Around and across

The method ‘lateral reading’ is a supplement to traditional source criticism, which assesses individual web sources by means of checklists. With checklists you read into a text, you read in depth. The method ‘lateral reading’ is about assessing a web source by looking across and around a number of connected pages in order to find out what context the source forms part of.

Students bring a web source and an electronic article from an information search, and are guided by a series of questions to navigate the terrain and the context in which the text was created, and to consider the background to the text. On the basis of this research work, the student produces an assessment of the source.

Through a cross-cutting assessment, students develop skills that give deeper insight into the knowledge of the subject and place the source in a subject context, rather than a narrow focus on the content of an isolated source.

All links for running the activities are at the bottom

 

CONTEXT

Through several years of schooling, students have been trained to use checklists to assess information found online. For many students, the internet and the large search engines (Google) are the first place they choose to search for information. The checklist method can very usefully be supplemented with the method ‘lateral reading’ when students start an academic/professional programme.

In higher education, students are introduced to information searching in academic search engines. Articles and texts found through searches support the argumentation in study assignments. The material has to be at an appropriate level. This is a challenge, since students are novices in the discipline and lack knowledge of authorities, discourses, knowledge environments and knowledge hierarchies.

Many students search on questions or sentences and look for answers. In the activity, students will become familiar with an approach based on research around and across the result.

The activity gives insight into knowledge environments and digital publication channels/patterns in the academic discipline/subject area.

OUTCOME

In many ways the internet has put texts on an equal footing. The activity focuses on academic/professional publishing in a digital context.

The activity supports students by focusing on a new working method for assessing, filtering and analysing search results.

  • Students will find that a method based on lateral reading can save them time in information searching, time they previously spent on unproductive in-depth reading of sources. The method can also be used to gain a greater understanding of a discipline/domain.
  • Being a novice in a subject area makes it difficult to navigate the many different sources. With the lateral reading method, novices are supported in exploring the subject through questions that guide them to read around the texts.
  • Students strengthen their subject knowledge by working with a method in which they have to take a critical view of the literature by looking at a text in its relationship to other texts.
  • Students develop skills for taking a critical view of their own search method. On the basis of the research work with the sources, students gain increased insight into how search engines present results.

CONTENT AND STEPS OF THE ACTIVITY

The activity is an introduction to and training in the method ‘lateral reading’, which is about assessing a source by looking across and around a number of connected pages. Through a cross-cutting assessment, students develop skills that give deeper insight into the knowledge of the subject and place the source in a subject context, rather than a narrow focus on the content of an isolated source.

Lateral reading is understood as a strategy for investigating who is behind a document/web source that is unknown to the student, by seeking out other sources that can say something more about the source. The activity contains two different exercises:

  • Around and across in relation to a specific document (article, report, study…).
  • Around and across in relation to a website.

BEFORE THE ACTIVITY

The students must read chapter 8 of Den gode opgave (see literature under external resources).

The students must search for and bring two sources to the class. They must deal with a topic that the student is curious about but does not know much about in advance. One source is an electronic journal article or another document (report, studies). The other source is a subject-relevant web page.

