of eye fixations during Internet page reading. Methodologically, an ‘online’ technique was used that allows objective measurement of the allocation of visual attention while reading, that is, eye fixation measurement. The analysis of visual attention allocated within various pages makes it possible to track epistemic evaluation of sources, and their contents. Information on the Web is presented in a wide variety of representational
formats. In this regard, as the multimedia tool par excellence, the Web is a wealth of external representations. Web pages may contain graphs, diagrams, animations, etc. as well as texts and pictures. In this study, we examined visual attention allocated while processing the texts and pictures appearing on various web pages. The research focused on evaluative processes of source reliability, which may lead to concentrating more on certain information and less on other, or to processing the same information differently according to the epistemic authority of the source itself.
