It is important for students to be able to use reliable sources in courses they are taking or for their thesis. It can also be useful to make use of online news articles.
This educational research project at Utrecht University collaborates with Sourcer (https://getsourcer.com), an organization that provides a tool that helps students self-assess the reliability of online news articles. We would like to know what students' experiences are with this tool.
Therefore, in this exploratory project, we are asking students if they could test this tool for us. Participation is, of course, completely voluntary. Moreover, they can decide to stop their participation at any time, should they change their mind later. They also sign an informed consent form. REBO's ethics committee has approved this educational research project. S
When students participate, we install the tool on the laptop they use when they search for online news articles for a course or their thesis. This is a tracker they use only for the news articles they find online and use. So only the results of their searches for online news articles are tracked (anonymized, not traceable to their person), their other searches on the Internet are not tracked. And the answers to the questions abut their experiences with Sourcer, we will ask them, after the project, about their experiences with this  tool cannot be traced back to their person either.

• prof. dr. ir. Marcel Boumans
• dr. Maryse Chappin
• prof. dr. Bruce Mutsvairo
• dr. Rianne van Lambalgen
• dr. Marie-Louise Goudeau

• Wout Haakman MSc

International consortium

• dr. Helen Vossen
• dr. Bregje Holleman
• prof. dr. Wieger Bakker
• dr. Bjorn Wansink

• Elisabeth Staksrud; Hajo Boomgaarden; Loredana Ivan; Elena-Alexandra Dumitru; Christina Ponte; Ioli Campos; Francesca Comunello; Katariina Salmela Aro; Andra Siibak; Sebastiaan Wachs; Steven Stegers; Lauri Hietajarvi

Toolkit with legal, technological and educatibe measures to fight Covid-19 fake news.

During three years researchers from the Netherlands, Spain, Sweden and Canada focused on fundamental changes in the contemporary experience of later life, at the intersection of digital infrastructures, During three years researchers from the Netherlands, Spain, Sweden and Canada investigated fundamental changes in the contemporary experience of later life, at the intersection of digital infrastructures, place and the experience of “being connected”place and the experience of “being connected”.

• Aleander Peine (Universiteit Utrecht Copernicus Instituut)
• Daniel Lopez Gomez (Universitat Oberta de Catalunya Spanje)
• Barbara Marshall (Trent University Canada)
• Britt Ostlund (KTH Stockholm Zweden)

The purpose of this project is to explore how exergames (digital games combining exercise with game play) and the playful interactions fostered during play can contribute to establish, reinforce or change the nature of social interactions among refugees and Dutch children in school classes. Exergame play enables multiple players to compete or cooperate on a team, thereby providing both a virtual and a real social interaction. Because exergame play allows youth to take their eyes off their peers and direct their attention toward a screen, game play may reduce body self-consciousness during physical activity.

• prof. dr. Catrin Finkenauer

• Theresa de la Hera Conde-Pumpido; Amanda Paz Alencar; Claudine Lamoth; Myrte Vertsteeg; Wiljan van Willigenburg

ACT is a research project that addresses the transformation of the experiences of ageing with the proliferation of new forms of mediated communications in networked societies. ACT considere how ‘digital ageism’ – the individual and systemic biases that create forms of inclusion and exclusion that are age-related – operates in subtle ways. ACT is creating intergenerational connections, rethinking new media from the perspective of old age and confronting digital ageism.

 1.      The research project Older audiences in the digital media environment: A cross-national longitudinal study (project leaders Eugène Loos, Galit Nimrod and Mireia Fernández-Ardèvol) aims to describe to which extent traditional dominant media are going to be replaced by innovative communication practices within the older audiences of new media, giving us insights into their media repertoires and habits. This research project included the older audience in six countries (Austria, Canada, Israel, the Netherlands, Romania, and Spain). During five years the same group of internet users aged 60 and up were followed during three waves (2016, 2018 and 2020). With varying expected dropout rates, the samples were planned to have a final panel that comprised about 500 participants per country. Finland joined the project for waves 2 and 3.

2.      The study The impact of exergames: A panacea for older adults’ wellbeing? Using  narrative literature reviews to make sense of exergaming in later life gives voice to older people themselves to get insight into how do they make sense of exergames in their everyday lives.

 3.      The digital divide due to age is declining quickly. But this does not necessarily mean that the willingness to use stock photos depicting older people accompanying digital information is the same among all senior citizens. The study The impact of pictures representing senior citizens as eternally youthful therefore focused on the following three research questions: 1) To which extent can various Dutch senior citizens (women and men, younger old and older old, living alone or together, full of vitality or fragile) identify with online stock photos of older people accompanying information about pensions, income, health and housing?, (2) Which are the connotations of the visual signs used in such stock photos? and (3) What are the policy implications for organizations aiming at offering digital information for a diverse group of senior citizens? The results of this Dutch study among 31 older adult are used to get insight into the ways they identify with stock photos. Finally, implications for organizations and future research are sketched.interviewed 31 various Dutch senior citizens to know how they identify with different kind of pictures (fragile/healthy) to help them to avoid the looming danger of euphoria and stigmatisation.

• Kim Sawchuk and international research team (see http://actproject.ca/members/)