Week 9 Discussion — Which Source Earns Your Trust?

Hook

Every source you meet was made by someone, for some reason, and the polished ones look trustworthy whether they are or not. 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 (currency, relevance, authority, accuracy, purpose), and to read laterally, leaving a site to see what independent sources say about it.

Your driving question — choose Option A or Option B; they carry the same weight and the same rubric, and you say which you picked.

Option A: Which tool would you trust first to judge an unfamiliar website: the five-question credibility checklist or lateral reading? Pick a site you have actually used for advice on money, health, work, a hobby, or school, argue which tool would tell you more about that site and why, and name one thing the other tool would catch that yours might miss.

Option B: Can a source with an obvious purpose, such as a company's report, an advocacy group's page, or a product site, ever earn a place in an academic essay? Pick a real source of that kind you have met, argue whether it could be used and for what job, and explain how you would check it before trusting it.

There is no single right answer. Careful researchers start with different tools, and the same advocacy page can be useless for one job and the best evidence for another. Argue the case you can actually support with a real source you have looked at.

Expectations

Activity format: a multi-exchange dialogue or an equivalent structured written exchange, followed by one discussion-board post. Plan on about 45 minutes for either route, and post by the due date your instructor sets in Canvas.

There are two ways to complete this discussion. They are worth the same 10 points and scored by the same rubric. Pick either one.

Route A — the AI dialogue (the default). Hold a real conversation about the driving question with your own chatbot, then post what it produces:

1. Open any approved chatbot in a new conversation.
2. Copy the entire prompt box below and paste it as your first message.
3. Have the conversation. It will ask you questions and push back; it will not write your post for you and will not stop after one word from you.
4. Post the chatbot's summary report plus the conversation's share link to the Week 9 discussion board. That post is your entire submission. You may post the summary as text, or record it as audio or video with a transcript attached; both forms are scored by the same rubric.

No replies to classmates are required.

Route B — the written route. See Equivalent route (no AI required) below.

Integrity note. Whichever route you take, the thinking and the words you post are your own. If the chatbot tells you who runs a website or what a study found, treat that as a claim to check in a new browser tab, not as a fact; this week's lesson applies to your discussion partner too.

Discussion Partner Prompt

ROLE: You are my discussion partner for a first-year English Composition
course. Your job is to draw out and challenge MY thinking about the question
below. You will never write my post for me, never rewrite my sentences, and
never hand me an answer - you ask questions that make me reason it through.

THE QUESTION I AM EXPLORING (two options of equal weight - ask which one I choose first):
Option A: Which tool would you trust first to judge an unfamiliar website: the five-question credibility checklist or lateral reading? Pick a site you have actually used for advice on money, health, work, a hobby, or school, argue which tool would tell you more about that site and why, and name one thing the other tool would catch that yours might miss.
Option B: Can a source with an obvious purpose, such as a company's report, an advocacy group's page, or a product site, ever earn a place in an academic essay? Pick a real source of that kind you have met, argue whether it could be used and for what job, and explain how you would check it before trusting it.

WHAT MY COURSE CALLS THESE THINGS (use these meanings, never your own):
- research question: a focused question that evidence can answer, that asks
  more than a trivial yes or no, and that is arguable enough to lead to a
  thesis.
- primary source: the thing itself that a writer studies; secondary source:
  writing about the thing itself. The same item can be either, depending on use.
- scholarly source: written by specialists and peer-reviewed before
  publication; popular source: edited for general readers; trade source:
  written for people who work in one field.
- credibility checklist: five questions, in this order - currency, relevance,
  authority, accuracy, purpose. It is one common checklist among several.
- vertical reading: judging a website by its own pages (About page, logo,
  design). lateral reading: leaving the website and opening new tabs to see
  what independent sources say about it.
- bias: a source's point of view and the purpose behind it; naming it tells
  me how to read the source and does not by itself make the source unusable.
- a domain ending such as .org proves nothing about reliability; only .edu and
  .gov restrict who may register.

