The topic I choose was: The utility of writing skills in todays world.

I need help with this assignment: The topic I choose was: The utility of writing skills in todays world. When you want a promotion, telling your boss your mom thinks you deserve more money is probably not the best strategy. Instead, you would want to give your boss evidence of things like:

• Work you have done that is exceptional
• Examples of how you have saved the company money or made the company money
• What the pay is (if it is higher than your current pay) for similarly skilled and experienced employees in your field

Likewise, when you want to have an idea adopted or you want to challenge a bad idea someone else has put forward, you will want to argue with evidence to help support your position.

In this task, we will investigate how to evaluate evidence, especially media evidence (writing, videos, audio), for quality and usefulness.

Background

One of the biggest changes brought to us by the Internet is the explosion of information access. Naturally, we do not want all information, we only want the information we need. The explosion of information access creates two major problems with our ability to get the information we need

1. How to avoid information overload and find the right source of information. The rightsource of information would include:

• High quality information (well-presented, easy to understand)
• Accurate information
• The most cost-effective information (I don't want to pay for good information I can get for free)

1. Finding truthful information. There are many types of information that are not fully truthful including:

• Out-of-date information
• Intentional efforts to deceive
• Unintentional misinformation
• Poorly crafted information that leads to misunderstanding

Fortunately, identifying good sources has been a process for a long time and it has improved along with the information explosion. Let's learn to do it well by looking for two sources using a specific method you can apply for education, career, and personal life needs.

We're going to help me to create a document and build our source evidence. There are X steps. We'll walk through them one at a time or you to can read through all the content and see all the steps together at the bottom.

Step 1 -Help me  Create a new Word document. Be sure to put your name on it. Add the topic you picked out in week 1. (If you failed to pick a topic in Week 1, please go back to the assignment and read the bit about picking a topic and then pick one from the list provided. You can click here to jump to that page.)

In order to evaluate sources, we need to decide what criteria we need to use. One approach is to use the CRAAP method of evaluation to determine the reliability and quality of sources. CRAAP stands for:

• C - Currency
• R - Relevance
• A - Authority
• A - Accuracy
• P - Purpose

Currency

The first evaluation step is to determine if a source is current enough for your topic. Outdated sources could have inaccurate information or be contradicted by newer information. Just think of all that you have learned in the last three years. Can you imagine going back to sources that were current in 2016? If we used 2016 data, Jerry Lewis would still be alive and Barack Obama would still be president. Many other things change too. Think about the cell phone you were using three years ago. Major political movements like #MeToo did not exist. Science, business, medicine, and many other fields have continued to grow. Even things we used to think were static are often experiencing changes now. The important thing is to know if there have been changes or not and how those changes impact what you are investigating. Evaluating currency will help you determine whether the source is reliable or whether you need a newer, more up-to-date source for your writing needs. Questions you can ask to determine currency:

1. Has this topic changed since the source was written?
2. Have there been newer sources written on the same topic?
3. Do I need new information for my topic?

Step 2 - Let's go find a couple of possible sources using one or both of the general research databases available through the Independence University Library&mdahs;ProQuest or EBSCOHost. (If you've managed to get this far in your courses without using them, this is a great time to start and it's really easy.)

You can go through the SHARC to get to them but you can save a step by going through this course here, on the Library Links page. Just click the one you want. Then you'll have a search bar, just like any Internet search bar, and can type in your topic or a particular aspect of your topic.

We'll use a simple one like the impact of taxation changes on manufactured goods in 15th century Germany to the mortality rate. Kidding. We'll look at the sample topic we picked in the Week 1 assignment, wildfire management. 

While we could simply type in "wildfire management" and get some good hits, we can think of some more focused areas we want to include in our research. For example, it would be good to look at the costs of wildfires (preventing, stopping, and reconstruction), impacts on wilderness areas from human management towards wildfires, and pros and cons for the environment of the different ways of handling wildfires. For this example, we'll pick the costs of fighting wildfires.

The search result I am going to evaluate is Congressional testimony from 2015. That seems reasonably current for the topic in terms of time. I'll keep looking at this source for the other questions. 

