6. Collecting and Assessing Sources

Now that you have a topic, it’s time to seek out sources and deepen our expertise. To become experts on our topics, we need to learn from those who have come before. Collecting a variety of useful sources that represent diverse perspectives will allow you to situate yourself within the conversation on your topic and develop a nuanced, authoritative point of view. Showing that you have done your homework on your topic makes your argument more persuasive when it comes time to write your paper.

What Are We Doing in This Module?

This module will help you understand the importance of referencing relevant sources in your research. Then, we’ll go over strategies for finding and evaluating those sources.

How Will We Do It?

We’ll start by reviewing why you need outside sources for your project. Then, you’ll learn about the different types of sources you can draw from to engage with a wide range of expertise on your topic. Finally, we’ll cover how you can find sources using the library, as well as how to identify the most useful sources for your project.

Why Does It Matter?

The research skills developed in this module will transfer to a range of research assignments across your coursework at SCU. Further, the strategies of locating, assessing, and understanding the arguments of diverse sources will also serve you in your life and work outside the classroom, where you will need to engage with research and sources for a range of personal, academic, and professional reasons.

Module Goal and Learning Outcomes

By the end of this module, you will be able to:

• Identify genres of sources and practice finding and paraphrasing their arguments
• Curate a collection of sources from databases and think critically about the output of those databases
• Analyze sources for quality and diversity of perspectives