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Today we're looking at websites! Break up into groups and use the D.R.A.M.A. Website Evaluation handout to evaluate one of the following websites (website will be assigned at random to each group):
You are allowed to use one website for your paper. This is a good opportunity to locate:
Websites are great to locate information you would not otherwise find in books and journal articles, especially recent news, social movements and statistics. You will find daily updates for Covid cases on a government website, for instance, and you won't find that in a book! BUT, websites require a lot of fact checking to make sure they're authentic and their information is good. Bad websites are plentiful, and many of them will look good at first glance. Choose your website wisely!
Anyone can create a website. It's your job to determine if a website is an appropriate resource for your paper. That means the website must be written by an authoritative person, without bias, and without trying to sell you something. Many websites are trying to sell you a product, and will do anything to convince you that you need that product, including publishing "informative" articles meant to sway your opinion. It's your job to sort these websites out of your searches, finding the good stuff and avoiding the bad. But how do you know what's bad or flat out misinformation?
Stop the D.R.A.M.A. around website selection! Use the checklist below as a guide to evaluate websites:
Date |
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Relevance |
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Accuracy |
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Motivation |
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Authority |
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When evaluating a web resource, analyze the domain name and determine if the creator of the webpage can be trusted.
Domain Name Differences by adstarkel. Used under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0.
Cite that book! Use zbib.org to whip up a quick citation, and make sure to copy that citation down on your Evaluation Sheet.