Week 11 — Document Your Sources: Audit a Machine's List, Then Build Your Own

Assignment 10 of the term — audit a chatbot's works-cited list on format and on facts, then build MLA ninth-edition entries and in-text citations for two real sources of your own.

This adaptive assignment uses a coaching dialogue to help you turn a first attempt into revised, correctly documented work. You remain the author. The coach asks questions, checks the reasoning you show, and waits for you to revise before it produces the required report. In Week 9 you chose and judged sources; in Week 10 you brought them into your sentences with signal phrases. This week you show a reader exactly where each one came from. 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 sources you actually use.

The task

Part A — audit a chatbot's works-cited list. A student asked a chatbot to "make an MLA works-cited list for my essay on phones in lecture classes." Here is the kind of list a chatbot might return. It was written for this course to contain mistakes; it is not a real chatbot's output, and it is attributed to no one. The four sources are the running draft's real sources, so you can check every element against Chapter 11 and against the sources themselves.

• Heading: References
• Entry 1: Beland, Louis-Philippe, and Richard Murphy. "Ill Communication: Technology, Distraction & Student Performance." Labour Economics, vol. 14, 2018, pp. 61–76.
• Entry 2: Amy, Jeff. "A majority of U.S. states now have laws banning or regulating cellphones in schools." 21 May 2025, www.pbs.org/newshour/education/a-majority-of-u-s-states-now-have-laws-banning-or-regulating-cellphones-in-schools.
• Entry 3: Carr, Nicholas. The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains. 10th anniversary ed., W. W. Norton, 2020.
• Entry 4: Department for Education. "Mobile Phones in Schools." GOV.UK, 29 June 2026, www.gov.uk/government/publications/mobile-phones-in-schools.
• The chatbot's suggested in-text citation for the running draft's quotation: (Beland and Murphy, 61)

Work this problem, showing your reasoning:

1. The illustrative chatbot list in Part A has 4 entries; 1 drops its container and sets its title in sentence case, and 1 gives the wrong volume and year and leaves out the DOI. How many entries can stay as they are?

Then run the two-level audit on the whole list. For the format level, check every entry against the template of core elements and name each fault; also check the heading, the order of the entries, and the suggested in-text citation. For the facts level, open the sources (or use Chapter 11's pinned entries) and name each element that does not match. Then write the corrected list in full, with the right heading and order, and the corrected in-text citation.

Part B — document two sources of your own. Choose two real sources you found or used in Weeks 9 and 10. If you do not have two yet, find two credible sources on one topic from this course's list: a four-day class schedule, a campus parking or transit change, the dining hall's hours, a community library's hours, a workplace's meeting policy, or the use of AI in the writing classroom. At least one of your sources must sit inside a container, such as an article on a news site, an article in a journal, or a page on a larger website. Then work this problem:

1. The MLA template has 9 core elements, and a journal-article entry with a volume, a page range, and a DOI uses 6 of them. How many elements does that entry skip?

For each of your two sources, write an element map: list the template's nine elements in order and, beside each one, either the detail you copied from the source itself or the word "skip". Then write each works-cited entry from your map, with its punctuation. Next, write a short paragraph of 4–6 sentences of your own that uses both sources: introduce one with a signal phrase and give the other a parenthetical citation. Each citation uses the author-page form, or the name alone if the source has no pages. Finally, set up a works-cited page for the two entries with MLA's heading, alphabetical order by first element, a half-inch hanging indent, and titles in title case, and describe your running head in one sentence (your last name and the page number, upper right).

Explain it to a non-expert

A coworker is writing a short safety report for your workplace and says, "The links are already in my report, so I don't need a list of sources at the end." Write a 3–5 sentence message that tells them, in everyday words, what a reader gains from a pointer in the sentence plus a full entry at the end, and why the first word of each has to match. Name one honest limit — for example, that a list only helps if each entry has been checked against the real source. Explain any term your coworker might not know.

For a different, ungraded example, imagine a friend who shares a recipe in a family newsletter and writes only "from a cooking site." Model answer: "Say which recipe you mean and where it lives, so your cousin can find the same one: the dish's name, the cook who wrote it, the site that published it, and the date. Put the cook's name next to the recipe too, so a reader can match it to the full details at the bottom. That way nobody has to guess, and the cook gets the credit. It only works if you copy those details from the page itself, not from memory."

Use that pattern for your coworker, with your own explanation of what you learned this week.

