COMM101: Oral Rhetoric

Imagine you are searching for sources on the sample topic. Look at the linked sources, and discuss:

• Which of the sources seems to be the best  – why or why not? 
• Be prepared to share your choice and rationale with the class. You should be able to identify and explain pros/cons for each source.

Sample Topic - Music therapy

Sample Topic - History of maps

Sample Topic - Advances in running shoe technology

Checklist Option 1:  "4 R's - In the Osborn Public Speaking textbook, the authors recommend that when evaluating sources, you ask if the source meets these criteria:

• Relevant
• Representative
• Recent
• Reliable

Checklist Option 2: "CRAAP" - Another set of evaluative criteria you may have heard before is "CRAAP":

• Currency
• Relevance
• Authority
• Accuracy
• Purpose

Checklist Option 3: "3 Scales" - In Hekman's "Introduction to Evaluation" video, we boil it down further to:

• Relevance
• Authority
• Bias

Summary:  Any of these checklists can work!  Choose your favorite, or the most memorable to you. But remember, considering the context (purpose and audience) of sources is critical in your evaluation.

Information literacy researcher Mike Caulfield has developed another method of evaluating sources, called SIFT:

Image credit: Mike Caulfield's SIFT (Four Moves), which is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Lateral Reading: A closely related approach is "lateral reading," a technique used by fact-checkers to go outside websites or sources to investigate based on external (rather than internal) information and clues.

For a more in-depth guide to using SIFT and lateral reading, check out this guide from Rowan University's library.