The Research Process:
For this required project, your task is to locate and evaluate a Web site related to employment assistance. Follow these steps to prepare your evaluation, making notes on your search strategies and decisions as you go.
1. Choose a search engine and explain why you chose it. Then describe your search strategy, such as the key words you used to locate Web sites related to employment. You might begin with information from a newspaper article, a career center help sheet, or a commercial site selling applicable software. Search for a site you haven’t used or heard of that has more than one page and that contains links to other employment-related Web sites.
Here are topic suggestions for beginning your search:
• Preparing for a job interview
• Job placement providers
• Resume writing
• Steps to applying for a job
• Making a career change
2. Investigate at least four different sites before making your choice. Explain why you discarded the three (and include those sites) and why you picked the one site on which you focus. The site you choose may be very good or quite awful, but it should contain something that piques your interest enough to make you want to write about it. Perhaps it offers just the job-search information you were looking for, or you found it to be one of the most difficult sites you’ve ever navigated.
3. Evaluate and analyze your chosen site according to the criteria given in the study unit for evaluating Web sites and in the grading criteria that follow. The sample evaluation of Penn Foster’s site provides a general idea of the areas to cover and the way to evaluate those areas.
Your evaluation, however, must include more specific information and personal commentary. Ask yourself questions about each aspect covered in the study unit. For example, is the site current? Is the page layout effective? What features does it include?
4. As you write your evaluation, use the pronoun I to describe your experiences searching for and using the site. At the end, in one paragraph, you’ll summarize your evaluation by expressing your overall opinions of the site and the reasons you feel that way. Arrange
your findings and analysis according to the following headings:
Web site address (URL) and complete name
Search Strategy
Sponsor and Purpose
Content and Page Layout/Features
Overall Evaluation
5. After preparing a rough draft of your work, read the evaluation criteria once again and revise your work carefully, correcting any errors you may find. Make sure to spell-check and grammar-check your work, too. You must use the correct conventions of standard written American English.
6. Type your evaluation in Times New Roman, font size 12. Double-space your pages (the option is usually found on the toolbar or in the Format/Paragraph menu of your word processor). Indent the first line of new paragraphs but don’t skip additional lines beyond the automatic double-spacing.