College of DuPage Library

Whether you're researching a topic for an assignment or for your own use, you want information that is both useful
and credible.

How do you determine these things? Use the CRAP Test to evaluate your sources.

The CRAP Test asks you to consider the following criteria:
     Currency - the timeliness of the information
     Reliability - the accuracy and correctness of the information
     Authority - the source of the information
     Purpose - the reason the information exists

This guide will provide you with tips for evaluating types of sources and help you ask the questions necessary to determine if your information sources are both useful and credible.

Remember: the CRAP test isn't a checklist, but a guide to help you consider whether a source is appropriate for your specific need.

Pew Research Center Report: The Future of Truth and Misinformation Online - October 2017
"Experts are evenly split on whether the coming decade will see a reduction in false and misleading narratives online. Those forecasting improvement place their hopes in technological fixes and in societal solutions. Others think the dark side of human nature is aided more than stifled by technology."

Hoaxy
Hoaxy visualizes the spread of claims and related fact checking online. A claim may be a fake news article, hoax, rumor, conspiracy theory, satire, or even an accurate report. Anyone can use Hoaxy to explore how claims spread across social media. You can select any matching fact-checking articles to observe how those spread as well.

False, Misleading, Clickbait-y, and/or Satircal "News" Sources
Document created by Melissa Zimdars, assistant professor of communication and media at Merrimack College

Truth, truthiness, triangulation: A news literacy toolkit for a “post-truth” world
A collection of resources, vocabulary, and best practices from Joyce Valenza, assistant professor of teaching at Rutgers University School of Information and Communication.

The Trust Project
The Trust Project, an initiative of the Markkula Center for Applied Ethics at Santa Clara (Calif.) University, is an organization that seeks to restore trust in the media by establishing indicators of accuracy and truthfulness in news sources. The Trust Project has collaborated with news executives to develop "Trust Indicators" for identifying responsible and reliable reporting.

The #Election2016 Micro-Propaganda Machine
An examination and data visualization of how rightwing websites spread their message during the 2016 election by Jonathan Albright

What is the filter bubble?

The term filter bubble was coined by Eli Pariser in his book of the same name in reference to the problem created when users rely on personalized searches and, as a result, become separated from information that disagrees with their viewpoints. Examples include Google Personalized Search and Facebook's news stream.

'Beware online "filter bubbles"
Eli Pariser TED Talk
https://www.ted.com/talks/eli_pariser_beware_online_filter_bubbles

Bursting your Filter Bubble
University of Illinois Libraries
http://guides.library.illinois.edu/c.php?g=348478&p=2347795

How to Burst the "Filter Bubble" that Protects Us from Opposing Views
MIT Technology Review
https://www.technologyreview.com/s/522111/how-to-burst-the-filter-bubble...

How can Facebook and its users burst the ‘filter bubble’?
https://www.newscientist.com/article/2113246-how-can-facebook-and-its-us...

Google, democracy and the truth about internet search (2016) Carole Cadwalladr
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/dec/04/google-democracy-trut...

Tools to Help Escape the Filter Bubble

DuckDuckGo
DuckDuckGo is a web search engine that does not track or profile its users and thereby avoids the filter bubble of personalized search results.
https://duckduckgo.com/about

Pop Your Bubble
A website that adds new perspectives to your Facebook feed, citing the statistic that "only 5% of us see social media posts that differ greatly from our world view." Pop Your Bubble "will connect you to people with different perspectives" using an "algorithm analyzes your profile and suggests new people for you to follow based on your age, location, likes and shares."
https://www.popyourbubble.com/

rbutr
A community-driven app that tells you when the webpage you are viewing has been disputed, rebutted or contradicted elsewhere on the internet.
www.rbutr.com

Escape Your Bubble
A Chrome extension that inserts "curated, positive posts" into your Facebook feed with the goal of helping you develop an understanding of the opposing party. Not on Facebook? Escape Your Bubble will send you articles via email, too.
www.escapeyourbubble.com

