1. Pick a topic that you are interested in or need to research for a different class (or both). The topic should be one on which it is possible to find scholarly work or factual information. For example, the topic could be something like these: is creationism a good scientific theory? Is cholesterol bad for you? Do prairie dogs make good pets? Is functionalism a plausible response to the mind-body problem? How good was the evidence that the pharmaceutical plant the US bombed in the Sudan was involved in terrorist activity? What are the similarities and differences between CISC and RISC processors? As you can see, many different kinds of topics are acceptable. However, I would prefer that you avoid narrowly commercial topics (e.g. what is the best place to buy CDs online?).
2. Search for information on your topic using at least one directory and at least three search engines. Experiment with various search strategies, including relevancy searching and boolean search strings.
3. Make a list of between five and ten sites that are directly relevant to your topic. (Make sure that you include the URL for each site!) Make sure that your list includes at least one excellent source and one complete turkey. (Except for the turkey, however, the sites you list should be the best ones you could find.)
3. Write an evaluation of each site, basing your evaluation on the "evaluation points" included in Chris Nolan's presentation. Do some work to evaluate the sources you find -- try to determine who the author is and what his or her qualifications are, find out who publishes or sponsors the site, check for substantiation of claims, etc.
4. Describe the techniques you used to find the sources you list, and indicate which techniques were successful or unsuccessful and why. Which directories or search engines did you find most helpful? What sort of search string turned up the most useful results?
5. Write up your results as a web page. Include links to the sites on your list. We'll discuss this part of the assignment in more detail on Tuesday, and I'll add more detailed instructions at that time.
Additional instructions for step 5: If you have all or some of the assignment completed using Microsoft Word, the easiest thing to do is to simply go to the File menu and select "Save as HTML . . .". This will save your document as an HTML document, with the same filename it previously had (or whatever new name you decide to give it) and a .htm extension. You could then proceed to use Word as an HTML editor, but my advice instead would be to close the file, start Netscape Composer, and then open the file from within Composer. You can then continue to edit the file using Composer.
Remember that the file should include: (1) a descriptive title,
(2) working links to the sites you found; (3) evaluations of the web sites
you found using the criteria discussed in Chris Nolan's presentation; (4)
a discussion of your search technique, including your findings about which
search engines or directories were most helpful, and what search strategy
turned out to be most useful. If you'd like to include an attractive
background, and/or images, perhaps taken from the sites you are evaluating,
that's fine but not necessary. (We'll talk about how to do this in
more detail on Thursday.) The page should also be in an attractive
and readable format. Please simply place the html file in our class
folder. (The next assignment will involve actually placing a page
on your university site.)
Due: Thursday, October 15.