When you do the same thing for two sources, write each source down on your paper and then write a short bit about how each is, or is not, current. For example, I would write:

Currency - 2015 is only four years ago. Though there have been increasingly challenging wildfire seasons since then, the basic technologies and cost issues surrounding wildfires has not. And any decision made by Congress based on this testimony would have taken time to write and then implement so the impact would be even more current. Overall, this source ranks high on currency.

Relevancy

Next we evaluate whether the source as a whole is relevant to your topic. This evaluation will help you determine whether to invest more time in the source. This step can be a huge help when you are faced with several options for sources. Relevancy helps you determine whether a source aligns with your topic or is related but not relevant.

Relevancy also includes appropriateness. For example, having reliable electricity is critically relevant to many issues in respiratory therapy since the equipment is plugged in. However, you wouldn't waste time in a short explanation paper on the proper use of a ventilation machine discussing the details of the electric grid since it reliable power can generally be assumed in the United States. It's kind of the TMI (too much information) issue. You want your sources to be relevant in a way that makes them powerful to answer your questions or solve your problems. When I look for a YouTube video to show me how to change the brake light assembly on my teenager's car, I don't want a bunch of info on brightness or the labor used to make the assembly, I want to know how to get the old one out as easily as possible and a new one in as easy as possible.

Questions you can ask to evaluate relevancy:

1. Does topic of the source relate directly to your topic?
2. What information from this source might be useful to support your argument?

Step 3 - For my wildfire Congressional testimony, if I apply the two questions above my answers would look something like:

1. Yes, this source does related directly to my topic.

1. The testimony refers to a particular study that is referenced (so I can find it) with costs broken out and based on research. There is also information about different types of costs associated with wildfires though much of it is about impacts on private property. The source argues the two cannot be separated, but I'm not yet convinced of that—or at least not convinced I need to address that in my paper.

Once I have these two questions answered, I have pretty much done the next step for this assignment, so I can just add in what I want for relevancy for this source. You need to do the same for your two sources.

Authority

When examining whether you should use a source you must also evaluate the quality of the author(s). A lot of the credibility of a source is dependent on who wrote it. Just imagine a comedian writing an article on engineering a bridge. Unless the comedian has a degree in engineering and relevant experience, the author has no authority on the subject. Understanding the author(s) and their knowledge and motivations can help you determine whether a source is reliable for your needs. Questions you can ask to evaluate authority:

1. Is the author named?
2. Does the author have any education in this topic?
3. Does the author have any experience with this topic?
4. Does the author have any credentials?

Step 4 - I'm not going to write down the answer to all of the questions above, though you can. But I am going to think about them. In my case, the answers would be:

1. Yes
2. I'm not sure. He has a high ranking position in an organization related to forests, but his education background isn't listed. His name is fairly common. A quick stalking on the Internet looks like he has education in forestry. He definitely has lots of experience with various forestry organizations.
3. Yes - he works for an organization dedicated to forests
4. As mentioned above, he has a number of credentials in the field and has been appointed to leadership positions in industry and government related to forests. (I'm not sure how good he is at starting or putting out fires—little late study humor there.)

When I have that information, I can put it down on my paper like this:

The author of this source has strong credentials and experience in the field of forestry. I'm not sure of his education. As a note, the organization he belonged to when he testified had a definite bias, which is going to play into my purpose below.

Now, please do your relevancy evaluations on both of your sources and write it down.

Accuracy

The next step is to evaluate whether the source is accurate. The facts and accuracy of the information in a source are critical for evaluating whether the overall source is credible. Thanks to the world wide web, you have billions of articles and pages that are just a search away. Unfortunately, the accessibility of information does not mean that it is all accurate. One example of inaccurate information is the story that was presented during the 2016 presidential election period. The "Pizzagate" story was presumed to be a real news story by some people and even sparked a violent event. By asking yourself questions while you review the article, you can determine the accuracy of the article or site. Questions you can ask to evaluate accuracy:

1. Can you verify what is said in the source?
2. Are there references listed?
3. Has the source been peer-reviewed?

Step 5 - This one I have already written about a little for my source. (Which is how it will likely go for you as well. The CRAAP model is not so much one step as five things you think about at the same time.) My answers to the questions above would be:

1. Yes. He provided evidence that can be checked.
2. Yes.
3. No. This is congressional testimony so it does not go through peer-review. Some of his referenced evidence did go through peer review.

