“It was information based”: Student Reasoning when Distinguishing Between Scholarly and Popular Sources

• Main Authors: Amy Jankowski, Alyssa Russo, Lori Townsend
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: In the Library with the Lead Pipe 2018-05-01
• Series: In the Library with the Lead Pipe
• Subjects: college students; evaluation; information literacy; instruction; teaching
• Online Access: http://www.inthelibrarywiththeleadpipe.org/2018/it-was-information-based/
• ISSN: 1944-6195

In Brief: We asked students to find an article and answer the following questions: Is this a popular or scholarly article? How can you tell? We analyzed student answers to better understand the reasoning used to distinguish between scholarly and popular sources. Our results suggest that framing sources as scholarly or popular is confusing rather than clarifying for students.