next »

[pine22]

Does anyone have any advice for how to teach students to evaluate the credibility of sources? I'd appreciate any insigh that other instructors might be able to provide. It's a common problem that I see in my students' writing, and I'd like to spend a day or so of class next semester going over this issue.

[comp_queen]

Hi there.  I teach them until I'm blue in the face (and have library staff come in and provide institution-specific information) about the differences among regular web sites, more reliable things like .edu and .gov, and then library databases of academic journals.  We discuss sources at length, and do sample web/library/database searches during in-class activities.  I have them hand in working bibliographies, and on and on and on.

IT JUST DOESN'T MATTER.  Today's students, and my experience has unfortunately been the same with traditional age folks and folks older than my own parents, simply REFUSE to do proper academic research.  In most cases it's not due to lack of ability or honest confusion about the differences between 'net and database usage (though that does happen from time to time, and I help those students personally).  Most of the time, though, people just . . . won't . . . do . . . what is required. 

I have to say that your question is a comfort.  As a young, female adjunct, I tend to feel like my students must be doing their "real" work in other people's classes and blowing mine off because they have siblings my age. 

Good luck teaching source credibility, but I feel like my cynics' view belongs in this conversation--most of our students, after our instruction, are perfectly well aware of source credibility issues.  They simply don't care.  They are the consumers after all, the thinking seems to go, and they can't be bothered to do what's assigned instead of what's easiest.

But they know, oh yes they know. 

[trentsands]

The only solution I've found for this is stage-by-stage assignments that build up to the research paper.  I have my students find three sources related to a topic of interest and develop a paper proposal and research question.  Then they develop annotated bibliographies (bibliographic entry with 2 to 3 sentence description of the source and how it might be useful) of sources that look as though they can help answer the research question.  I require them to collect more sources than they are required to use for the paper, explaining that it is hard to know what sources will be useful before one has started to take notes and write the paper.  I have them develop and refine their research questions all the while and review the bibliographies well before the paper is due to alert them to any troubles I see.  I also restrict the types of sources they use while explaining why the restrictions are in place.  Basically I have the imitate as closely as I can the process I go through for research as well as the restrictions I place on myself.  The finished products are well above what I see when I don't use these methods.  My crowning example is freshman composition course in which students wrote on literary topics and use journal articles to support their analyses of literary texts.  The preparation they went through, especially the developed research question, made it difficult not to develop a competent research paper.  All they had to do was answer the research question, using the primary source, their research, and their articulated arguments.

[smart_e_pantz]

The only solution I've found for this is stage-by-stage assignments that build up to the research paper.  I have my students find three sources related to a topic of interest and develop a paper proposal and research question.  Then they develop annotated bibliographies (bibliographic entry with 2 to 3 sentence description of the source and how it might be useful) of sources that look as though they can help answer the research question.  I require them to collect more sources than they are required to use for the paper, explaining that it is hard to know what sources will be useful before one has started to take notes and write the paper.  I have them develop and refine their research questions all the while and review the bibliographies well before the paper is due to alert them to any troubles I see.  I also restrict the types of sources they use while explaining why the restrictions are in place.  Basically I have the imitate as closely as I can the process I go through for research as well as the restrictions I place on myself.  The finished products are well above what I see when I don't use these methods.  My crowning example is freshman composition course in which students wrote on literary topics and use journal articles to support their analyses of literary texts.  The preparation they went through, especially the developed research question, made it difficult not to develop a competent research paper.  All they had to do was answer the research question, using the primary source, their research, and their articulated arguments.

This is what I do.  If their first bibliography is filled with unacceptable sources, they get a zero on the assignment until they fix it and then they lose 20% on the fixed version for not doing it right the first time.  You wouldn't believe how good they become at identifying credible academic sources after we go through one round of this. 

The upside of breaking it down into parts, other than teaching them to identify credible sources, is that the ones who are truly interested in learning how to write a good academic paper will get a lot from the assignment  and turn in beautiful work by the end of the semester.

The other upside is that this will be another nail in the coffin of lazy students.  It's hard to argue to a dean that it is unfair that you failed your paper assignment when there are four previous sections of the assignment letting you know exactly where you stand AND your professor can demonstrate, by using other students' work, they she did carefully explain the requirements of the assignment to you.

[comp_queen]

My crowning example is freshman composition course in which students wrote on literary topics and use journal articles to support their analyses of literary texts. 

