Evaluating Web Resources

Evaluating Web Resources Tracy Ponder

Brief Description • At the end of this module you will have learned the six criteria for evaluating websites. And how to think critically about your choices of websites.

Objectives • By the end of this module students will: • Understand the six criteria for evaluating websites. • Compare and contrast the reliability of resources available on the web. • Interpret the criteria on a website evaluation checklist. • Apply an evaluation checklist and reach a conclusion about the usefulness of a website for research. • After each criteria a question will be asked, answer it to the best of your knowledge.

Websites: Fact or Fiction? • Doing research on the internet? Do you know there are more websites out there that are fictional rather than factual? Your job as a student is to try to distinguish between those two, but sometimes that is hard especially if you aren’t sure what to look for. Ask yourself these simple questions while doing research on the internet; it’ll help you learn how to determine between a fictional and a factual website.

Authorship • An authoritative website will have a clearly identified author. • Things to consider: • Is the author of the text clearly indicated on the site? • Is there a way to get in touch with the author?

Question One: Authorship • If an author isn’t listed on a website should you use it? • Yes • No

Sorry • This in incorrect. • If the author isn’t clearly indicated on the site, don’t use it. It’s best to skip over website when authors aren’t indicated, even if it looks good. Keep in mind it’s better to skip over a website that you aren’t sure of then use it and let your grade suffer.

Congratulations • This is correct. • If the author isn’t clearly indicated on the site, don’t use it. It’s best to skip over website when authors aren’t indicated, even if it looks good. Keep in mind it’s better to skip over a website that you aren’t sure of then use it and let your grade suffer.

Expertise • An authoritative website will have a knowledgeable author. Meaning they should have a degree in the field in which they are writing about. • Things to consider: • Are the author’s credentials indicated? • Is the author’s background described? • What is their degree in? • Is the author an expert in the field?

Question Two: Expertise • Should you use a website about diabetes written by a history professor at the University of Missouri or should you use a website written by a professor from Harvard Medical School? • History Professor • Harvard Medical Professor

Sorry • This in incorrect. • You should always use a website in which the author’s credentials and educational background match up with the information they are informing you with. • Recommendation: • If an author’s credentials are not listed, do a little investigative research. For example if an author claims they are a history professor at the University of Missouri go to MU’s employee directory and look them up.

Congratulations • This is correct. • You should always use a website in which the author’s credentials and educational background match up with the information they are informing you with. • Recommendation: • If an author’s credentials are not listed, do a little investigative research. For example if an author claims they are a history professor at the University of Missouri go to MU’s employee directory and look them up.

Host • An authoritative website will be hosted on a legitimate web server. Analyze the website’s address to see where the site is hosted. This will include .com, .gov, .edu, and .org. • .edu • A website ending with .edu is hosted by an educational institution. The information may be scholarly. Or it could be a student’s work. • .gov • A website ending with .gov is hosted by a governmental body. The information may be authoritative and likely biased. • .org • A website ending with an .org is hosted by an organization or society. The value of the information contained in the website will depend on the reputation of the organization or society. • .com • A website ending with .com is hosted by a commercial organization. Information found on these sites can be informative as well as biased.

Question Three: Host • When analyzing a website do you need to consider where the site is hosted? • Yes • No

Sorry • This in incorrect. • An authoritative website needs to be hosted on a legitimate web server. The authoritativeness of a website is based on it’s host, but you also need to consider the information found on that website. Does it seem misinforming and biased? • Recommendation: • Consider the purpose of each site no matter what their host is; the purpose of a website will tell you a lot about the type of information coming your way.

Congratulations • This is correct. • An authoritative website needs to be hosted on a legitimate web server. The authoritativeness of a website is based on it’s host, but you also need to consider the information found on that website. Does it seem misinforming and biased? • Recommendation: • Consider the purpose of each site no matter what their host is; the purpose of a website will tell you a lot about the type of information coming your way.

Currency • An authoritative website show signs that someone is taking care of it on a regular basis. • Things to consider: • Is a creation date clearly indicated on the page? • Is there a date on the page stating when it was last updated? • If there are links to other websites, are the links up-to-date?

