Now here’s something I KNOW someone in Chiffland can help me with. I have a group assignment for my masters program to develop a rubric for evaluating educational websites. Part of the assignment is to find a site that ranks poorly on our rubric. I’m sure some of you can come up with some creative possibilities. I need them fast. Like, tonight. In the next ten minutes would be good.
It has to at least bill itself as a serious educational website. If it’s trying to be serious and manages to be so bad it’s funny, that’s kosher. But no tongue-in-cheek stuff, YouTube type pop sites, etc. The writers/designers have to be making an attempt at being seriously educational.
And it has to fail miserably.
The rubric we’ve developed evaluates the following areas, so you know:
Content (Useful info; rich, varried content; organized and focused)
Credibility (identification and credentials of author; sources cited; supported by an organization/commercial body; references; up to date)
Design (ease of navigation; good functional graphics; grammatically correct text)
Those are the criteria, for good or ill (I don’t like group work, because this isn’t the way I’d have done it…sigh…).
Well, that’s a good question. Perhaps “academic” would be a better word. Something a student or teacher might use (and reference) for an academic paper. As opposed to a “recreational” website. Though with well-done sites the line is very blurry indeed.
I mostly want to avoid something that is primarily for entertainment rather than education, or obviously trying to be satirical or funny, like the Onion, or even parts of C&F (yes, my extensive research has revealed that parts of C&F are intended to be satifical and/or funny. My secretaries are alerting the media even as we speak).
The flash adds nothing at all to the functionality of the site & merely makes the pages slower to load.
They’re trying to communicate community information to a number of groups, including seniors. When you do get it open, the navbar is cunningly styled in an attractive black-on-gray-on-gray 10 point font, completely invisible to anyone with less than perfect vision.
Finally, the page contains a “best viewed in 1024*768” message. Given that their target client base consists of folks with lower-incomes and probably older computers, this too impedes communication.
