Welcome to the Site of the Month for February, 2011!

This month, we highlight the ALPS LINK contest grand-prize winner, Web Evaluation Step-by-Step, by Diane Cruickshank, Mirela Djokic, and Allison Richardson.

In contributing these exercises to the LINK repository, Diane and her colleagues have responded to a specific request we had for ideas and activities for teaching website evaluation, one of our “burning needs,” and the theme of this year’s contest. This resource has numerous examples drawn from a wide range of subject areas, and takes a step-by-step, problem-solving approach that can be easily adapted for use in any library orientation.

ALPS asked Diane a few questions about her guide:

These seem like really good example topics to choose to work with students. Do you find students respond to the participatory nature of this class?

I would hope so but I haven’t had the opportunity to use it yet.

How is web evaluation usually taught in your library? as a stand-alone class, or as one component of a subject-based orientation?

Usually as part of the orientation. I would prefer that is was taught as a stand-alone class. I would like students to find their own sites and then evaluate each one individually.

What do you find is the biggest challenge for students when it comes to evaluating information they find on the internet?

The fact that good visual presentation creates a convincing website. I think if students look at the site and it looks “good” (whatever that means), and the page says what they want it to say, they then think it is a good site. 

Have you had an opportunity to assess, either formally or informally, student learning outcomes based on these exercises?

No. I would like to have more feedback from instructors to see if the orientations were helping or not.

Three of you contributed to this learning object, and we are interested in how you worked as a team. How did you come up with this format for teaching web evaluation? Did you work on each question separately, or did each of you have a hand in all questions?

Generally, Allison and Mirela came up with the topics that are usually taught in seminars. I then searched through the web looking for examples that I thought worked easily. (We had given ourselves a 10 minute teaching time limit.) It was also important to me to show that the library had access to resources that Google only tempted you with. Then Mirela and Allison tested out my lessons themselves to make sure they worked.

Do you have any favourite web evaluation resources that you’d like to share with us?

Actually I don’t. The thing is, I think evaluating a site that a student wants to use is better than giving examples of evaluating sites that they would never find themselves. That is why in my examples I chose the top hits from my Google searches. I was imagining myself as a desperate student, looking for information that is fast, easy to understand and looks official. Then I just thought about what makes the page convincing and whether what it was convincing me to believe was right or not.