Ever since Melissa and I started working on our textbook, we’ve been paying a lot more attention to what our students do and don’t know about source use.
Before, I was guilty of thinking they knew the basics or that they would pick them up, the way I did, along the way.
They don’t know the basics, which is why I’m so glad I take the time to teach the fundamentals.
Recently, I created a 50 question true/false pre-test, just to gauge where they are.
I’m not reproducing all of the results here, but the data should help explain why, when we say, “you have to use academic sources” or “you have to use reliable sources” or “you have to use peer-reviewed sources,” they don’t follow instructions.
This is from two classes of upper-division UCD students:
Reliability
50% of the students think Google Scholar only shows reliable sources (they don’t know about predatory journals).
Peer Review
50% think all academic sources are peer-reviewed.
64% think everything in a peer-reviewed journal is peer-reviewed (this is why they cite book reviews in journals, instead of articles in journals, half the time).
Citing
52% think they only have to cite quotes, not summary and paraphrase, to avoid plagiarism.
60% think “common knowledge” is a fact everyone knows.
Rhetoric
67% believe the appeal to ethos is about appealing to morality (it’s credibility).
What’s an academic source?
50% think anything they get via the university library is academic.
52% think all class materials (lectures, PowerPoints) are academic.
52% think fact-checked news is academic.
64% think dictionaries and general encyclopedias are academic.
67% think poetry is academic (33% think novels are too).
One question defined the difference between as academic and nonacademic sources as one of audience. Academic sources are for academic audiences.
62% marked that as false.
I hope they do better on the post-test!
