Hands-on Practice

Reflection

Since people had computers, there were more and more people who involved in designing, creating, and using the programming language to write and build a page to the Net. We almost know that there are many kinds of formats of information on the Internet, and also we recognize everything on the Internet is always changing and upgrading by the new technology day by day. Therefore, to people, knowing and realizing the contents of each web page is very important to help to find out or search the information quickly and easily. After reading those three online articles about evaluating website, I get more ideas and knowledge understanding how to evaluate the pages. In my opinion, those three articles are talking the same perspective on evaluating the website. From the chapter five, I get the SCAD checklist for evaluating the website. The items of SCAD are source evaluation, access, and design. From Five criteria for evaluating web pages, the five criteria are accuracy, authority, objectivity, currency and coverage. While we are evaluating the website, we should take those parts of above into consideration. Why? First of all, we have to know the author's credentials. Does the author list or describe his or her qualifications? If the author is an eleven-year-old elementary school student, is the information that he or she provided reliable? Second, about the contents, we should identify that information on the Internet whether the information is factual or ideal. We have to make sure the author provides e-mail or a contact address, and we can connect with him or her while we get some questions or problems. Third, about the website function or the best quality to browse the website, the author might give notes for users and so on. From Website evaluation criteria - an analysis of why websites fail, keywords, conversion rates, retention rates and who did you hire are the four criteria to evaluate the business or commercial website. In my opinion, in order to find out the information more easily and quickly, so, people can have the quick search engine box for their website. In addition, when authors design their websites, they should respect to not only the criteria that mentioned above, but also don't let the users get misunderstanding with the information and links that you provided. Moreover, about webpage design principles, simplicity, consistency, clarity balance, harmony and unity are very important parts for users to get a friendly feeling of it. The target of design web pages is the users, the readers. In one of the articles mentioned about "The e-business consultant can set strict guidelines on how the design is executed, and ensure that commercial success is prioritized over the designers desire to excel artistically (a problem with most sites)." The website is designed for users. Therefore, the first impression that the users got is an important factor to the author that designed the website. And building a website which is familiar with the famous site - Yahoo, is a point that the users might evaluate in their mind. Briefly, designing and evaluating are based on users' viewing.

Resources:

Johan Graus. The Internet in the EFL Classroom. "Chapter 5." 10/20/99.
[http://home.plex.nl/~jgraus/thesis/content/ch5.htm] An Evaluation of the Usefulnessof the Internet in the EFL Classroom. 05/10/05.

Kapoun, Jim. Five criteria for evaluating Web pages. 09/18/98.
[http://www.library.cornell.edu/olinuris/ref/research/webcrit.html] Olin & Libraries. 05/12/05.
"Teaching undergrads WEB evaluation: A guild for library instruction." C&RL News (July/ August 1998): 522 – 523. Converted to HTML by Paul McMillin, September 18, 1998

Website evaluation criteria. "Website evaluation criteria – an analysis of why website fail." 2003.
[http://www.web-design-uk.biz/website-evaluation/website-evaluation-criteria.htm] website evaluation. 05/12/05.

Huang Nicole. Internet English Weblog. "PPT for Website Evaluation." 05/16/05.
[http://sparc.nfu.edu.tw/~phuang/evaluation.ppt] PPT for Website Evaluation. 05/09/05.