Defining a Scholarly Source

Title

Defining a Scholarly Source
Description Students will compare 3 different articles to determine which one is scholarly and will then list out the reasons why they think it is scholarly. This activity allows students to think critically about publications in order to deduce the features that give scholarly sources their scholarly nature.
Steps
  1. Provide students with 3 articles to review related to the course content:
    • A peer-reviewed, scholarly research article
    • A popular source
    • One should be somewhere in-between, such as an article written by a scholar, but not published in a journal
    • These articles can be provided as print copies or online links to the articles
  2. Working in pairs or small groups, have the students compare the three articles for 10 minutes
  3. They should:
    • Identify areas where the articles are different,
    • Discuss what is scholarly, what is not?
  4. After each group has had time to review the articles ask students to tell you which article they thought was scholarly and why
  5. Note their criteria on the whiteboard
  6. If anything is missing, add it, and explain;
  7. Based on the criteria, ask them to define what a scholarly article is
Tags  Evaluating-sources; Beyond-Google; In-class
Time 20 minutes total (1o minutes examining sources; 10 minutes discussing)
Attachments noun_229116Scholarly Worksheet