evaluating websites
DESCRIPTION
Not all sources on the Web are equally valuable or reliable. Individual sites are not screened or standardized in any way to determine if the information they provide is accurate or useful. Critically evaluating the information you find is central to successful academic research. Determining the credibility of information found on the Web is not always easy - think of the following criteria during evaluation. The World Wide Web offers a great wealth of information, as well as the opportunity for people to express themselves and exchange ideas. This makes it a potentially great place to accomplish research on many topics. But putting documents or pages on the Web is easy, cheap or free, unregulated and unmonitored. If you are using a Web-based source for a research paper, you will need to develop skills to evaluate the credibility and appropriateness of what you find. The following checklist presents questions to ask to help determine whether a Web page is a suitable resource for a research paper, or not. Don't expect to be able to answer all the questions, all the time, for all Web sites you look at. Rather, try to use the questions as a tool to help you look at Web pages critically.TRANSCRIPT
Evaluating Websites
CRITERIA
CRAAP
CRAAPCurrencyRelevanceAuthorityAccuracyPurpose
Currencywhen?revision?links?
Evaluation Criteria #1
Evaluation Criteria #2
Relevancerelate to topic?question / problem?locate?
Authorityaffiliation & qualifications?contact?copyright?.com, .org., .edu, .ca,.gov,.
Evaluation Criteria #3
Accuracysources verifiable?grammar & spelling?
Evaluation Criteria #4
Purposeintention?objective and impartial?advertising?inform? teach?
entertain?persuade? sell?
Evaluation Criteria #5
CRAAPCurrencyRelevanceAuthorityAccuracyPurpose
REVIEW CRITERIA
Examples http://tinyurl.com/sociokids http://tinyurl.com/joyreading
http://tinyurl.com/todaysparent http://tinyurl.com/busytoddler
TRY IT!
In Class Activity
Critically evaluateAsk yourselfWrite your responses
Learn More? http://www.vtstutorials.ac.uk/detective/
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