Periodical Credibility Exercise Suggestions ****First Draft*** [Edit 9/07/05ADA

Purpose of Exercise: This exercise has two purposes
(1) Have students develop criteria for evaluating exercises (working on how to think rather then what to think).
(2) Have students apply this criteria and to begin to recognize the differences in credibility of different sources.

In general I have found that presenting parts of the exercise over several days for classes works better than covering the material in one class session. (For upper division and majors, it "may" be possible to assign this in one or two sessions or as an extra credit assignment. I divide the class into small groups (4-6 students) and use a "smart classroom" or overheads for displaying material and group developed criteria.  Following is a rough outline of how I go through this exercise in a 3 day per week Critical Thinking class in a quarter system. This is the second assignment of the quarter and is given about week 2 (the first assignment is developing criteria and evaluating newspaper articles http://www.csubak.edu/~jross/classes/soc120/assignments/A01.html).

Possible periodicals ( I select a range of periodicals based on what's available). These are the ones I used this quarter.

American Journal of Sociology
The National Enqiirer
PC World
Cosmopolitan
Syllabus
Magazine exercise
 

Day 1 (10-15 minutes): Part I: Review one magazine set determine beginning criteria---Have class groups look at one periodical per group and write up descriptive characteristics. One description per group

• Day 2 (10-15 minutes): Part II: Review additional sets refine criteria---Each group examines a diffirent set of periodicals (1 for for each group member) and refines their developing criteria.  This is then shared by each group with the class and I start a list based on unique contributions from each group.

• Day 3 (10-15 minutes): Part III: Review all sets refining criteria with each additional set---This is then shared by each group with the class and I tray and prioritize and refine the criteria based on group contributions. If there is time the sets of periodicals are split up with each group getting one periodical from each set to see how well the criteria work.

• Day 4 (15-20 minutes): Part IV: Each group describe one magazine type---each group gets one set and describes that set as completely as possible in terms of the developed criteria.

Last modified: Sunday, 18 October 2002