Assigned short papers with research and application components expose students to the analytical process of research and writing; too often, however, students turn in papers without any appropriate or reliable sources. We have noted in recent years that college students’ abilities to distinguish appropriate academic articles from other internet resources have diminished. In a resource-rich environment such as the one found on a college campus, connecting students to appropriate peer-reviewed materials that may challenge their beliefs can be complicated. Often, students reach for Google as their first source in collecting information, and they never make it past websites that agree with their positions or that offer little to no critique of theories or propositions.
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