Evaluating Sources: the Matrix

Title

Evaluating Sources: the Matrix
Description This activity presents students with several  categories of sources (ex. background, social media, news, scholarly/academic) and asks them to select a source and rate it using critieria about the relevance, timeliness, and authority. The source genres can be adapted to fit the kinds of sources students will be utilizing for their assignment. 
Steps
  1. Introduce the evaluation matrix to students and touch on the key criteria that they will be looking for in their sources (relevance, currency, and authority)
  2. Break students into small groups (2-3) and distribute worksheet (either online or in print)
  3. Ask students to follow the instructions and find a source related to their course topic for each source genre/category
  4. Ask students to rank the “scholarliness” of the source they select using the evaluation matrix
  5. At the end of the exercise, have students report out on one of the sources that they found and the evaluation criteria they applied to determine the quality of the source
Variation Give students a blank matrix and ask them to evaluate sources as they conduct their own independent research on their own topic.
Tags Evaluating-sources; In-class
Time 20 minutes total (1o minutes examining sources; 10 minutes discussing)
Attachments noun_229116Evaluation Matrix Worksheet