Evaluating Sources
20-50 min.
General Topic Overview
Students will use critical thinking, and lateral and vertical reading techniques to evaluate sources and information for their accuracy, reliability, and suitability for their research. Students will examine the content of sources, with a focus on source creators, voices, biases and perspectives. This workshop can be tailored to focus on primary or secondary sources, if desired.
Secondary Source Focused Lesson Description
Students will be introduced to fact checking resources, tools to determine political bias of media outlets, and specific search techniques to help them dig deeper into a source to evaluate its reliability.
Primary Source Focused Lesson Description
Students will learn skills to evaluate and analyze primary sources using pre-selected material or material they discover through their own research. The focus will be on source format, creators, audience and voices (who is represented, and who is silent in the sources).
Objectives:
- Identify and evaluate different types of sources for their suitability
- Evaluate the reliability of sources
- Use lateral reading skills to examine a source
- Identify potential areas of bias within sources
- Understand how to use sources with varying viewpoints effectively and ethically
Sample In-Class Activities:
- Lecture/Presentation introducing concepts and methods of evaluating
- Demonstrations of evaluating a source using vertical and lateral reading techniques
- Practice by completing a source evaluation worksheet
Recommended for: (May be more focused for 300 and 400 level seminars)
