Presented at the 59th Annual Meeting of the National Reading Conference, December 4, 2009, Albuquerque, NM.

Increasingly, students are using the Internet to obtain information about both general and academic topics (Lubans, 1999; Jones & Madden, 2002; Shackleford, Thompson & James, 1999). Along with this trend there is a growing concern about the dubious nature of online information, and users’ ability to validate or evaluate this information (Alexander & Tate, 1999; Flanagin & Metzger, 2000; Browne, Freeman & Williamson, 2000). Research shows that students are frequently deceived when viewing online content (Leu et al., 2007; Johnson & Kaye, 1998; Rieh & Belkin, 1998). Particularly, students are not able to judge the validity of a website, even when given procedures to do so (Lubans, 1998, 1999). There is still little known about building the healthy skepticism needed by students while reading online information. Because of the reliance of students to use the Internet to find information it is even more paramount to their success as online readers to be able to evaluate the validity and reliability of websites (Leu et al., 2008). This paper reports on the results of a pilot study that investigates if critical evaluation skills could be improved by first analyzing the techniques authors use to make websites more credible (Britt & Gabrys, 2002; Fogg, Marshall, Laraki, Osipovich, Varma, Fang, et al., 2001) and then having students build their own hoax websites by using these techniques. Hoax websites are defined as website “fabrications” that have been created for entertainment purposes, usually invoking the ridiculous, but maintaining a “superficial appearance of scientific professionalism” (Brem, Russell, & Weems, 2001, p. 198).

Please click below to view the student-created hoax websites.