Locating and Using Credible Sources in Academic Writing

Running head: LOCATING AND USING CREDIBLE SOURCES IN ACADEMIC WRITING
LOCATING AND USING CREDIBLE SOURCES IN ACADEMIC WRITING
Name of the student
Name of the university
Author note

1
LOCATING AND USING CREDIBLE SOURCES IN ACADEMIC WRITING
Answer to question 1:
Education at the tertiary level requires us to learn intensively about our chosen area of
study and his has to be done using authentic and credible academic sources. In the modern age of
internet, information on anything is easily available but not all information could be taken as
credible. Sometimes, much information is just posted on the internet out of fun or to target some
opposing ideology or school of thought. At the tertiary level, we have enough intellect to know
the difference between authentic sources and fake sources. At this level, we learn what is
actually real and not what others perceive as real. We are expected to research, collect and relate
information that has been constructed structurally and empirically over a long period.
Studies surrounding the impact of the internet are abounding in the literature however;
little research has been done to assess the importance of using academic sources has been done. I
include this because while researching for the assignment, I found online information in
abundance but very little academically credible sources. I found some studies that discussed
about the theoretical benefits of sharing of teaching materials on online platform for students and
reusing of open educational resources (OER) (Atenas, Havemann and Priego 2014). This study
shows that using credible sources even online is given much importance. Using sources that are
not authentic might lead to devastating outcomes. Consider visiting a doctor for a heart surgery
and the doctor takes help from tutorial videos found online to perform the surgery it would scare
us. Hence, using credible sources at the tertiary level is important.
Answer to question 2:
As I have mentioned in the first question, using sources that are not credible might lead to
devastating outcomes in the future. As described by the UNESCO, tertiary education has much