Trentsands--you are my hero--even though I go through similar processes to those described (staged assignments, preliminary source lists, et al.), I've been lucky if my freshmen even quote the actual literary sources being analyzed in lit analysis papers (and yes, the rubric specifically requires quotes and/or specific plot references).

Would you mind sending a few of your students my way?

[trentsands]

comp_queen,

It surprises me too when I see the results.  The university at which I taught (I am currently an academic adviser and will be starting a Ph.D. program in Fall 2007), was not top notch, with students who certainly did as little as possible to succeed. 

What may make a difference, at least in my experience, is that every paper previous to the research paper teaches something relevent to the completion of the research paper.  Students write an explication of a poem, analysis of a short story, a comparison of two or three poems or two short stories, etc., before the research paper.  I also conducted in class large group and small group practice of explication, analysis, comparison, credibility testing, understanding and summarizing academic prose (The Explicator works great for this, heady stuff that is nonetheless short enough for students to read in class).  I basically have broken down all the skills a student must have to accomplish the final task and find at least one course session to tackle the most vital skills.  All of this would only be practical in a writing class.  After doing this, I was impressed with what my students could accomplish.  Even those students who weren't particularly successful at arguing his or her thesis still made strides in how they approach academic writing.

[trentsands]

I also try to be honest with myself about the number of students who actually slough off on the assignments is relatively small.  Maybe one to three students in a class do truely inadequate work that is a result of their entire unwillingness to do the work involved.  Many others do okay or well, having room for improvement in the skills they've developed and would do better if they would manage their time better or took the work a bit more seriously.  All college students have tremendous demands on their time, and some of these students have decided that my particular class is less a priority than other classes or activities.  There's another few on top who either have the skills entering the class or catch on with a mere explanation of the task.

The few on top need little attention.  Those on the bottom don't deserve much attention because they have not even answered for themselves why they are in the class and apparently don't consider even passing the course a priority.  These bottom students also don't respond to any amount of effort put in on their behalf.  The ones in the middle respond to smaller or greater degree, though they have their off days, and I can live with that.

It is easy, though, to focus on the few glaring examples of utter slackers and plagiarists and to start to feel like they represent the rest of one's students.  Truth is, they are the minority.  Keep them there.

[monkeypants]

I've had some success using the Bedford "Research Room" online.  You can browse through their tutorials and exercises for evaluating sources at http://www.bedfordstmartins.com/researchroom/

They have a checklist there that I modify and turn into a student assignment.  I change the checklist items into questions and require students to answer the questions about each source.  My students attach the source evaluations to their papers.

[trabb]

I read this post yesterday, and I've been waiting for a spare moment to post some of my ideas for teaching source evaluation.

Then, this afternoon, I graded an essay submitted for the current unit of my summer course.  In the works cited - and I kid you not - was an essay from www.freeessays.tv.  The paper was not plagiarized; in fact, I was impressed with how carefully the student documented every quote and paraphrase that he used from a paper he purchased from an online paper mill.

Needless to say, I will not be sharing my ideas on how to teach evaluation of sources.  I will instead commence banging my head against the wall.

[ngs_gmail]

AT the CC where I am a librarian, the profs. do all the above-mentioned and more - including bringing their classes to the library (yay!) - usually to little or no avail.  As Comp Queeen said: they just. won't. do. what is required.

The only thing that seems to work that I've seen is to, essentially, evaluate for them.  To indicate which sources you believe are credible (e.g. articles from journals, accessed through the library databases) and that's all you will accept.  Period.  No googling, no .gov or .edu, no wikipedia.  Only journal articles (or - gasp! books.)  And they have to print the article or photocopy the book pages and attach it to the paper to back it up.  I've even seen some profs. require the printout to be highlighted in particular colors to indicate quotes, paraphrases, etc.

Of course, if you require the use of Library databases (which are NOT "the Internet") you sort of have to then instruct the students in how to use them.  Which is where the librarians come in.  We are HAPPY to show your students how to use the databases. 

Whenever I face a class of bored, know-it-all students who have little thought bubbles over their heads reading "as soon as she shuts up, I'm just going to google this," my intro line about how their prof won't accept googled sources, and I'm now going to show them THE ONLY sources acceptable for their assignments, they almost snap to attention.  Well, not snap to, exactly, but at least lift their heads off the desks.  When it begins to dawn that one can't just type in a string of words and print out the first five results in, say, an Ebsco database, the looks of "you mean I have to do some WORK?" on their faces is priceless.  Ahem.  But that's just a bonus.  The real priceless jewel is: for that one class, that one assignment, they have to learn (yikes!) how to use something other than Google.