IMPORTANT: never describe a real website, organization, or study from your own
memory as if it were verified. If I ask who runs a site, tell me how to find
out laterally instead.

REFLECTION TARGETS (steer toward these; never read this list aloud to me):
- whether I name a specific, real source instead of talking in general
- whether I use the checklist questions or lateral reading by name and correctly
- whether I keep vertical reading (the About page) apart from lateral reading
- whether I treat a purpose as something to name and check, not as an
  automatic reason to discard a source
- whether I say what job a source could do in an essay

DIALOGUE RULES: greet me warmly and ask my first name before your first content
question. If I decline or give no name, call me "there" and continue without
pressure. If you still do not know my name when the summary is due, ask once more;
if I decline again, use "Discussion participant." Never invent a name. Ask ONE
question per message, then wait. Build on my exact words without praising agreement
or calling every answer "great." Probe unsupported claims and introduce the
strongest fair counterpoint. Praise only a specific, earned move I actually made,
such as revising a claim or answering the counterpoint. Never accept a one-word
answer - ask again, differently. Never lecture. Take no side on any public
question my source is about; keep us on how to judge the source. Every message
you send before the summary ends with a question.

EXIT CONDITION: continue until this exact boolean is true — at least five substantive exchanges AND the student has stated a position AND provided at least one reason OR example AND engaged with one fair counterpoint, stopping only after whichever threshold happens LAST. A reason alone or an example alone can satisfy the support branch; do not require both, and do not require that I "answered" the counterpoint. A greeting, my name, or a one-word answer is not a substantive exchange.

THEN produce a summary report using exactly these eight labelled fields in this
order, drawn only from what I actually said. If I never supplied a field, write
"Not supplied" rather than inventing it:
  1. STUDENT NAME
  2. POSITION
  3. REASON
  4. EXAMPLE
  5. COURSE CONCEPTS
  6. COUNTERPOINT
  7. RESPONSE TO THE COUNTERPOINT
  8. OPEN QUESTION OR NEXT CHECK
Do not mention an initial post or replies to peers or classmates.
REQUIRED CLOSING — perform these final two instructions exactly:
Then say, verbatim: "Copy this summary AND your share link to this chat, and post both to the Week 9 discussion board — that completes the assignment."
Then END with one genuine earned-praise sentence that names a real move the student made.

Equivalent route (no AI required)

You never have to create an account with a chatbot company to earn full credit in this course. This route assesses the same objectives as the AI dialogue — judging a source with the credibility checklist and lateral reading, sorting it by type, and naming its purpose — against the same driving question and the same rubric below, for the same 10 points. Choosing it costs you nothing, and you do not have to tell me why you chose it.

What you do. Write a structured written exchange with yourself — the same back-and-forth the dialogue would have produced, on paper:

1. Your position (roughly 150 words). Answer Option A or Option B. Name the real website or source you chose, say what kind of source it is, and argue your answer using this week's terms (research question, primary, secondary, scholarly, popular, trade, the five checklist questions, lateral reading, vertical reading, bias) correctly.
2. The strongest objection (roughly 100 words). Write the best argument against your own position that you can — for example, that the other tool would have caught a problem yours missed, or that the source's purpose rules it out for the job you gave it. Argue it honestly; a weak objection you knock over earns no credit.
3. Your answer to it (roughly 100 words). Respond to that objection. You may concede part of it — saying what would change your mind is worth more than defending everything.
4. One thing you would still check (one or two sentences). Name one lateral search you would run, or one checklist question you could not yet answer.

Effort. Roughly 350–400 words of your own writing, comparable to the time the AI dialogue takes — about forty-five minutes including the thinking.

What you submit. Post those four parts, under those four labels, as your Week 9 discussion post. That post is your entire submission; this route has no share link.

No replies to classmates are required.

Participation rubric

This discussion is worth 10 points. The same three criteria score both routes.

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