Abstract:

Critical thinking is a skill that can be divided into the two basic components of inquiry and argumentation. Inquiry involves seeking and selecting relevant information, while argumentation involves justifying one’s conclusions. This study aims to relate the internet searching strategies higher education students use to the quality of their argumentative texts.

Our specific objectives are:
1) to describe the Internet searching strategies that participants use to support the elaboration of their texts,
2) to elaborate a rubric to assess the quality of the argumentative texts,
3) to describe the quality of student argumentative texts, comparing the quality of the text style with the quality of the argument construction, and
4) to relate the quality of their argumentative texts with their Internet searching strategies.

We have carried out a mixed-method study collecting written argumentative texts of 107 participants about the illegalization of abortion, in which they were allowed to consult any Internet source, and an open questionnaire about the search and selection of Internet sources to elaborate the text. For data analysis, we elaborated a rubric to assess the quality of the texts using intra-class correlations for inter-rater reliability, and we performed quantitative descriptive analysis. The final version of the rubric showed acceptable reliability (α >.7) and it included the following categories: text organization, text style, use of sources, coherence, and absence of fallacies, selection of arguments, number of arguments, elaboration of arguments, and discussion of different positions and counterarguments. We also conducted a qualitative mixed coding of the answers to the open questionnaires. Our preliminary results indicate that students’ texts had lower quality regarding argumentation, especially in the elaboration of arguments and the introduction of counterarguments and different positions. Furthermore, this result connects with the fact that students did not use much internet sources and, when they did it, they tended to search in sites that defended similar positions as their own. Only a minority of students sought scientific articles and described quality criteria to assess the source reliability. As a conclusion, we emphasize the need to further develop digital literacy skills as a relevant factor to foster critical thinking in higher education.

Keywords:

Critical thinking, argumentative text elaboration, internet searching strategies.