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Thesis Statement Draft and Source Evaluation
In Modules 1 and 2 you chose a course project topic and narrowed your focus through the process of brainstorming and finding preliminary sources. Each week make sure you are reading your instructor’s feedback and making improvements before submitting the next Milestone. For example, if your instructor suggested replacing any of the sources you listed in Milestone 2, or refining your narrowed topic of focus, make sure to take that into account before submitting Milestone 3.
Now, in Module 3, you will draft a thesis statement and evaluate your sources for relevance and credibility.
This is the template:
Instructions: Replace the example wording in brackets below with your wording for each prompt.
IND101 Milestone 3 Template
1. Thesis statement:
[Example: The US government should increase incentives for the production and consumption of electric
cars because they are still too expensive for most consumers, US consumption is falling behind other
nations, and electric cars are effective at reducing carbon dioxide emissions, which contribute to climate
change.]
2. In-depth evaluation of one source:
Source (not required to be in APA format, but must include author, date, title, and a link):
[Example: Sperling, D. (2018). Electric vehicles: Approaching the tipping point. Bulletin of the Atomic
Scientists, 74(1), 11–18.
http://vlib.excelsior.edu/login?url=https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=ulh&AN=1
27161734&site=eds-live&scope=site
• Relevance: This source is very relevant to my topic because it concerns the future of electric
vehicle production in the United States. The article also compares government policies on
electric and non-electric vehicles in multiple countries, including China, France, and Britain. This
will be useful in thinking about the second point of my thesis statement about how the US
compares to other nations in electric car production.
• Authority: The author of this article, Dr. Daniel Sperling, is a professor of civil and environmental
engineering at UC Davis. His area of expertise is in the environmental impact of motor vehicles.
He has a considerable number of publications and is a recognized authority on this subject.
• Currency: This article was published in January of 2018, so it is relatively current, but not the
most up to date on the topic. This field is changing quickly, so articles that articles that have
come out in the past two years may be more useful.
• Objectivity: The author is a trained scientist and engineer so although he may have personal
biases, his work would be likely to be objective in its use of evidence and conclusions. The article
also includes a disclosure statement noting no potential conflict of interest for the author.
According to its website, the publication Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists is a nonprofit that
“informs the public about threats to the survival of humanity from nuclear weapons, climate
change, and disruptive technologies” (https://thebulletin.org/about-us/). This means that the
publication would be more likely to publish pieces like Sperling’s which advocate for potential
solutions to climate change and use non-technical language to communicate to the public.
• Verifiability: This article is not a ty