THE ACTIVITY STEP BY STEP

  1. The teacher presents different ways of taking a source-critical approach to knowledge; it is important that the teacher goes into depth on the method: lateral reading. (see under external resources)
  2. The students are divided into groups of 2-3 people, and group work begins.
  3. The students present to each other the two sources they have found in advance. The presentation must focus on how they have checked the credibility of the source.
  4. The others in the group ask questions about the credibility of the source and how it was found.
  5. The group chooses to work on with the two sources that are most unfamiliar to them and whose credibility they are most in doubt about. They must choose one web source and one journal article.
  6. Together, the students practise a lateral approach to the chosen web sources/articles. They investigate the following:
    1. How does the web source describe who is behind it – check om os / about us
    2. Open several tabs in the browser
    3. Find knowledge about those behind it, what is their interest in sharing knowledge? who finances the web source?
    4. Google those behind it, remember to use “” and choose carefully in the search results – preferably a source you already know and trust, e.g. newspaper articles, journal articles or wikipedia. do look through 2-3 pages of the search results before you choose. How is the source spoken about by other sources?
    5. How does the article describe who is behind it?
    6. What have the authors done before (which topics do they research/work with?)
    7. Are there other articles by the same authors that touch on the same topic?
    8. Are there particular points to note (bias, date of publication,…)
  7. When the students have gone behind the sources, they must talk about whether it has changed their perceptions of the sources they have looked at.
  8. The teacher hands out a web source,which is unknown to the students. The students get 10 minutes to check whether the source is credible or not. They must use lateral reading as the method. The students answer individually
  9. After the “test” a vote is taken by a show of hands: who thinks the source is credible / not credible.

AFTER THE ACTIVITY

Joint round-up, where all groups share their experience with the new method, and how it may have changed their view of the sources by going behind and around the source.

The teacher shows how the students should use lateral reading in their studies going forward.

It is important that this competence in lateral reading is brought into play as often as possible. Acquiring the method requires practice in a different way of thinking and a different pattern of action.

MATERIALS AND PREPARATION

Preparation Materials
The teacher prepares an introduction to lateral reading and this method's relationship to source evaluation/source criticism (see literature for preparation below). PowerPoint or other material in which lateral reading is presented.
In good time, the teacher shares on the learning platform what the students have to prepare and do before the class. The teacher may usefully watch this youtube video about lateral reading: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GoQG6Tin-1E&list=PL8dPuuaLjXtN07XYqqWSKpPrtNDiCHTzU&t=0s
The teacher prepares questions that support the students in the process of critically assessing, filtering and analysing information.
The questions for the exercise on the specific document could be:
In this exercise you will deal with who wrote the article you have been assigned.. You must therefore investigate the following:
  1. What type of source is it?
  2. Who are the authors?
  3. What have they done before/which topics do they research/work with?
  4. Are there other articles by the same authors that touch on the same topic?
  5. Are there particular points to note (bias, date of publication,…)
  6. Find information about the journal the article is published in.

The questions for the exercise on the specific web page could be:

  1. Who is the sender of the web page
  2. Does the sender have a particular intention with the web page?
  3. Who finances the web page?
  4. Find information about the web page outside the web page, use credible sources such as newspapers, journals and encyclopaedias (wikipedia)
  
The teacher finds a specific subject-relevant web page that is in a grey area between a credible and a non-credible source,  

CREATED BY
Ulla Buch & Birgit Larsen, VIA University College,
together with a librarian at a university college

 

EXTERNAL RESOURCES

Article describing an experiment with lateral reading, good background reading for the teacher.

Wineburg, S., & McGrew, S. (2017). Lateral Reading: Reading Less and Learning More When Evaluating Digital Information (SSRN Scholarly Paper ID 3048994). Social Science Research Network. https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3048994

Caulfield, M. (2017). Web Literacy for Student Fact-Checkers. Self-published. https://webliteracy.pressbooks.com/

Think. Check. Submit. (2019). Retrieved 1 May 2020, from https://thinkchecksubmit.org/

Check Yourself with Lateral Reading: Crash Course Navigating Digital Information #3: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GoQG6Tin-1E&list=PL8dPuuaLjXt

THE STAK PROJECT

This learning element is an edited version of a learning pattern from the research project STAK (Studerendes Akademiske Digitale Kompetencer).
Through a particular method, the project developed a number of learning patterns/paths, especially within information literacy. The elements are aimed
primarily at teachers, either as inspiration or to be integrated directly into teaching.

If you are curious about the method, you can see the original research website at: https://web.archive.org/web/20251118005249/https://www.stak.dk/

Publication & revision: Created by: Licence:
First published: August 18, 2020
Revised: January 16, 2026 		Author(s): CC-BY-NC