Question Four: Currency • It’s important to consider ‘dead links’ when before using a certain website. • True • False

Sorry • This is incorrect. • An authoritative website shows signs that the author is taking care of it on a regular basis, this includes keeping linked URLs up-to-date. • Recommendation: • If one or two links are no longer functioning this is okay, since websites have the habit of disappearing overnight. However, if all of the links are no longer functioning it’s time to consider another website.

Congratulations • This is correct. • An authoritative website shows signs that the author is taking care of it on a regular basis, this includes keeping linked URLs up-to-date. • Recommendation: • If one or two links are no longer functioning this is okay, since websites have the habit of disappearing overnight. However, if all of the links are no longer functioning it’s time to consider another website.

Purpose • An authoritative website will have a clear reason for existing. • Things to consider: • Is the purpose and goals of the website clear? • Is the purpose and goals of the author clear? • Is the website designed to get you to subscribe to a particular point of view? • Who is the intended audience?

Question Five: Purpose • When looking at a website is it important to consider who the intended audience is? • Yes • No

Sorry • This is incorrect. • When looking at websites, it’s important to consider who the intended audience is especially now that you are in college. For example you don’t want to use a website about the Battle of Gettysburg that is geared towards students in the third grade. Instead use one that is geared towards college students and historians. • Recommendation: • Pay special attention to this concept. One day you might have an instructor who might mark your grade down for this.

Congratulations • This is correct. • When looking at websites, it’s important to consider who the intended audience is especially now that you are in college. For example you don’t want to use a website about the Battle of Gettysburg that is geared towards students in the third grade. Instead use one that is geared towards college students and historians. • Recommendation: • Pay special attention to this concept. One day you might have an instructor who might mark your grade down for this.

Content • An authoritative website will be well written and provide in-depth on-topic analysis. Meaning it will be a well rounded website and all points will be covered. • Things to consider: • Is the text written in “good” English? There should not be any spelling mistakes or other errors. • Does the site provide in-depth material? • Is the site carefully focused on a particular topic? • Does the website display a minimum of bias? • Does it provide you with a bibliography?

Question Six: Content • When looking at a website should you consider the importance of a bibliography? • No • Yes

Sorry • This is incorrect. • When looking at websites it is recommended that you look closely at the provided bibliography. An author’s bibliography will help you check and verify their work. As well as take you to additional resources which can be use in your paper. • Recommendation: • Pay close attention to an author’s bibliography, just because they look right, it doesn’t mean the resources actually exist.

Congratulations • This is correct. • When looking at websites it is recommended that you look closely at the provided bibliography. An author’s bibliography will help you check and verify their work. As well as take you to additional resources which can be use in your paper. • Recommendation: • Pay close attention an author’s bibliography, just because they look right, it doesn't mean the resources actually exist.

Actual Website • The next few slide will give you an example of a complete evaluation using all six evaluation criteria.

Example: Authorship For our website evaluation example, I’ve chosen to take a closer look at Evaluation of Alleged Sasquatch Footprints by D. Jeffrey Meldrum Under authorship the most important question one needs to ask themselves is; Is the author clearly indicated on the site? The author is clearly indicated on the website as D. Jeffrey Meldrum. If the author is not listed, do not use that website. Another aspect that one needs to consider is a ‘Contact Us Section’; authoritative and reliable websites should always provide users with a ‘Contact Us Section’. If you find the website questionable and the author is not providing you with a ‘Contact Us Section’ skip over it and use another one. Since I find the article interesting enough, I’m going to continue on with my evaluation process, even though a ‘Contact Us Section’ is not listed.

