Evaluating Sources Using Lateral Reading

Purpose

For this assignment, students will use lateral reading strategies¹ to evaluate the credibility of one or more information sources or, see the alternative option for evaluating academic journal articles. 

Learning Outcomes

• Identify multiple factors to consider as part of the source evaluation process
• Explain the distinction between lateral reading (reading across sites) versus vertical reading (deep evaluation of a single site)
• Use lateral reading strategies to evaluate information sources for credibility

Related Framework Concepts

• Authority is Constructed and Contextual
• Information Has Value
• Scholarship as Conversation

Learn more about the Information Literacy Core Concepts. 

Related Resources

• What Reading Laterally Means (Caulfield, 2017)
• Lateral Reading Video (University of Louisville Libraries)
• Lateral Reading Handout (University of Louisville Libraries)

Notes

• This assignment could work as a standalone assignment/activity or as could be incorporated as part of a larger, scaffolded research project
• Depending on your specific goals, you could provide students with one or more sources to evaluate, or students could be required to first identify their own source(s) relevant to their topic or research question
• If you provide sources, the activity will likely work best if the sources are not ones in which the credibility or lack of credibility will be immediately obvious; instead, sources of varying levels of credibility are recommended
• A version of this assignment could have half the class using the vertical strategy to evaluate a website and the other using the lateral strategy to evaluate the same site, then each side posting their evaluation and comparing the responses.

Follow Up

For a follow-up activity, students could be asked to use this experience to create class guidelines for evaluating sources. For subsequent assignments, they could be required to demonstrate that they applied the guidelines when selecting their sources.

Instructions

_{¹ Based on the Lateral Reading Teaching Activity on the Citizen Literacy website, created by Robert Detmering, Amber Willenborg, and Terri Holtze for University of Louisville Libraries and licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-Share Alike 4.0 International License.}