Week 9 — Earn Your Sources: Question, Sort, and Read Laterally — Traditional alternative (no AI)

Instructors: publish this instead of the adaptive version if you prefer, and unpublish or delete the adaptive one.

Assignment 8 of the term — turn a topic into a research question, find and sort three real sources, run the five-question credibility checklist, read each source laterally, check one source's description of itself, and explain lateral reading to someone outside the course.

This week you learned to turn a topic into a research question, to sort sources as primary or secondary and as scholarly, popular, or trade, to run the five-question credibility checklist, and to read laterally, leaving a site to see what independent sources say about it. In Week 1 you learned that every text has a writer, an audience, and a purpose; this week you ask those questions of the sources you might use. This week's lecture tutorial, quiz, discussion, and Writing Studio practise the same moves from other angles; this assignment is where you put them together on your own research.

The task

Choose one topic from the course's roster: a four-day class schedule, campus parking, the dining hall's hours, a community library's hours, a workplace's meeting policy, or AI in the writing classroom. Do not use the running draft's phone topic; Chapter 9 already worked that one. Every source you name must be real and findable, and you must open it yourself. Never list a source you have only seen described in a search result or by someone else.

Part A — turn your topic into a research question. Write your topic. Then write one weak version of a question about it, either too broad to answer or a trivial yes or no, and say which it is. Then write your research question: focused, answerable with evidence, more than a trivial yes or no, and arguable enough to lead to a thesis.

Part B — find, sort, and check three sources. Find three real sources that help answer your research question: one scholarly article reached through your library's databases, one popular source, and one primary source such as an official policy page, a set of meeting minutes, or a government data page. For each source, write the author or organization, the title, and where you found it (library database, library catalog, or open web). Label each one primary or secondary, and scholarly, popular, trade, or government document, with a one-sentence reason. Then run the five-question credibility checklist on each source, in the course's order: currency, relevance, authority, accuracy, purpose. Answer each question with a specific detail from the source, not a general impression. Your evaluation covers 3 sources, and each source gets all 5 checklist questions; say how many checklist answers your evaluation contains and how you got that number.

Part C — read laterally and check a self-description. For each of your three sources, leave the source and open new tabs to see what independent sources say about its publisher or site. Keep a short lateral-reading log: for each source, name at least two independent sources you checked and what they said. Then state each source's purpose (to inform, to persuade, to sell, or to direct) and what that purpose means for how you will read it; a purpose is something to name, not an automatic reason to drop a source. Your log needs 2 independent sources about each of your 3 sources; if you had found 1 so far, say how many more you would need and how you got that number.

Finally, take one of your three sources' own About page or self-description. List every factual claim it makes about itself (who runs it, how long it has existed, who funds it, what it is known for), and tag each one confirmed, unconfirmed, or contradicted, with the lateral check that settled it.

Explain it to a non-expert

A relative often forwards health articles to the family group chat with the message "this looks official." Write a 3–5 sentence message that explains, in everyday words, what reading laterally means and why it tells you more than the site's own About page or design. Use one of your own checks from Part C as your example. Name one honest limit — for example, that lateral reading takes a few minutes and some topics have few independent reviewers. Explain any term your relative might not know.

For a different, ungraded example, imagine a coworker about to buy a laptop because a review site gave it five stars. Model answer: "Before you trust that review, open a new tab and search the review site's name with words like 'paid' or 'sponsored.' If other sites say it earns money from the brands it reviews, its stars mean less. You learn more from what others say about a site than from what the site says about itself. It takes a couple of minutes, and you may not find much on a very small site."

Use that pattern for your relative, with your own example.

Reflect on your revision

Before you submit, audit your first draft: put a check beside every checklist answer that cites a specific detail, circle every label that lacks a reason, and mark any "lateral" check that never left the site. Revise. Then answer one of these two options in 2–4 sentences; they carry the same weight:

• (a) Which change after your audit made one of your sources more trustworthy to use, or showed you it should be dropped, and what check revealed it?
• (b) Which of the source's claims about itself surprised you most when you checked it, and what will you do differently the next time a site describes itself to you?

Deliverables

Submit in the assignment entry: Part A with your topic, weak question, and research question; the Part B source list with labels, reasons, checklist answers, and your checklist-answer count and how you got it; the Part C lateral-reading log, purposes, self-description check, and your count of sources still needed and how you got it; your message to your relative; and your reflection. Each part may be written, or recorded as audio or video with a transcript; every form is graded by the same scoring criteria.

Submit in any accessible file type or as a link; a recorded response may be submitted as audio or video with a transcript, or as text.

How you'll be graded

The full analytic rubric is attached to this assignment in Canvas.

Academic integrity and AI use

The research question, the sorts, the checklist answers, the lateral-reading log, the message, and the reflection must be your own words and your own checking. This version of the assignment asks for no chatbot at any step. Open every source you list; never list a source you have only seen described somewhere else.

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