FlipFeed
Learn what it's like to view the world through someone else's Twitter feed. FlipFeed uses social network analysis to find a feed that leans differently from you own and provide you with allow you to navigate content with a radically different lens. Developed by MIT Media Lab's Laboratory for Social Machines.
flipfeed.media.mit.edu

Read Across the Aisle
"Just as your Fitbit reminds you to get up and walk around after an hour of inactivity, this app will notice when you’ve gotten a little too comfortable in your filter bubble—and it’ll remind you to go see what other folks are reading."
www.readacrosstheaisle.com

FactCheck.org
Award-winning project of the Annenberg Public Policy Center of the University of Pennsylvania.
www.factcheck.org

Fact Checker
A Washington Post site and column with the goal of acting as "truth squad" for the statements of political figures.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/fact-checker

FlackCheck.org
A service of FactCheck.org providing resources designed to help viewers recognize flaws in arguments in general and political ads
www.flackcheck.org

Health News Review
A web-based project that rates the completeness, accuracy, and balance of U.S. news stories that include claims about medical treatments, tests, products and procedures
http://www.healthnewsreview.org/

Media Matters for America
A politically progressive media watchdog.
http://mediamatters.org/

NewsBusters
Media Research Center project dedicated to exposing & combating liberal media bias
www.newsbusters.org

OpenSecrets.org
The website of the Center for Responsive Politics, a research group tracking money in U.S. politics and its effect on elections and public policy
www.opensecrets.org/

PolitiFact
The Pulitzer Prize winning project from the Tampa Bay Times
http://politifact.com

Snopes.com
An independent reference page aiming to debunk or confirm widely spread urban legends.
www.snopes.com

Sunlight Foundation
A national, nonpartisan, nonprofit organization that uses the tools of civic tech, open data, policy analysis and journalism to make our government and politics more accountable and transparent to all
https://sunlightfoundation.com

What is critical pedagogy?

Just as community colleges were founded the principles of social justice - providing educational access and democratizing higher education - critical pedagogy seeks to empower students by providing them with a democratic and emancipatory education.

Critical pedagogy encourages "habits of thought, reading, writing, and speaking which go beneath surface meaning, first impressions, dominant myths, official pronouncements, traditional cliches, received wisdom, and mere opinions, to understand the deep meaning, root causes, social context, ideology, and personal consequences of any action, event, object, process, organization, experience, text, subject matter, policy, mass media, or discourse."¹

Why critical pedagogy?

Critical pedagogy encourages students to examine and challenge the very academic system in which they are learning, exposing and questioning the hidden social, cultural and political processes that at are a part of knowledge production.

• Critical pedagogy is grounded on a social and educational vision of justice and equality.
• Critical pedagogy is constructed on the belief that education is inherently political.
• Critical pedagogy is dedicated to the alleviation of human suffering.²

• ¹Empowering Education, Ira Shor, 1992
• ²Critical Pedagogy Primer, Joe L. Kincheloe, 2005.

image credit: Start Questioning

Summer 2018 Academic Integrity Webinar Series

Testing & Proctoring Best Practices – Thursday, June 14
What are the top security issues in classroom testing and what can you do to prevent cheating on tests and exams?
Presentation Slides
Recording

Preventing, Identifying and Dealing with Plagiarism – Thursday, June 28
How do you define, discuss, and deal with plagiarism in your classes? This webinar will explore student motivations for plagiarism present best practices for supporting student academic integrity.
Presentation Slides
Webinar Recording

Plagiarism Resistant Assignments – Tuesday, July 1o
What assignment characteristics lend themselves to plagiarism? Learn what they are and how to avoid them.
Presentation Slides
Recording

Creating a Classroom Culture of Integrity – Thursday, July 19
Prepare for the fall semester by building integrity into your classroom culture – whether you’re teaching online or face-to-face. In this session, we’ll discuss honor codes, definitions of cheating, and keys to creating a culture of honesty, integrity and accountability.
Presentation Slides
Recorded Webinar

College Presentations and Publications

Dyer, J. M. and Kelley, J. (2017) Organized Crime, Sex Trafficking, and Your Students: What You Need to Know about Testing in 2017. [PDF]

Dyer, J. M. (2015). Test Proctors Share All: Stories From The Frontlines of Testing. http://dc.cod.edu/oer/1

COD Testing Center Presentations

• Technology Enhanced Cheating
• Managing Test Security

Academic Honesty

COD Academic Honesty Policy handout: A simple handout that outlines the College's policy and provides resources - online and on-campus - for students.

