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Week 12 · Module overview

Week 12 — Evaluating Sources and Evidence

Critical Thinking Free sample edition

Welcome to your Week 12 Start Here page.

Why this matters

A nursing student checking where a health post got its numbers and a business major weighing a supplier's "a study proves it" both need to ask where a claim came from before trusting it.

In plain language

This week is about where a claim comes from and whether its source has earned your trust. A source's credibility (how far it deserves trust on one claim) rests on four questions you can ask of any page, post, or person. You will learn to follow a claim back to its primary source (the original record). You will check what other people say about a site before you read it, and spot a real photo or quotation used out of its setting. You will also learn to treat a chatbot's citations and a familiar voice on the phone as things to verify, not things to trust on sight.

  • Already covered: Week 7 taught the appeal to authority, and Weeks 9 to 11 judged samples, causes, and numbers.
  • This week: the four credibility questions, tracing a claim, leaving the page, context, and AI fakes.
  • How they connect: every earlier test assumed the evidence was real and fairly reported.
  • Where we're going next: Week 13, Science and Explanation.

Focus

When has a source earned your trust on a claim?

By the end of this module, you should be able to:

  • [ ] judge a source on one claim with the four credibility questions
  • [ ] trace a claim back to its primary source
  • [ ] check a photo or a quotation against its original
  • [ ] verify a chatbot citation or a familiar voice

To-do

Plan your week

  1. Read Chapter 12 (about 40 minutes), then the lecture and slides.
  2. Work the lecture tutorial (60–90 minutes) and the practice set (about 20 minutes).
  3. Do the Argument Workshop (about 90 minutes), the discussion, and the assignment.
  4. Take the quiz.

This week's checkpoint: run the four credibility questions on the actor passage and on the weather service, and say which question decides each.

You've got this

Take it in order, and ask your instructor if a step snags.

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