Expertise An authoritative website will have a knowledgeable author. Are the author’s credentials indicated? Is the author’s educational background described? The answer to both of those questions is no. D. Jeffrey Meldrum does not list his credentials and/or educational background, automatically this will send up a red flag. Although D. Jeffery Meldrum does not list his credentials and education background, I still find his website interesting enough to continue on, my next step will to try and locate the author somewhere on Idaho State University website. Once I arrived at Idaho State University’s website, I simply looked up Jeffrey Meldrum, by accident, instead of D. Jeffrey Meldrum; does this make a difference, perhaps. According to ISU, Jeffery teaches in the Department of Biological Sciences, he is an associate professor of Anatomy & Anthropology. He’s also is an adjunct associate professor in the department of Anthropology and Occupational and Physical Therapy. Jeffery has his B.S. and his M.S. in Zoology and his Ph.D in Anatomical Sciences. ISU also gives readers a brief biographical sketch; here we are introduced to his studies and some of his writings, for example, Sasquatch: Legend Meets Science. However, good as this sounds, I still realized I made a mistake earlier on when I was looking up Jeffery. As I stated earlier on I looked up Jeffery Meldrum on ISU’s site instead of the listed author D. Jeffery Meldrum; I was able to locate one page within ISU’s website on D. Jeffery under the Department of Biological Sciences. The email provided for D. Jeffery Meldrum is the same for Jeffery Meldrum, so it’s fairly safe to assume they are the same person.

Host Evaluation of Alleged Sasquatch Footprints is hosted by an educational institution; Idaho State University. Number one thing people need to keep in mind about websites ending with .edu; is that it could be a professor’s personal studies or a student creating a website for their computer science class.

Currency An authoritative website shows signs that someone is taking care of it on a regular basis. Number one thing to look at is, if there’s a creation date indicated. A brief glance through indicates that there is no date listed. I always recommend students to look for creation dates, if they aren’t listed, don’t use it. The main reason for this is due to time sensitive material; health related topics, for example, need to be current to keep up with the amount of new information out there. This normally will send up a red flag, however I’ll give the author the benefit of the doubt for this evaluation example.

Purpose An authoritative website will have a clear reason for existing. Under purpose one needs to consider; are the purpose and goals clearly indicated within the text? Is it biased? Overall the purpose Evaluation of Alleged Sasquatch Footprints is to introduce readers to a brief examination of over 100 footprint cases and photographs of Sasquatch. D. Jeffery’s work doesn’t seem biased in any manner; he just wants to give readers a brief introduction to the footprints of Sasquatch.

Content An authoritative website will be well written and provide in-depth on-topic analysis. Also under content it’s important to consider if the text is written in ‘good’ English, if there are any spelling mistakes and so forth. Another aspect that I consider extremely important to consider under content is the bibliography. When dealing with information found on the internet, anyone can publish anything on the internet, there isn’t any checks and balances. This is extremely important to consider since many websites can be plagiarized; when an author provides you with their resources, double check their work. It is recommended to look at a website’s resources; look them up in any of the library’s databases to see if what the author is saying is what others in the same field are saying. This is also extremely important, since some websites make up their own bibliography to look good. Since D. Jeffery isn’t listing any of his resource, a red flag is automatically sent up.

Evaluation Conclusion In the end, I would most likely never use the Evaluation of Alleged Sasquatch Footprints for one of my resources, for two really big reasons. Number one, there is still the question of the author; is the listed D. Jeffery Meldrum of this website the same as Jeffery Meldrum on ISU’s faculty page, who is a professor with excellent credentials. Or is this another Jeffery Meldrum all together. Number two is based on the content; since this website, reliable or not, does not list its bibliography; I would have to skip over it entirely. It’s important to keep in mind; author’s of websites can easily be plagiarized from another individual’s work, since there are no checks and balances, and place it as their own words. By being provide with a bibliography its an easy way to check on an author’s works, not only to see if what they are saying lines up with the authors listed in his work, but also to double check and make sure the author of that particular website isn’t plagiarizing from their resources.

Final Conclusion • There are many details of a website that can help you decide whether you are looking at a reliable website or a bad website. The information provided in the previous slides will help you determine if the website you are looking at is authoritative or not. • Questions??? Please contact Tracy Ponder at 417-447-8173 or pondert@otc.edu

Evaluating Web Resources