R.U.S. stands for RELIABLE, USEFUL and SCHOLARLY. This is a source evaluation guide that we ask our students to fill out for every source they plan to use.
Why every source, you may ask. Well, we faced 2 big challenges when it came to source evaluation with our students. First, we found that our students' biggest challenge when it came to research was locating sources that were useful to their topic. We found ourselves constantly asking students to go back to read their research and make sure it was useful to their topic. It seemed that got the reliable and scholarly for the most part, but were not very discerning after that. Second, when we required and evaluation page only for internet sources, we found that students were shying away from those sources even though they were, perhaps, the best sources out there. When we sat down to brainstorm about these challenges, we realized that we wanted students truly analyzing the quality of ALL of their sources regardless of the type. So, we came up with this short form to fill out. There are 6 questions; we made ours electronic so that it will calculate for students as they go and give them a good visual indication of where their source ranks. R.U.S. Evaluation Form
Online R.U.S. Evaluation Form Practice sites: Research topic 1: The Manning Family, http://goo.gl/W1XK Research topic 2: Current fertility trends and issues, http://goo.gl/rBd84 Research topic 3: 3D Movies, http://goo.gl/NbHuK |