I have attached the file that has the questions for directions for step one 

REL 150 Spring2016

Directions for Assessment of a Website: STEP ONE

Step One of the Website Assessment is worth 15 points. It is due by Wednesday, October 5, 11:59pmin BbLearn. Late submissions will be accepted but only as a prerequisite to complete Steps 2 and 3 and earn those other points. Remember, this is only step one of a three-step assignment, so it is very important that you complete this assignment. If you skip a step, it will not be possible for you to complete the next step of the assignment.

Over the course of this semester, you will assess the reliability of a website which purports to offer accurate information on one of the religions studied in the course.

Directions for Step One

Choose a website which claims to provide accurate information on one of the religions studied in the course. You may not use any online encyclopedias or dictionaries (including Wikipedia.com, Religionfacts.com, etc. You may use a website that is a good source of information or a bad source of information for this assignment. You will be working with the same website for the entire semester, so make sure you choose one both want to work with and you feel comfortable working with. Once you have chosen a website, find one particular article or page on that website you would like to directly worth, then answer the following questions:

1.        What is the name of the website you have chosen and what kind of publisher (be as specific as possible) is behind the site: academic? popular? blog? news agency? Business? Non-profit? How were you able to determine this information? Did you have to really search for this information or was it easy to find?

1.       Remember, in order to discover this information, you may need to “deconstruct” the URL address. For example, if you take were to try to discover the publisher behind the website:http://nau.edu/CAL/CCS/News-Research/ , you could slowly deconstruct it by taking out the words between the slashes. So, by doing this you would discover that http://nau.edu/CAL/CCS/ takes you to the Department of Comparative Cultural Studies. http://nau.edu/CAL/ takes you to the College of Arts and Letters. And finally http://nau.edu/ takes you to the home page of Northern Arizona University.

2.       What is the purpose of the website? In order to answer this question, choose the option below which you believe best describes the purpose of the website and explain why you believe this option best explains the purpose of the website:

o    Express Individual Opinions—Examples of this motive include websites or blogs run by individuals. The educational background and reliability of these individuals hugely varies. The author may be trying to convey their personal knowledge about a topic, critique or condemn certain perspectives, or advocate for their opinion on subjects.

o    To Inform— Examples of this motive include sites sponsored by government agencies and sites that end in .edu or .gov. These sites are generally considered to have the least bias and are sponsored by educational or governmental institutions.

o    To Advocate— These include sites ending in .org. and are generally sponsored by non-profit organizations, religious organizations, political parties and self-help groups. Sponsorship for these sites generally arises by an organization that wishes to provide information for the purpose of influencing or persuading the viewers to share its particular perspective or opinion.

o    To Sell— Examples of these sites include amazon.com, ebay.com, etc.

o    To Provide News— The motive behind these sites is to provide information on current events and issues.

o    Mixed— Some sites may have multiple purposes as described in the options above. For example, some sites attempt to appear as informational when they actually present personal opinions or intend to sell or advocate something.

3.       Who is the author or authors of the particular page or article you chose?

·         If you are not able to determine the author(s) of the page, you should explain what you did to attempt to find out this information and why you were not able to determine this information despite your best efforts. For example, did you thoroughly investigate other links on the website to try to discover the author? Did you try a Google search? Did you email the maker of this website to discover this information?

·         If you are able to determine the author, you should discuss:

o    (1) Who did you determine the author to be and how did you find out this information? For example, was information about the author readily available and easy to find? Or did you have to really search the broader content of the website to determine this information? Or did you have to do a Google search to discover this?

o    (2) What do you know about the author(s) and how did you discover this information?

§   Is he or she a trained and credible expert on the religion? As an expert, does he or she have publications in peer reviewed (scholarly) publications? If an author does not have publications in a peer-reviewed journal, this does not imply that he or she is not an expert on the subject with accurate information, but it does mean that his or her research has not yet undergone a professional “test” through which other scholars in the same field have verified the quality of the author’s knowledge, research, and authority.

§  Is the author a religious practitioner?

§  Is the author a journalist?

§  Or if none of the above applies to the author, how would you best describe the background of the author?

4.       Utilizing the answers you provided to questions 1-3, why do you think it is important to determine the publisher of a website, the purpose of a website, and the identity and qualifications of any authors in determining the reliability of a website? This last question should fill at least ½ page.

This assignment should be typed in paragraph form, double-spaced, 1-inch margins, Times New Roman font size 12, and be between 350-450 words. You should include the word count on the lower right corner of the last page.This assignment must answer the above 4 questions and the answers to these questions should be clearly organized in your essay. While certain answers for questions 1-3 will require a whole paragraph to answer, based on the information the website does or does not contain, the paragraphs for each answer will vary in length and you may discover that certain questions do not require an entire paragraph to answer due to lack of information provided by the site.Keep in mind that the assignment should be at least 350 words, so if a particular question does not require a lengthy answer, you should spend more time on another question. Please note that question 4 should beat least ½ page in length and it should incorporate your answers to the other questions.

Lastly, you need to include a bibliography with this assignment, which includes the name of the website and the full URL address of the website you assessed, along with other bibliographic information as required by MLA or Chicago format. Please see the link which is posted to BbLearn on how to properly cite a website in a MLA or Chicago style formatted bibliography.