Information literacy is crucial to any conceivable profession and to personal decisions ranging from health to finances (plus, I would argue, to forging a collective future on our planet). Yet, it’s getting harder to teach students how to discern credible sources.
As a millennial, I’ve observed the Internet evolve into a homogenous marketing tool. A Google search today yields a slew of sponsored hits and useless ones that have been optimized to dominate search engine results. Now we swim through vast oceans of online slop to reach islands of verifiable knowledge.
To address information overload and degradation, we now have a tantalizing solution: use AI tools to collect and digest sources (indeed, a Google search now generates an AI summary). For low-stakes info gathering tasks I find tedious, I’ve found LLMs helpful; they can save me the time and brainpower usually spent on sifting through search results and dodging clickbait. (Of course, other energy resources feed these water- and electricity-guzzling programs.)
Two tools that IU licenses, Google Gemini and Microsoft Co-Pilot, as well as various non-vetted options, can provide links to their sources, so I can verify their quality. For example, when one LLM cited a Reddit thread, I pondered when I can trust crowdsourced advice. (For me, for finding things to do in Indy, yes; for consequential decisions, nope.)
That’s the step that often seems to get skipped—the detective work of verifying. When an LLM provides “sources” without working hyperlinks, then we must be doubly skeptical. We’ve all heard of the lawyer who used AI to write a court filing that turned out to be filled with hallucinated legal decisions. More recently, a freelance writer’s summer book list that appeared in a few major newspapers was filled with made-up novels, again, thanks to uncritical AI use.
I think these are great stories to share with students—how long it takes to build a professional reputation, and how quickly it can be tainted by one careless choice.
Many faculty tell me they’re seeing evidence of sloppy AI use in two ways: fabricated quotations from a real source, and completely unreal sources. This is a serious problem for anyone who cares about accuracy. But there must be a better way to deal with this problem than the instructor checking every single quotation and source in dozens of student assignments and filing endless misconduct cases.
As with so many teaching quandaries, it helps to start with asking, “Why?” Specifically, why do we want students to find and cite sources? Likely, we want our students to build the ability to ask and investigate questions in their post-school life, when they won’t be handed a list of curated readings for every project. We want them to winnow the chaff so they can make well-informed choices.
All too often, something else happens: students (understandably) focus on the most obvious requirements. They strive to find the minimum number of sources we stipulate. They agonize over formatting the reference list. Along the way, they aren’t really researching, in the sense of open-mindedly searching. Instead, they cherry-pick sources that support their stance.
To engage students in more authentic inquiry, we need assignments that foreground the “why” of finding and using sources. Check out examples in the Meaningful Writing Project, and email me to talk through your assignment design.
What about the “how”? I suggest scaffolding your assignments to require students to verify every quotation or paraphrase and source. To show that your rationale is educative, not punitive, discuss with students how such work helps them build accountability and attention to detail, cornerstones of the professionalism desired by any employer.
Here are three approaches to try, either separately or in combination:
- Conduct a focused peer review activity where students swap drafts and check every quotation/paraphrase and citation in their classmate’s project against the source texts. This activity reflects common professional tasks like fact-checking a colleague’s document.
- Require that every source be hyperlinked within the relevant text so the reader can open them as they read, as I’ve done in this post. Since most sources are available digitally, linking to them should be an easy ask.
- Alternatively, ask students to compile an annotated PDF with all their sources. They should highlight every passage they quoted or paraphrased. They’ll submit this PDF to you along with their written assignment so that if any questions arise, you can quickly toggle to the original texts.
How are you encouraging your students to become source detectives? I’d love to hear from you. And please visit the Campus Writing Program page.
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