In today’s “post-truth” era, lay citizens have difficulty trusting and judging what is true based on their integrated comprehension of various information. The amount, diversity, and complexity of information has increased dramatically causing rampant conflicting information originating even from reliable sources in topics such as vaccines, diets, educational methods, and so on. This paper reviews research in epistemic cognition that explores new ways of information literacy in order to improve the abovementioned situation. Based on the AIR model for epistemic cognition, which places particular emphasis on evidential practices, we explain the Grasp of Evidence framework which captures competencies that include evaluation, interpretation, and integration of evidence, as well as evaluation of testimonies of experts who provide such information. Our three projects that explore innovative forms of information literacy education based on the framework are also described in this paper.

In this study, we aimed to reduce the burden of creating questions in certification exams by developing a question creation support system that automatically generates questions and answers based on knowledge extracted from questions and answers in past exams. In addition, we developed a prototype of the system for the Morioka history and culture expert certification called “Moriken”, which is sponsored by the Morioka Chamber of Commerce and Industry. This system is characterized by questions and answers that are automatically generated using a knowledge base constructed by extracting knowledge contained in past exams. Results of a preliminary experiment with students and an experiment on use of the system by the “Moriken” question creation committee demonstrated that the system could automatically generate questions that could be used with minor modifications in the certification exam. The mean time spent on each question was significantly shorter when using the system than when not using the system. Moreover, 78％ of the participants in the preliminary experiment and 60％ of the participants in the usage experiment reported that the burden question creation was reduced.

It is important to exploit educational and school psychological knowledge to verbalize and conceptualize reflections on college life under the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic. This study qualitatively analyzed two types of reports completed as a part of a lecture: reflective writing, which asked students to relate the knowledge from the courses to past days, and an impression essay, which asked them to reflect on the reflective writing. The results showed that students selected psycho-educational service for learning aspect (25 of 36 students) and motivations (19 of 36 students) as reflection targets. Moreover, in a critical case sampling with Steps for Coding and Theorization (SCAT), a student recognized learning about contextual adaptation abilities for learning. Students’ descriptions of their impressions reveal that they perceived this reflective writing assignment as a good opportunity to reflect on receiving psycho-educational service and own learning during the COVID-19 pandemic.

This paper describes design and evaluation of an educatoinal practice aiming to promote university students’ understanding and intentional use of the concept and strategy of self-regulated learning (SRL). The course is designed on the basis of the experiential learning model intending to foster students’ reflection and conceptualization of their own learning experience by combining them with SRL theory. To evoke their learning experience, the course design exploits TV documentaries describing junior high school students struggling to achieve good results. In addition, online essay submissions are assingned for the course students to interpret the documentaries from the viewpoint of SRL theory. All the submitted essays are distributed to the students to give them a chance to compare their own ideas with those in the essays written by other students to deepen their thoughts. The course was taken by first-year university students. The results of questionarie indicate that the course was effecteve for the students to deepen their understanding on SRL, especially for those who could associate their experiences of failures or ones to overcome them.