The website evaluation paper requires you to summarize and evaluate the contents of a single website that is
relevant to one of the topics covered in your course. Your evaluation should
concisely summarize the contents of the site,
indicate the author's purpose in creating the site, assess the credibility of the author and
evaluate the usefulness and accuracy of the information on the site.
- Please email your website selection to your instructor for an ok to go ahead with the evaluation of that site.
- The site that you choose to evaluate
should have at least five separate pages of text and graphics.
- The site
CANNOT be one of the sites listed anywhere in
your course as a suggested website nor can it refer to US history or
be from an online encyclopedia. You also cannot evaluate any of the Internet History Sourcebooks,
done by Paul Halsall at Fordham University.
- Your name and date should appear at the top left of your paper along with
- the url and title of the website that you are evaluating
- the date the website was last revised
- the name(s) of the author(s) of the site.
-
If you need some assistance with
searching the web to find a website for this assignment, please check Jennifer Reynold's
Effective
Internet Searching site or the NVCC library site on finding and evaluating websites.
- If
you have any doubts about a selection, please contact
your instructor.
The evaluation is a single, unindented,
double-spaced paragraph not to exceed one page. You should be critical of your chosen website in your evaluation,
and the following questions should be addressed in addition to what I
noted above. Please note that your paragraph should not just be a
series of answers to these questions; it should be an overall
evaluation and read as such.
- Detailed description of the site
- Credibility of the site's author
- How knowledgeable
is the author on this subject?
- What evidence is offered to support that authority?
- Accuracy of the site's information
- Are sources for information clearly listed so they can be verified?
- Are there grammatical and spelling errors?
- Are source materials complete or edited?
- Are all images identified with proper citations?
- Site bias
- Is there reason to suspect bias?
- If there is any commercial advertising
on the site?
- If there is a political/ideological/religious or other agenda?
- Site purpose
- To provide general, or scholarly, information?
- To persuade? To entertain?
To explain?
- How current is the information on the site?
- Do any links on the site lead you to any related material? Are the links easy to navigate?
- Site Design. Consider these issues:
- Is the text easy to read?
- Does
the site's structure and navigation make sense?
- Do the graphics contribute to your understanding
or appreciation of the material?
- What might you suggest to make this site more effective?
This assignment should be sent by e-mail to your instructor according to the Using Email instructions.
Please remember to consult
Charlie's History Writing Center for
specific information on the writing requirements of this course. (You may use present-tense
verbs in this assignment; you may not use "I.")
The Required Website Evaluation Paper is worth a maximum of
100 points.
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