I can easily state on my assignment paper that this source does have accuracy. As I look at the evidence, I can see a definite bias, so I want to make note of that as well. It is accurate, but he definitely picks the stats, way to reference statistics, and arguments that support the position he is arguing for.

Now you can do the authority evaluation for your two sources and write it on your paper.

Purpose

The final step is to evaluate why a source was written. Knowing a source's purpose can help you determine if there is any bias that would impact how the information is presented or even circumstances that could impact a source's credibility. All authors have their own opinions and judgment based on their experience.

An example would be an article on "What to look for when finding a child care site" written by a daycare director. It is likely the daycare director would write in a way that would make their own business look good.

We all have a bias on most issues. There is no way to completely escape bias. However, it is important to understand where bias may be coming from and how strongly it is held in your source. This doesn't mean that the information they present is invalid, but if you chose to use it, you must recognize the bias and be ready to perform additional research to verify the validity of the author's statements as well as to confirm there isn't other evidence that outweighs what has been presented.

Bias is often not bad or in error, it is about perspective. For example, a child may love a particular pair of jeans. To the child, the overwhelming evidence is that this brand of jeans is "cool" and their best friends wear this brand of jeans. For the parents, the overwhelming evidence might be the jeans cost three times more than other jeans or they are lower quality or they don't want their child to be chasing after brand popularity.

It is also important to avoid ignoring a source simply because they have a bias we disagree with. They may have solid evidence. And, especially if we disagree strongly on something with a big emotional or opinion aspect to it, we need to understand their position, evidence, and arguments in order to effectively counter them. (Which our mass media, social media, and politicians are doing poorly in the U.S. now because they have adopted the method of who yells the loudest and the most wins. This is ultimately a poor strategy because it generates ill will, creates division, results in poor solutions, and alienates potential supporters who are trying to find rational answers.) 

As you examine sources you can ask the following questions below to evaluate the author's purpose:

1. Is there a clear reason this was written?
2. To inform, to convince, to sell, to entertain?
3. Is there any bias present in the writing?
4. Is the information presented as fact or opinion ?

Step 6 - For my wildfire source, I would answer the questions like this:

1. Definitely. He is testifying to get stronger control of wildfires to help the forestry industry.
2. He's trying to do all but entertain. His ultimate goal is to get Congress to act favorably, which would include regulations and money
3. Mostly fact with a bit of his opinion and opinions of supportive experts.

With these answers, I can now fill out my assignment paper on the purpose of my source with an admission there is a clear bias I need to be aware of but that the bias does not invalidate the evidence.

Bringing it Together

The video Evaluating Sources for Credibility (3:02 min) provides an overall review of the method and a good starting place for thinking about what elements of a source you should look at.

Evaluating Sources for Credibility (3:02 min)

Prompt

For the week 2 assignment you are to research sources for your paper (topic determined in week 1) and apply the CRAAP method (currency, authority, accuracy, relevancy, and purpose) to at least two sources.

If you have been following along with the steps as you have read, you're pretty much done with the assignment now. All you need to do is go back through what you have written about your two sources and polish it up so it is easy for you and the instructor to understand and will be useful to you as you write your actual position paper.

Submission Requirements

1. Use ProQuest or EBSCO to find two sources for your paper. Other academic resources such as Google Scholar are also acceptable. Though you can use even terrible sources to do this assignment, you don't want to waste your time on bad ones because you need good ones to do the other parts of the writing in the rest of the course.
2. Document your sources according to the Institution Writing Guidelines (IWG). Give your instructor enough information about the source so he or she can locate it.
3. Provide an evaluation of your sources based on the five CRAAP criteria (currency, authority, accuracy, relevancy, and purpose), including a rating for each on a scale of one to five.
4. The length of your evaluation assignment should be appropriate to cover the criteria well and show you have put thought into it. If it is shorter than 350 words, you need to look at it again and expand on your answers.