(C).omprehensive (O).nline (D).ocument (E).valuation

jim ridolfo; michigan state university: rhetoric & writing: wide research center.

WIDE Publications. http://35.8.22.44/pubs

What do we as teachers and scholars do with such an address? What do we do when students walk into our classroom and have sources that look like that? In the fall of 2003 during my first semester of teaching the first-year writing class at Michigan State, these question came up weekly. When assigning a paper, I'd require my students to use a minimum of ten sources to support their findings. By the end of the semester, I felt I could predict their first question before it was spoken:  “How many of these ten sources can be online sources?”

“Four,” I’d reply.

“And you need six sources that originally appeared in print, with only two being journal holdings,” I’d add.

I've heard from my other fellow teaching instructors that this sort of quantity question is common. In some sense, the amounts are arbitrary. My  rationale for specifying only two journal holdings is that, at Michigan State, many of our journal archives are now digitally accessible. This makes trips to the stacks a less than frequent experience. Knowing this, part of my justification for assigning a percentage of print sources is to encourage physical library visits.  

The “why four and not six?” problem sat on my right shoulder like a prodding demon during my first semester of teaching. While I was demanding my students to produce six print sources and teaching MLA with a roar, I simply wasn’t dealing with the prominence of online sources. I was avoiding the sort of critical engagement in the classroom that comes from the needs of my own students.  This article is a result of my attempts to answer both the questions of "why online sources?" but also "how online sources?"

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