Students need to possess the procedural knowledge and engage in sufficient practice to be able to determine whether a website contains information that is accurate, credible, relevant, and ultimately is useful to their goal. While some websites are quite obviously not worthy of one's time from an academic standpoint, many more websites reach the upper levels of search results that appear to be legitimate academic resources, yet actually contain false information, biased viewpoints, or are simply click-bait for the purpose of advertising dollars. Whether for learning activities or just personal use, being able to discern between fact and fiction and information and infomercial is a critical skill set for anyone. Additionally, in our instantaneous information world, we need to be able to not only discern how reliable information is, but also whether that information is even useful for our purpose. These are all skills that require some training, a practical awareness, and practice to master.
A quick internet search will produce a plethora of websites, documents, and checklists for evaluating websites and teaching the concept digital literacy. While the terminology varies from source to source, the approach is generally the same. These resources ask the student to put a website through a series of criteria to help determine whether a site is accurate, credible, and relevant. To the right is a series of links to a small collection of website evaluation tools. These tools were selected because of their frequency of reference from related websites, and their high level of credibility on this topic. Below is an outline of basic evaluation criteria, organized in a three level process as used in the provided lesson seed.
The following Levels help to organize website evaluation in three sequential steps starting with identifying potential surface level issues, then identifying whether the site or author has an authority on the topic, and finally, determining whether the information is useful to the student's purpose. Included here are two documents (related to the lesson seed) that can be used in the instruction and practice of these website evaluation skills.