Strengthen your source use practices (including evaluating, integrating, quoting, paraphrasing, summarizing, synthesizing, analyzing, and citing sources).

One of the fastest ways to render your argument invalid and useless is to fail to properly utilize evidence.

We had plenty of practice with this Course Learning Outcome. The technical description, engineering proposal, and the lab report assignments all required extensive use of evidence.

My most extensive use of evidence is in the technical description assignment.

Here is my reference sheet for the technical description assignment:

You will see that I have twelve sources cited, each in APA citation. It is important to have many sources backing your work, this automatically improves your credibility (if you used the sources correctly of course).

This turns me to what I believe is the cardinal sin in using sources: picking your facts. What I mean by this is choosing to recognize only the facts that support your stance. If you pull data from a source that supports your stance, and ignore the other data in the same stance that contradicts your stance, then you will lose all credibility when your audience finds out.

If during your research you find information that genuinely contradicts your argument, and this information makes you insecure in your argument, then it is best to reevaluate if your argument is correct. You should not under any circumstances have your argument depend on withholding information from your audience.