Evaluating Sources

When our instructor assigned this essay to us I felt lost and frustrated because we had to outline the essay ourselves, which I have never done so but later she pointed out the required points for the essay. Then I started to look for a good source to use in my research project I looked into the database of University of Cincinnati. There I could easily find a reliable and credible article. I could confirm the credibility and reliability of the article pretty quickly. First, it is from institutional database. Second, it is from a scholarly journal. Lastly, the author had clear credential for the claims in the article. Also, when I was searching for a source that I would never use in my research project was a bit tedious, it seemed like there was no any example of an unreliable source available anywhere. I spent a tremendous of my time searching the web for a bad source to talk about in this essay. The knowledge I learned in this essay was a practice for the next one which is annotated bibliography. I would definitely use the skill I learned in this essay such as finding reliable and credible sources, make sure that the articles are relevant to my topic and they must be up to date. I also learned that finding reliable and credible sources as much as difficult and time consuming as the unreliable because I must know and ensure that whether author has the credentials for the claims and is it relevant? After looking for any source I understood that looking all these things will take a while. However, I learned a new technique that shrinks the time which is reading the abstract first, next introduction and summary to make sure that source is even relevant to my topic.