Evaluating Web Sites

California State University, Dominguez Hills
University of Wisconsin, Parkside
Latest update: December 13, 1998
Faculty on the Site.

There is a certain assurance to learning when you are required to do no more than process the material given you in the security of knowing that the teacher will accept as valid the knowledge the teacher has taught. Unfortunately, that process leaves out the critical stage of evaluating and synthesizing the knowledge received for its truth value or the validity of its claim to be heard in good faith. (See Bloom and Krathwohl, A Taxonomy of Educational Objectives, or any other text on learning theory that establishes a hierarchy or taxonomy of levels of learning. Bloom and Krathwohl start out with recognition, then recall, then analysis, and finally synthesis and evaluation. Refer to Curran and Takata's Statistics . . . for more detail on learning theories. See Habermas for validity claims to be heard in good faith.)

One of our primary goals in the statistics course is to help you master the process of evaluating theoretical approaches, methods of measurement, and the resulting analysis of that measurement. Within the class there are exercises to guide you. But when there is no more class, the evaluation of multiple validity claims will rest squarely upon your shoulders. We live in an age of information overload. There is no dearth of information if you are diligent in seeking it. But all of that information must be evaluated and synthesized to fit with your own thought processes.

College professors all over the country are cautioning their students to evaluate carefully the information overload, to teach them to absorb information critically. In preparation for our next exercise, I want you to browse some other sites, where others are giving a similar message: