Mount St Benedict College Library: Evaluating Resources

Factitious is a game that is designed to help students practice identifying real and fake news stories. The 2020 version of the game features stories about COVID-19.
 

Selecting Information for Your Assignments

When you select material and information for your assignments, it should never be used indiscriminately - there should be a continual evaluation process occurring. Evaluate information for its relevance and usefulness to your work, and its quality. When looking at a source, ask yourself the following questions.

1. Will this information be useful?

Is it relevant to my task?

Does it relate to my topic?

Does it help me answer a question or solve a problem?

2. Will this information add to my knowledge?

Does it help me learn more about the topic?

Does it fill in background information?

Does it provide specific information?

3. What will I use this information for?

Could it help to form my central argument?

Will it help focus my thoughts?

Can I use it as evidence?

Will it help me locate other information?

4. How recent is this information?

Is it out-of-date, or is it still useful?

Is it the most up-to-date? Does it need to be?

5. How reliable is this information?

Does this material come from a reputable and unbiased source?

Is the author an acknowledged expert in the field?

6. How understandable is this information?

If I find it difficult to understand, do I have to use it?

Can I choose other information that I do understand?

7. How will I use this information?

Does it provide evidence or support for my ideas?

Does it provide a good example?

Where could I put it in my assignment?

8. Do I really need to use this information?

How does it help me answer the task?

Is it essential information?

Is it new information or am I just restating what I have already said?

Is it the best example or most relevant piece of evidence? Do I have better material?

What does it add to my work? Would my assignment be just as good without it?

Is it too technical or too simple?

Have I already supported my argument or point of view well enough?

Do I have enough information to begin my task?

Lateral reading is basically searching for information about a source while you are reading it; you are checking for currency, relevancy, authority, accuracy, and purpose (CRAAP method) by reading what other sites say about your source. This is different from vertical reading where you apply the CRAAP method using only the information the site itself provides you.

Searching for information online? Don't automatically click the first search result! Professional fact checkers practice click restraint: Before clicking on anything, they scan the list of results and look for the best sources.

Lateral reading is a powerful digital literacy strategy to combat fake news. Based on research with professional fact checkers, the Civic Online Reasoning curriculum from the Stanford History Education Group provides resources to help students become better consumers of digital information.

You might have heard that you can’t trust anything on Wikipedia. If that’s the case, then why do professional fact checkers often use it? In this video, we break down the basics of how to use Wikipedia wisely.

Look to your left. Look to your right. Look at this video. Today, John Green is going to teach you how to read laterally, using multiple tabs in your browser to look stuff up and fact check as you read. Real-time fact-checking an help you figure out what's real and what's not on the internet.