Workshop on Quality and Authenticity of Web Resources

Hello Readers !

On 19th November 2019, a workshop with the title, "Quality and Authenticity of Web Resources" was organised at the department of English M.K. Bhavnagar University. The head of the department, Dr. Dilip Barad, conducted the workshop and introduced students a new method to check the reliability of web resources and digital content. The aim of the workshop was to enable students to check the authenticity of web resources and evaluate them accordingly. SEER means Source Educational Evaluation Rubric.

SEER - Source Educational Evaluation Rubric

When assigned to prepare a written research paper, PhD theses or assignments, many students, PG and research scholars follow the popular method of CCP, which is Cut Copy, Paste. This practice of taking shortcut to complete the work in a short time, is very much harmful. Many software and online systems are now working for preventing plagiarism and increasing integrity in academic writing. Urkund, Turnitin, Grammarly are online platform for checking the originality of any written document. How can we stop following the blindfolded flow of sheeple ? Nowadays we take much help of internet to search anything related to study. In that way we are too much relying on internet. Have you ever thought that the site you are visiting or the reference you are taking from web resources is authentic or not ? We are least concerned about those things. We just type the keywords on Google and simply copy and paste the reference on our assignment or research paper. Here we will see that how Turnitin rubrics are helpful to evaluate websites and digital resources on the web.

Turnitin, a company, which is to prevent plagiarism and engage students with digital resources. Here is the link of the website. Click Here. The website presents many instant rubrics for evaluation of academic writing and web resources. Here one of those rubrics, named SEER is used.

As the workshop proceeded, students were asked to check the authenticity and reliability of any three websites that they visit very often, using the rubric prepared by the website. The PDF of the rubric can be downloaded from the following link. Readers are free to download the rubric and they can also evaluate the websites on their own. 

https://go.turnitin.com/seer-rubric

Here are the parameters to check web sources and digital content.

Authority - Is the site well regarded, cited, and written by experts in the field ?
Educational Value - Does the site help advance educational goals ?
Intent - Is the site a well-respected source of content intended to inform users ?
Originality - Is the site a source o original content and viewpoints ?
Quality - Is the site highly vetted with good coverage of the topical area ?

Based on the criteria, here are the points to be given from 0 to 4

3.0 - 4.0 : Highly credible, quality sources
2.0 - 3.0 : Credible sources
1.0 - 2.0 : Questionable Sources
0.0 - 1.0 : Unacceptable or inappropriate sources

Here are the websites I've evaluated based on the rubric following the same parameters.

(1) Flipped Learning - Click to visit site

Authority - 3
Educational Value - 2
Intent - 2
Originality - 2
Quality - 3

(2) AksharNaad.com - Click to visit site

Authority - 1
Educational Value - 2
Intent - 2
Originality - 2
Quality - 2

(3) Cliffsnotes.com - Click to visit site

Authority - 3
Educational Value - 3
Intent - 2
Originality - 3
Quality - 3

These are only few examples of evaluation of web sources and websites, but more we put this rubric into practice, more we find genuine and reliable content on the internet. Are you able to find such websites and evaluate them ? if you can, please mention your views in the comment section. If you find this blog helpful, then why to hesitate share this blog ?

The workshop was very fruitful and it helped the students to check the authenticity of web resources. Students became aware about how to use website's content smartly and wisely. I thank our head of the English Department, Dr. Dilip Barad for organizing this fruitful workshop.

Thank You !