Reflect on your revision

After you revise, answer one of these two options in 2–4 sentences; they carry the same weight:

• (a) Which element in your own entries changed most after feedback, and what did you find on the source itself that made you change it?
• (b) Which fault in the chatbot's list would you have missed without the facts level of the audit, and how will you check for it in your next essay?

Part 1 — Student instructions

1. Draft Part A, your Part B element maps, entries, paragraph, and works-cited page, and your message to your coworker before opening a chatbot.
2. Open any course-approved chatbot. Copy the entire Coach Prompt box, including its first and last marker lines, and paste it as one message. The coach will ask for your draft and then work one question at a time.
3. Answer in your own words. Use the coach's feedback to revise at least one part of your work, even if your first attempt was strong, and then answer reflection option (a) or (b).
4. Continue until the prompt's exit condition is met.
5. Save the chat's share link and copy the final report exactly as the coach gives it.

The chatbot is a coach, not a ghostwriter. It must draw out your reasoning rather than write your entries for you, and it must never hand you an entry, a page number, or a date that you did not copy from the source yourself.

Coach Prompt

COPY EVERYTHING BELOW THIS LINE
ROLE: You are a careful writing coach for a first-year college writing course. Draw out and challenge MY thinking about documenting sources in MLA style, ninth edition. Do not write my audit, my corrected list, my element maps, my entries, my paragraph, my message, or my reflection for me, do not supply any author, title, date, page number, volume, or address for a source, and do not invent work I did not show. If I ask you how to cite a real source, ask me what the source itself shows for each element instead of answering from memory.

ASSIGNMENT: Work through these two problems in order, one at a time. Do not invent, replace, or reorder a problem. The illustrative chatbot list I am auditing, written for my course to contain mistakes and attributed to no one: Heading: References. Entry 1: Beland, Louis-Philippe, and Richard Murphy. "Ill Communication: Technology, Distraction & Student Performance." Labour Economics, vol. 14, 2018, pp. 61-76. Entry 2: Amy, Jeff. "A majority of U.S. states now have laws banning or regulating cellphones in schools." 21 May 2025, followed by the article's web address. Entry 3: Carr, Nicholas. The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains. 10th anniversary ed., W. W. Norton, 2020. Entry 4: Department for Education. "Mobile Phones in Schools." GOV.UK, 29 June 2026, followed by the page's web address. Suggested in-text citation: (Beland and Murphy, 61). In my course's checked versions, Entry 1 is vol. 41, 2016, with the DOI https://doi.org/10.1016/j.labeco.2016.04.004, and Entry 2 has the container PBS News and its title in title case.
PROBLEM P1: The illustrative chatbot list in Part A has 4 entries; 1 drops its container and sets its title in sentence case, and 1 gives the wrong volume and year and leaves out the DOI. How many entries can stay as they are?
PROBLEM P2: The MLA template has 9 core elements, and a journal-article entry with a volume, a page range, and a DOI uses 6 of them. How many elements does that entry skip?
For P1 I must also run the two-level audit: name each format fault (including the heading, the order of the entries, and the suggested in-text citation) and each facts fault, and write the corrected list in full. For P2 I must also write an element map and a works-cited entry for each of two real sources of my own, at least one inside a container; a 4-6 sentence paragraph that cites one source in signal-phrase form and the other in parenthetical form; a works-cited page set up with MLA's heading, alphabetical order, a half-inch hanging indent, and title case, plus one sentence describing my running head; then a 3-5 sentence message to a coworker in everyday words that names one limit. After revising, I answer reflection option (a) or (b) from my assignment page.
The course meanings I must use: an in-text citation is the short pointer in a sentence that leads the reader to the matching works-cited entry; MLA's author-page form is the author's last name and the page, one space, no comma and no "p.", or the name alone for a source with no pages; the template of core elements is Author. Title of Source. Title of Container, Contributor, Version, Number, Publisher, Publication Date, Location. - include only the elements the source has; a container is the larger whole that holds a source; the matched pair means whatever word begins the in-text citation begins the entry; the list's heading is Works Cited, in alphabetical order by first element, with a half-inch hanging indent; the two-level audit checks format against the template and facts against the real source.

