Website evaluation criteria and methods

Education

Evaluating Websites

When evaluating a web site there are very specific things that should be looked at in order to determine if it is effective and useful. The first thing to look at is that of authority. It should be determined if the web site has an author or a sponsor and if this person or organization is reputable. The second thing to look at is that of accuracy. It needs to be determined if the web site is reliable and error free. The third thing to look at is that of objectivity. It is important to see if the information on the page is biased in any way. Another thing that needs to be looked at is that of currency. The page should be current and updated within a recent time period. The last thing to look at is that of coverage. It needs to be looked at to see if the topics that are covered on the web page have intrinsic value (Evaluation Criteria, 2009).

I looked at three different web sites having to do with tenure and post tenure review. The first site was sponsored by the American Association of University Professors. I looked up this association and they appear to be a reputable organization. This organization is a collective group of university professors along with other academics in the United States. Over the years this organization has helped to shape American higher education by developing the standards and procedures that maintain quality in education and academic freedom in this countries colleges and universities. The information that is available on the site has to do with resources on tenure. This information all appears to be reliable and error free. This site contains several links to articles that deal with the subject of tenure. The articles deal with a variety of things that surround the topic of tenure and do not appear to be biased in any way. The site was last updated in September of 2008 which makes the information relatively current. This site contains several pages of information and has a very extensive site map along with a search function. This allows visitors to access information quickly or to search for a specific topic that they are interested in. Overall this web site appears to be a very useful source of information for those wanting to know about tenure or other college and university related subjects (American Association of University Professors, 2008).

The next site that I looked at was one sponsored by Insider Higher Ed. Inside Higher Ed is a free online publication that covers many issues that deal with college and universities. After researching it, I found that it appears to be a very reputable and respected organization. The information that is available on this site covers the topic of what counts for tenure. The information is presented in the form of an article and then has the option for people to leave their comments, thus facilitating a discussion surrounding the issue. This type of formats allows for there to be a wide variety of opinions regarding the topic and hand which helps to alleviate any bias that could occur. The information on this site about tenure is very current with being updated last on July 20th of this year. It also appears to be very reliable and error free. This site contains several pages of information and has a very handy search function for people to use to look up specific things. This site does not have a site map in order to facilitate navigation. Overall this site appears to be a very useful resource for those who are looking for information regarding tenure (Inside Higher Ed, 2009).

The last site that I looked at was one sponsored by the National Education Association. The National Education Association is the largest professional organization and largest labor union in the United States that represents public school teachers. This organization appears to be very reputable within the education arena. The information that is available on this site surrounds the topic of tenure. The site is set up with links to several articles that surround this topic. The information that is presented appears to be reliable and error free. It does not seem to be biased in any way. The information is very neutral in the way that it is presented. The site itself is up-to-date with last being updated in 2009, but some of the information that is presented in the articles is somewhat dated. The site contains several pages of information not only about tenure but about the educational field as a whole. It contains a very useful search function, but does not contain a site map for navigation. Overall this web site appears to be a very useful source of information not only on the subject of tenure but for many subjects regarding the academic environment (National Education Association, 2009).