Evaluating Sources: How to Tell if a Source is Credible
The videos on this page will help you learn how to up your digital literacy game and decide if a source can be used for academic assignments.
This video discusses some ways to tell if a source is credible. For example, who created the source? How recent is it? What is the domain?
This playlist is an entire series of videos called Navigating Digital Information made by Crash Course and hosted by John Green. This series has ten 10-20 minute videos discussing topics like fact checking, lateral reading, using Wikipedia, evaluating evidence, photos, and videos, and more. This is a very good resource to learn how to evaluate and navigate digital information.
Particularly pay attention to the videos about lateral reading, using Wikipedia, and fact checking.
This is a playlist of 11 videos, they're ALL very helpful for learning how to evaluate sources.
This video, by the Stanford History Education Group, explains what lateral reading is how to use it to up your digital literacy.
This video, by Khan Academy, discusses how to evaluate a source by evaluating their reasoning and evidence.
Scholarly vs. Popular Sources: What's the difference?
When looking at a potential source it is important to know whether it is a popular source or a scholarly source. Here are some key differences
-Scholarly articles are usually written for experts in the field by experts in the field and they are peer reviewed.
-Popular articles are written for the general public.
-Scholarly articles are highly researched and include an extensive list of references at the end of the article; popular articles don't usually show any sources at all (some do though).
Examples of Scholarly Articles:
-Academic journals
-Books written by experts
Examples of Popular Articles:
-Magazines
-Websites
-Blogs
-Books not written by experts.
Scholarly articles and peer reviewed articles are the same thing.