SCORING CRITERIA: Score only evidence I supply, out of 100 points. Works-cited list audit (P1): 25 if I give the count without error, name both format faults in the entries plus the wrong heading, the wrong order, and the comma in the in-text citation, name the facts faults (volume, year, missing DOI), and write the full corrected list and citation; 15 if the count and the entry faults are right but I miss the heading, the order, or the in-text citation; 8 if I name at least two faults but the count is off or the corrected list is missing; 0 if no fault is named. Element maps and entries for my sources (P2): 30 if I give the skipped-element count without error, both element maps list the nine elements in order with each detail copied from the source or marked skip, both entries follow the template's order and punctuation, and at least one entry places a source inside its container correctly; 20 if both maps and entries are present but one element is out of order, mislabeled, or mispunctuated; 10 if only one source is documented, or the source and the container are swapped; 0 if no map or entry. In-text citations and the works-cited page (P2): 20 if my paragraph has one correct signal-phrase citation and one correct parenthetical citation in the author-page form, each matching the first word of its entry, and my page has the Works Cited heading, alphabetical order, a hanging indent, title case, and a described running head; 12 if both citations are present but one has a comma, a "p.", or an invented page number, or one page convention is missing; 5 if a citation appears but matches no entry's first word; 0 if no citation appears. Plain-language explanation for a non-expert (P2): 10 if the message to my coworker uses everyday words, explains what the pointer and the full entry each do and why their first words match, and names a limit; 5 if it can be followed but omits the limit or leaves a term unexplained; 0 if missing. Revision and reflection (P2): 15 if I show a before-and-after change prompted by feedback plus a reflection on why it is better; 8 if only one of the two; 0 if neither.

Do NOT invent grading rules.

DIALOGUE RULES: Ask exactly one question per message and wait for my answer. Start by asking for my complete first attempt. Build each next question from my exact words. When I name an element, ask me where on the source I found it. When I name a container, ask me what the source is and what holds it. When I write an in-text citation, ask me which word of which entry it points to.

ENGAGEMENT GUARDS: A greeting, copied prompt, yes/no reply, or one-word answer is not a substantive exchange. Do not flatter or accept agreement as evidence. Praise only a concrete move I made. If evidence is missing, say what is missing and ask for it. If I give an author, date, page, or volume for one of my own sources, ask me to confirm I copied it from the source itself. Require a real revision plus a short reflection on why the revision is better. Do not issue the report early.

EXIT CONDITION: Continue until at least five substantive exchanges have occurred AND I have supplied both problems with the audit, the corrected list, the element maps, the entries, the paragraph, the works-cited page, and the message AND revised at least one part AND reflected on the revision. Stop only after whichever requirement happens last.

REPORT: After the exit condition is satisfied, output exactly these labelled lines in this order. Replace X with the exact earned score. Base every line only on evidence in this chat; write "Not supplied" for missing evidence and never raise the score for polished chatbot prose.
STUDENT'S SCORE: X/100
EVIDENCE FOR THE SCORE: [specific evidence from my audit, maps, entries, citations, page, and message]
REVISION MADE: [what I changed and why]
STRENGTH: [one earned strength]
NEXT STEP: [one concrete improvement]
Then tell me to submit this report, my revised work, and the share link.
COPY EVERYTHING ABOVE THIS LINE

Deliverables

Submit these three items in the assignment entry:

• your revised work: the Part A audit with your count and the corrected list, your two element maps and entries, your paragraph, your works-cited page, your message to your coworker, and your reflection — written, or recorded as audio or video with a transcript; every form is graded by the same scoring criteria;
• the coach's five-line report; and
• the conversation share link.

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.

Equivalent route (no AI required)

This route assesses the same Week 11 skills — auditing a machine-made list on format and on facts, building works-cited entries element by element from real sources, writing in-text citations in the author-page form that match their entries, setting up an MLA works-cited page, and explaining the system to someone outside the course — for comparable time and effort, about two hours, the same as the coached route. Complete Part A, both Part B element maps and entries, your paragraph, your works-cited page, the message to your coworker, and one reflection option. Then audit your own first draft against the attached scoring criteria, criterion by criterion: beside every element in each map, write where on the source you found it; trace each in-text citation to the first word of its entry and mark it "matches" or "does not match"; and check your page for the heading, the order, the hanging indent, and title case. Write a second draft. Add a 150–200 word revision memo that names one change you made, the check that prompted it, and one question you still have. Submit the revised work, your completed criteria checklist, and the revision memo in the assignment entry; together they replace the share link and the coach's report. This route uses the same scoring criteria and the same points, with no penalty for choosing it.

How you'll be graded

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

Academic integrity and AI use

The audit, the corrected list, the element maps, the entries, the paragraph, the message, the revision, and the reflection must be your own words. Do not ask the chatbot to write any of them. Copy every author, title, date, page, and address from the source itself, never from a chatbot or a generator, and quote only words you have found in the real text. Submit an honest share link from your own dialogue. The equivalent route keeps the same workload and evidence and requires no AI account.

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