Part I: Writing a Review

Today's Scripture

• John 14:27 "Peace I leave with you; my peace I give you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your heart be troubled and do not be afraid."

Review

• Sentences, Run-ons, and Fragment Sentences Worksheet

Encountering Websites

• How can people viewing a website determine if it is a quality product? How does one differentiate between a Wikipedia-like site and a site presented by the U.S. government?
• Many students rely on website suffixes such as .gov, .org, and so on to determine the value of a website. Surprisingly, not all can be decided simply by the website suffix.
• Many students rely on website suffixes such as .gov, .org, and so on to determine the value of a website. Not all can be decided simply by the website suffix

Objective For This Essay

• Discuss how to determine a valuable website from one that is not credible for research purposes
• Examine documents for their value
• Writing a review or evaluation to share these findings with others

Review (Academic Context)

• Involves evaluative writings about a text or website.
• Uses certain criteria to evaluate the text or website.
• Evaluates whether the text or website is valuable for its intended audience.

Evaluation

• making a judgment or assessment about the value of a document or website using clearly defined and explained criteria along with evidence from the text

Difference between a Review & Evaluation

• An evaluation makes a judgment about a document or product
• A review is a written evaluation or judgment of that document or product

Reviews Are Part Of Modern Life

• Shopping online would not be the same without reviews.
• Products and services are evaluated by many different consumers
• They are consulted by potential consumers before they decide to purchase the service or product

Website or Document

• Website or document also can be a product or service
• Solid website or document that has been vetted for research purposes is much more valued than one that has gone without a review or, worse yet, has been rated poorly

Examples

• Everyone has consulted a review at some point, or perhaps even posted one on a website
• After viewing a movie, the viewer may have a strong opinion about the mediocre plot twist at the end and feel justified giving his or her opinion about the movie to friends and family

Our Review

• Goes beyond personal opinion
• Involves having a set of criteria that is applied to each website one evaluates or reviews
• Either the website or document will meet this criteria or it will not
• Based upon this criteria, chosen by the writer/reviewer, the evaluator will decide if it a useful product.

Reviews In Everyday Life

• Personal reviews from friends and family about the new Italian restaurant in town to academic reviews of journal articles and books, reviews are something upon which everyone relies
• Doctors’ quality of care, the best handyman in town, the worst car-repair shop all of these evaluations are passed around from friend to friend or online

Academic Reviews

• Generally of books in a specific field of study, are used to help evaluate new work or knowledge.
• evaluates its worth in the field. It answers inherent questions such as the following: -Does it contribute to the scope of knowledge in the field of study? -Does it bring up a new point that -previously has not been discussed? -Who is the audience for this book?

Defining Criteria or Criterion

• Refers to a standard, or standards, upon which a judgment may be decided

Common Criterion for a Website is Currency

• Refers to whether the website is up-to-date
• Would not necessarily want to base research upon a website that was last updated in 1999 because the information could be very outdated
• Cause a student researcher to dismiss the information, knowing that it is potentially outdated

Criteria

• Help viewers evaluate a website or document by giving them guidelines by which to understand whether the material contained in the website or document is of value

Using a website or document that is of value and not biased or outdated, among other criteria
helps with learning and utilizing the best information available

Quick Review

• What is the difference between a review and an evaluation?
• What are the different types of reviews? Describe each briefly.
• What is the benefit to using criteria for evaluating a website?

Evaluating Websites

Authority

• Refers to the qualifications of the website or document
• Who authored the website? Can the author be contacted? Does the person/people who wrote the website have the proper credibility to write about this topic?

Accuracy

• Refers to how is the website or document correct
• Who is the publisher, and is it different from the webmaster (the person who organized and/or maintains the site)? What is the website’s URL domain extension (e.g., .com, .gov, .org)? What institution publishes it? Are the publisher’s qualifications listed?

Objectivity

• Refers not only to the goals and objectives of the site or document, but also to whether or not it is biased
• What goals and objectives does this product meet? Is the information given in detail? Does the author put forth any opinions, or is the website a cover for a lot of advertising, either a product or a certain viewpoint?

Currency

• Refers to how timely is the site
• When was the content on the website written and put on the Web? Has it been updated, and if so, when? Are the links live or are they dead links that lead to nothing?

Coverage

• Refers to how well the information is presented
• Do the provided links match the content of the page and are they evaluated as well? Is the amount of text balanced with the amount of images? Are there correct citations given for the information presented on the page? (Grand Canyon University, n.d.)

Group Activity

1. Think of the worst movie you have ever seen.
2. Name the genre of movie (some choices are film noir, romance, action, adventure, horror, and comedy)
3. List a minimum of five common elements of that type of movie. Ex. of one of those elements might be that a comedic movie should elicit laughs.
4. Go through your list, and cross out the elements that the worst movie did not include. Ex. your comedy movie may not have made anyone in the theater laugh.
5. How many of the common elements did your movie miss? Do you think this had anything to do with making it an unenjoyable movie? Formulate a response in 100-150 words that discusses how missing or including those elements made the movie a poor one.

References

• Writing with a purpose chapter 9 GCU