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Technology Enhanced Language Learning at the English Language Institute

Iona Sarieva
Annmarie Zoran

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Website
Evaluation

The Internet - this vast source of information that contemporary people rely more and more upon is not without its own problems… The Internet is not a library – a collection that is carefully selected and organized by librarians. It is rather a living organism with a zillion ‘cells’ that functions by YES! publishing web pages and sites, updating, deleting, or abandoning them. These ‘cells’ follow Internet’s and their own dynamics and unspoken conventions. It is worth letting our students get acquainted with these dynamics and conventions so the sources they rely on for academic as well as everyday information are reliable and appropriate.
When introducing students to web source evaluation principles and techniques, it might be useful to make the parallel with printed sources: the reasons supermarket tabloids are unreliable source of information are similar to those for certain web pages. However, the difficulty with the Internet is that contrary to the supermarkets, it does not organize all the ‘tabloid’ websites neatly in one corner; these websites are not always formatted in a way that would suggest that they are unreliable, and sometimes they might mimic ‘serious’ pages by using a similar URL, layout, page names.
How can we help students recognizing the tabloids of the Internet?
Below are some questions to teach your students to ask in order to help them avoiding web sources of unreliable information:
1. Who is the author?
The author's name may appear at the top or bottom of the text and can be used as a key word for an online search with one of the search engines (Google, Altavista, etc.). If the author is cited frequently, most probably this site/page is reliable.
2. What is the date?
Depending on the type of information, the date can be crucial for information quality. Many pages post at the bottom the date of the last time the page was updated (mailing lists, newsgroups, and forums may have the date at the top). Keep in mind that the Internet was not widespread before 1992.
3. What is the URL?
There are some conventions in assigning domains. For example, the use of .edu as an URL extension near to or at the end of the address indicates that the site is published by an educational institution, .gov by a government organization, .mil by a military. There are three other endings that should be also mentioned: .com and .net are often related to commercial organizations. The third one - .org is often used by non-profit organizations but can be used by commercial organizations too. Commercial Internet providers also allow their subscribers to use addresses with .com or .net.
A good (but not universal) indicator that a certain page is published by a person is a ~ in the address. However, it is useful to remember that these are not rules but rather conventions and as we all know conventions can sometimes be violated. The good news is that there is a ‘WhoIs’ database available at: http://www.networksolutions.com/en_US/whois/index.jhtml . It will allow you to track the owner of the ‘root’ URL. In many cases web pages and smaller websites are ‘hosted’ by larger websites. You can either ‘edit’ the domain name by deleting the address up to the ‘root’ (the web extension such as .org, . com) to find out the ‘hosting’ website or you can learn more about the hosts using the “WhoIs’ directory.
4. Where does the thread lead?
The Internet is also referred as the World Wide Web, and it makes sense to follow some of the threads linked to the website under investigation. From where do these threads come? Find out who put links to the web page you are evaluating. Where do they lead? Whom is the web page is linking to? It is easy to identify where the links go from the website you are evaluating by simply following them. To find who chose to post a link to this website use a search engine. For example, go to Google Advanced Search (http://www.google.com/advanced_search?hl=en), ‘Page-Specific Search’ to find out how many sites are providing a link to the site you are evaluating. You can also type in the site's exact title in the field named ‘Find results with exact phrase’ to see who else is referring to this website.
5. What does the content say?
Evaluate the text published on the web in the same way you would evaluate a printed material. Answer the following questions:
· Does the author make references within the text? What type of sources are referenced: print references, and/or Internet documents?
· Is the topic under discussion a controversial one? Is the author an expert on the topic? Can the author’s biases affect the topic presentation?
· Can you verify the information presented in the source, i.e. do other sources present the same facts?

Sources for more information on website evaluation:

Brody, H. (1996). The Web maestro: An interview with Tim Berners-Lee. Technology Review, 99 (5), 32-40.
Healey, D. (2002) English Language Institute, Technology Tip of the Month. Retrieved October 03, 2004 from: http://oregonstate.edu/Dept/eli/july1996.html
Tips for evaluating websites (n.d.). Retrieved October 03, 2004 from: http://www.ohiou.edu/esl/help/evalTips.html