May 20, 2026. 13:00h. On-site and online session (Aula Este 1, Faculty of Psychology and Speech Therapy). Language: English.

Carolin Hahnel

Ruhr University Bochum

Searching for information online requires students to perform many tasks, such as defining search criteria and synthesizing information from multiple sources. Proficiency in reading is assumed to support students throughout this process, a relationship that I will explore in detail in this talk. The CORE research group (Critical Online Reasoning in Higher Education) asked 167 university students to search the internet for answers to several generic questions (e.g., are cell phone towers a health risk?). The students were asked to write a short, evidence-based argument, which was rated based on several criteria (e.g., action recommendation, coherence of argument). The students also named at least two relevant websites, which were coded based on information quality criteria, such as accuracy and completeness. We also assessed students’ reading skills, including sentence-level comprehension, text-based reasoning, and discerning facts from opinions. I will present the results of these assessments and their relationship to one another.

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Bio

Carolin Hahnel is a professor of psychological assessment and testing at  the Ruhr University Bochum (RUB) in Germany and associated researcher of  the DIPF | Leibniz Institute for Research and Information in Education.  Her main research interests include questions about how readers search,  process, and evaluate digital information in a self-regulated way, how process data from technology-based tests can help to assess comprehension and learning processes, and how such information about test-takers’ behaviour can contribute to improving learning in digital environments.