COD Academic Integrity Brochure: A tri-fold brochure outlining the College's commitment to our Core Values of integrity, honesty, respect, and responsibility.

Creating a Classroom Culture of Integrity: Three key discussions to have with your students as well as open-ended questions for longer conversations.

Institutional Toolkit to Combat Contract Cheating: A resource from the International Center for Academic Integrity.

Testing

Classroom Testing Best Practices: A COD Testing Center Guide to the Top Security Issues in Classroom Testing

Plagiarism

Supporting Student Academic Integrity: Preventing, Identifying and Dealing with Plagiarism

• How to Support Academic Integrity [PDF]
• Intellectual Property Issues in Legal and Academic Writing

Is it Plagiarism? A Flow Chart

How to Avoid Plagiarism
Are students plagiarizing or are they uninformed about the conventions of academic writing?
This tutorial is designed to educate students about plagiarism and provide the important skills and knowledge to help avoid committing plagiarism.

Patchwriting

Recommended articles

Howard, R. (1992). A plagiarism pentimento. Journal of Teaching Writing,11(2), 233-245.

Howard, R., Serviss, T., & Rodrigue, T. (2010). Writing from sources, writing from sentences. Writing & Pedagogy, 2(2). Retrieved from https://journals.equinoxpub.com/index.php/WAP/article/view/6723

Walker, A. L. (2008). Preventing unintentional plagiarism: A method for strengthening paraphrasing skills. Journal of Instructional Psychology, 35(4), 387-395. Retrieved from http://www.citationproject.net/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/Howard-Plagiar...

An ongoing survey of ALP English students' perceptions of cheating behaviors.

• Spring 2018
• Fall 2017
• Spring 2017
• Fall 2016
• Spring 2016

Writing and Avoiding Plagiarism presentation slides

An ongoing survey of ALP English students' perceptions of cheating.

Responses were collected from 38 students in 5 sections of ALP English, Fall 2016.

1. Have you ever been tempted to cheat on a test, homework or other school assignment? Y=74%
2. Would you cheat if you knew you wouldn’t get caught? Y=50%
3. Is it acceptable to cheat on something small like a pop quiz or a group assignment? Y=26%
4. Do you think it is more acceptable to cheat on a test in a topic you don’t care about? Y=26%
5. Would you report someone for cheating? Y=21%
6. Which of the following is cheating (Check all that apply):
• a. A friend lets you copy their homework because you left yours at home. Y=66%
• b. A friend in the class before yours tells you what’s going to be on the test. Y=45%
• c. You hand in a paper you wrote for a different class. Y=26%
• d. A friend gives you a copy of last year’s final exam answers, which turns out to be the same exam. Y=84%
• e.You have an open-book test and use a friend’s notes. Y=29%
• f. You find a paper on a similar topic online and use a few sentences verbatim. Y=58%
7. Have you ever cheated on something personal (like a diet, exercise regimen, crossword puzzle or your budget)? Y=76%
• Did you win?

Alt-Research, a Future of Research series, offers presentations on alternative assignment strategies and templates that can be adapted for classes across disciplines. Sessions will provide practical and creative options for any instructor who is weary of reading lackluster research papers, frustrated with plagiarism, or simply looking to expand their assignment repertoire.

Sessions will be presented as face-to-face workshops or discussions and the Library will compile content into an open online toolkit for instructors.

In addition to attending sessions, we invite you to participate by joining the Alt-Research online classroom at https://app.schoology.com/course/874873070. Please contact Jenn Kelley at kelleyj@cod.edu for the enrollment key.