Website Evaluation - Educational Criteria

I have been a bit slack with my blog posts and uni forum posts for the first couple of topics for ETL 501- The Information Environment.  I have finally got my act together for Topic 3: Website Evaluation.  In the past, when I have looked for websites for a particular topic and class, I have always considered whether the site fit in with the topic, whether the students could understand it, and the reliability of it.  From my readings so far I am glad to see that I was on the right track.  Looking at different sets of criteria however, I can see that I needed to be more specific in my evaluation - to consider other factors relating to educational quality, reliability and the technical aspects of the sites.

The following is my evaluation of the Cyberguide Ratings For Website Evaluation as a tool for website evaluation.  This was one of the activities in our Topic 3 module.

In my opinion, the Cyberguide Ratings for Content Evaluation contains some educational criteria but is made up of mainly reliability criteria.  I would not rate this tool very highly as a guide to assessing the ed criteria of a site because the educational criteria is either incomplete or is not written in a way that highlights educational needs.

At the top of the page where info is requested I would add to "Audience" the teacher's name, the grade of the students and educational needs ie their reading level range.  Instead of "Purpose for exploring this site", I would put "Teacher's Purpose". 

Our readings mention that fit for purpose is the most important evaluation criteria in an educational setting so I would consider rearranging the subheadings in the table, effectively moving "Information Quality" to the top.  It would probably be worthwhile  changing this subheading to "Educational Quality", to ensure that teaching/learning is the main consideration. 

I would also rearrange the individual criteria,  putting first: "This site sufficiently meets the teacher's needs/purposes", with room to explain/indicate  how/why.  Then "This site sufficiently meets the students' learning needs", again with room to explain or indicate how, i.e. The information in this site is written using language the students could understand (a) independently, (b) with some assistance (c) with a lot of assistance.

Criteria should explicitly draw attention that the website is required for an educational purpose.  Criteria 4.H. This site provides interactivity that increases its value, for example, could be rewritten as "this site provides interactivity/ activities that extends the learning of students. 

Criteria also needs to be added so that the evaluator considers whether the site allows for differentiation. 

We also were asked to respond to another person's post on the forum.  I found particularly useful some points made by another student. She thought that criteria needed to be added that asked whether the content was relevant in terms of the curriculum framework.  Good point!  As a teacher I would want to know that a website I intended to use met specific educational outcomes for the topic I was teaching.  She also thought that TLs should consider whether the website had been scholastically reviewed.  This could give the evaluator a view of the website not previously considered, particularly if the reviewer had actually used the site in the classroom. 

Next post: Reliability and technical criteria for website evaluation.