This document discusses effective ways to appraise web content. It defines appraisal and explains why appraising a site is important to evaluate how well it meets organizational goals and adheres to standards of effectiveness. It recommends measuring effectiveness based on how the content contributes to a learning community and credits contributors. The document outlines goals of empowering people, providing credible research tools, and sharing knowledge. It provides a two-step process for appraisal: 1) planning by identifying attributes to measure like knowledge level, usability, relevance, actionability, and interrelatedness; and 2) creating a system like a Google Docs form to collect data on pages and make improvements based on the findings.

1. Effective Ways to Appraise Web Content ACE/NETC 2.011

2. ap·praise To evaluate, especially in an official capacity. To estimate the quality, amount, size, and other features of; judge.

3. Why Appraise Your Site? Effectiveness Adherence to your organization’s goals.

4. Measure of Effectiveness Content developed becomes part of learning community. Content creators will be credited for their contributions Content contributors should believe in collaborating on content Avoid Duplication of existing content Contributors should strive to understand who their content is for CoP content will need to change and evolve

5. eXtensions Goals Empower people Provide credible, reliable, research-based tools Bestow knowledge

6. Step 1 Planning the Appraisal Process

7. What are You Going to Measure? Create attributes you can use to measure your web pages.

8. eXtension’s Attributes Knowledge Level Usability Relevance Actionability Interrelatedness Differentiation

9. Knowledge Level What level of subject matter knowledge is needed to understand or use this page?

10. Who is Your Intended Audience? Are you putting content up that is hard to grasp? Are the needs of your audience met?

11. Page Usability On the average Web page, users have time to read at most 28% of the words during an average visit; 20% is more likely. -http://www.useit.com/alertbox/percent-text-read.html

12. Enhance the Scan Clear, descriptive headings and subheads Appropriate sentence and paragraph length Use of graphics, bullets, tables, charts, etc., where appropriate Overall readability

13. Relevance Is the content up-to-date and of current interest to its intended audience?

14. In With the New Out With the Old Outdated content takes up valuable space and should be dropped New content keeps the readers interested and coming back for more

15. Actionability Does the page provide a clear next step for its current audience, and does it facilitate that step?

16. Lead that Horse to Water If there is a next step, lead the reader down the path Not all content has a next step

17. Interrelatedness Does this content fit well with, and link to, other CoP content?

18. Why Link? Encourages users to dig deeper in the site Rely on eXtension as an information source

19. Differentiation Does the page fill a unique need, providing information or perspective that is not readily available elsewhere?

20. Re-Inventing the Wheel To link to or not to link to that is the question

21. Other Attributes Depending on an organization’s goals

22. Step 2 Create a System to Collect Data

23. The Hard Way Spend a lot of money and outsource

24. The Easy Way Use Google Docs Create a form to collect data All data will be collected in a spreadsheet Make changes from the data Ask me for my Template

25. eXtensionsSites https://sites.google.com/a/extension.org/acenetc2011/ Make sure you are not already logged into Google

26. High and Low Rated Examples

29. About Neurotoxic Shellfish Poisoning Let’s Rate a Page

31. Rate It The Form

33. Nick Broady nbroady0001@extension.org University of Kentucky