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ENGL 1213 Composition 2Ⅱ

Research & rhetoric for more advanced expository essays.

Session 1: Evaluating Sources

Evaluating Your Sources

When your class visits the library for the first time, we’ll discuss how to find peer-reviewed sources and how to evaluate information on the internet for reliability.

Follow along with the presentation and then complete the following activities.

In-Class Presentation

Padlet Collaboration

The librarian conducting the session may have you collaborate with your classmates remotely using the widget below.

Based on what you are learning in class, create search terms for the following research question:

How does social media affect college students’ grades?

Made with Padlet

Possible Activities

In-class activities may include the following.

  1. Using the following article as a starting point, find three peer-reviewed sources to which the article refers:

    Since this is a popular article, you may have to get creative to find its sources.

    Remember these tips:

    • Pick out keywords that likely came from the original source.

    • Try multiple search tools, but only use regular search engines as a last resort; try our databases and Google Scholar.

    • Brainstorm with your group members on research strategies

  2. With the worksheet on your table, use the Spider method to produce an evaluation of the following two websites:

    Does either site appear to be reliable? Why or why not? Would you use either as a source in an assignment, assuming that popular sources were appropriate for that assignment?

  3. Open access is currently a big movement in the world of academic journals, but it has resulted in a lack of control over quality in scholarly content. Using the same Spider method as before, examine these two databases of open-access journals:

Worksheets

Worksheets will be handed out in class, but they are also provided here.