Course: English Composition (ENGL 1A) · Silver Oak University (fictional sample) · Prof. Lindgren
Module: Week 9 of 16 · Fall 2026 · in-person, two 75-minute sessions
Objective covered: Objective 5 — Find, evaluate, and integrate credible sources — developing a research question and judging credibility through lateral reading.

This file holds two pieces: (A) the Module 9 Overview page ("Start Here") and (B) the Welcome Announcement that drips out when the module opens. Dates below assume a Tuesday/Thursday session pattern with Week 9 meeting Tue Oct 27 and Thu Oct 29, and end-of-week work due Sunday Nov 1, 11:59 p.m. Adjust the day-of-week and times to match your section.

(A) Module 9 Overview — Start Here

Welcome to Week 9: Research — Finding & Evaluating Sources

This is your home base for the week. Read it first, then work the checklist below from top to bottom. Everything you need is linked inside the module.

Welcome back — the midterm is behind you, and we now turn the corner into the research arc of the course (Weeks 9–12), which builds toward the Research-Based Argument in Week 12. Before you can integrate a source or cite it in MLA, you have to find the right sources and decide which ones to trust. That is this week. The internet will hand you ten thousand "answers" in half a second; the skill that separates a college writer from a search bar is knowing which of those answers is worth believing — and how to check.

Two big moves anchor the week. First, turning a topic into a research question — the difference between "social media" (a topic you could write a library about) and "Does limiting teens to one hour of social media a day improve their sleep?" (a question you can actually answer). Second, evaluating a source's credibility — using a CRAAP-style checklist and the move professional fact-checkers actually use: lateral reading (you judge a source by leaving it and seeing what independent sources say about it, instead of staring at the slick page in front of you).

The week's big question

"How do I turn a topic into a researchable question — and how do I decide which sources are actually worth trusting?"

By Friday you'll be able to write a focused research question, tell primary from secondary and scholarly from popular sources, and run a quick lateral-reading credibility check on a real website.

By the end of this week, you can…

Use this as a checklist. If you can do all four out loud, you're ready for the quiz.

• [ ] Turn a topic into a research question — narrow, focused, and genuinely answerable with evidence (not a one-word topic, not a yes/no fact).
• [ ] Classify sources — primary vs. secondary, and scholarly/peer-reviewed vs. popular — and say which fits a given purpose.
• [ ] Tell library databases from the open web — and explain why a database result usually clears a credibility bar the open web doesn't.
• [ ] Evaluate credibility with a CRAAP-style test and lateral reading — check currency, relevance, authority, accuracy, purpose, and the bias behind a source — by leaving the page to see what others say about it.

What's due this week, and when

Work these in order — each one gets you ready for the next.

Heads-up on the AI work: this is the week the course's AI-critique habit gets serious. A chatbot will answer "Is this site reliable?" with total confidence — and it will sometimes invent facts about the source, "remember" an award it never won, or describe an author who doesn't exist. The same tool, asked for sources, will hand you citations that look perfect and lead nowhere. Starting now and through Week 12, the rule hardens: the tool drafts; you verify — against the real source.**

Late policy reminder: 10% off per day late. If life happens, reach out before the deadline — I'd much rather hear from you early.

How to succeed this week

• Question first, then research. Don't go to the search bar with a topic — go with a question. "Vaping" returns chaos; "Has the teen vaping rate fallen since flavored-pod restrictions?" returns evidence you can weigh. The narrower question is the easier paper.
• Stop trusting the look of a page. A slick logo, a confident tone, and a .org address tell you nothing about whether a source is reliable. Credibility lives in who's behind it and what independent sources say — not in the web design.
• Read laterally, not just down. When you hit a new site, the fact-checker's move is to leave it: open a new tab and search the site's name plus "funding," "owner," or "criticism." Let other sources tell you who you're reading.
• Use the CRAAP questions as a habit, not a worksheet. Currency, Relevance, Authority, Accuracy, Purpose — five quick questions that catch most bad sources before they cost you a grade.
• More sources is not a stronger paper. Ten weak sources sink an essay faster than three strong ones. Depth and credibility beat a long Works Cited.

You don't need any special background for this week — just a healthy skepticism and a willingness to click away from a source to check it. Come to class ready to argue about whether you'd ever cite Wikipedia in a college paper. See you Tuesday.

(B) Welcome Announcement — Module 9

Release setting: post on the module's start day (offset = 0 days), i.e., Mon Oct 26, 2026 — not before. If your platform won't preserve the scheduled date on import, post this as a draft labeled "Release: Mon Oct 26."

Subject: Week 9 — how to find sources worth trusting (and catch the fakes) 🔎

Hi everyone — and welcome to the research stretch of the course.

Quick gut check: Google "is coffee bad for you" right now and you'll get a site swearing it cures everything and another swearing it'll kill you — both with clean layouts and confident voices. So which one do you believe? That question is the whole of Week 9. We're not writing the research essay yet (that's Week 12); first we learn the two moves every researcher makes before they cite a single thing: ask a real research question and decide which sources are actually trustworthy.

This week — Research: Finding & Evaluating Sources — we tackle the big question: How do I turn a topic into a researchable question, and how do I decide which sources are worth trusting? By Friday you'll be able to write a focused research question, tell a scholarly source from a popular one, and run the lateral-reading check that professional fact-checkers use to size up a website in two minutes.

Four things not to miss:
1. Lecture Tutorial 9 — work through research questions, source types, and lateral reading with one approved chatbot and submit the share link. Due Sun Nov 1.
2. Quiz 9, Discussion 9, and Assignment 9 also close Sun Nov 1 — the discussion ("Is Wikipedia a legitimate source?") is a quick AI dialogue you summarize and post, so start early and leave time to reply to classmates.
3. Writing Studio 9 — "Check the Source" — our weekly workshop. You'll pick a real website and evaluate it by reading laterally, then watch a chatbot confidently tell you a source is reliable — and learn to verify that for yourself.
4. Open the Start Here page first — it lays out everything in order with due dates.

One promise: by the end of this week, you'll never look at a search results page the same way again. The skill you build here — judging a source instead of just believing it — is one of the most useful things this entire course will give you, in school and far beyond it.

Bring your skepticism (and a strong opinion about Wikipedia) to class on Tuesday.

See you soon,
Prof. Lindgren