Xavier University Library: 26 Steps to Information Fluency: Step 21: Finding Websites

You may recall there is an Xtreme Subject Guide for every academic program at Xavier. Each one of the Xtreme Subject Guides has a separate page that lists important, useful and reliable websites. Librarian subject specialists selected these websites based on evaluation criteria. You need to be able to evaluate websites, too. This step will provide the help and tools you need do this. To satisfy this step complete the following tasks:

Complete the Evaluating Internet Resources tutorial in xu.tutor.
There is a quiz at the end of this tutorial. Follow these instructions for the quiz:
1. Enter your name in the Name textbox.
2. Enter your Xavier email address in the Email textbox.
3. Accept the default No Instructor in the Class selectbox.
4. Complete the quiz.
5. Click the Score button at the end of the quiz.Your quiz will redisplay showing your score as well as your correct and incorrect answers. You need to achieve 80% or better on each of your quizzes. If your score is under 80% review the pages of the tutorial that address the questions you answered incorrectly and take the quiz again.
6. Once you have a quiz that is 80% or better do one of the following:
  1. Print two copies: one for your professor as proof of completing this step and one for your records. You may get asked to take these tutorials again for another class and these quizzes provide the proof you need to get out of taking the tutorials again.
  2. Highlight the entire quiz, including your name and score at the top of the page. Then copy and paste it into a new entry for your e-portfolio (Expo Directory) in Blackboard. If you do not remember how to do this review these e-portfolio instructions.
Go to the library's homepage at http://www.xavier.edu/library/
Under the Websites tab, in the Quick Links section, click Xtreme Subject Guides.
Click the down arrow in the Select an Academic Program textbox and select a program that provides the focus for one of your classes.
The resulting Xtreme Subject Guide will contain a Internet guide.
Click the Internet guide to see the list of reliable websites.
Select one of these websites.
Go to Search Engines and Web Directories.
Find your favorite search engine or one that you have not used before.
Using the search engine, locate a website whose reliability is questionable.
Print the Criteria for Evaluating Websites.
Create a new entry for your e-portfolio (Expo Directory) in Blackboard.
In the new entry type an evaluation of the two website usings the criteria you printed.