ASSESSMENT OF ACADEMIC WEBSITES

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ASSESSMENT OF ACADEMIC WEBSITES

• Asad Khailany , Eastern Michigan U
• Michael Sheppard Eastern Michigan U
• Abhijit Modak , Eastern Michigan U
• Wafa Khorsheed, Eastern Michigan U

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ABTSTRACT

• Currently there are no standard metrics to
  measure the effectiveness of academic web sites.
  In this paper we are recommending 25 metrics
  divided into 5 different categories to measure
  and make academic web sites more effective and
  productive to professors, to students, and to
  public. We have used the proposed metrics to
  evaluate the websites of 40 professors to provide

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INTRODUCTION

• Most of faculty members and students heavily
  utilize the Internet for research, news,
  communication and entertainment.
• Internet provides many opportunities for
  professors to reach out and engage students in an
  interactive and non-threatening medium of
  communication.
• Variety of web design tools such as WYSWIG (What
  You See What You Get) HTML editors, Flash, Dream
  Weaver, XML, Perl, Microsoft Word and many others
  are available to design dynamic web pages .
• There no many guidelines to design web effective
  academic websites.
• Currently there are no standard metrics for the
  measurement of the quality of the academic web
  sites .

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Seven Principles

• Chickering and Gamson proposed the following 7
  principles for Good Practice in Undergraduate
  Education
• 1. Good practice encourages contact between
  students and faculty.
• 2. Good practice develops reciprocity and
  cooperation among students.
• 3. Good practice encourages active learning.
• 4. Good practice gives prompt feedback.
• 5. Good practice emphasizes time on task.
• 6.Good practice communicates high expectations.
• 7. Good practice respects diverse talents and
  ways of learning.

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Seven Princples
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• Chickering and Gamson did not proposed any
  technique or method to achieve their seven
  principles.
• We believe todays technology provide good
  opportunities for achieving the above principles
  via good quality effective academic websites. For
  that we have taken these principles in
  consideration, combined them with good web design
  practices, and incorporated them into a group of
  metrics that can be applied to measure the
  effectiveness of academic web sites.

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Proposed Metrics

• We are proposing 25 metrics, grouped into
  following 5 categories
• 1. First Impressions pertain to site features
  and observations that a visitor would note within
  the first few moments they have loaded the site.
  Such metrics pertain to whether there is readily
  available contact information, a consistent
  design throughout, download time, aesthetics or
  look and feel and whether the purpose of the
  site is clear. When a visitor has passed a
  judgment on these metrics, they will have formed
  a definite opinion of the site before even
  viewing the sites contents. While the opinion
  may be a strong positive or negative one, it is
  not irreversible. So no extra weighting is given
  to this category that would make it count more
  than the others. The next proposed category is
•  

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FIRST IMPRESSION category

• Following are the proposed metrics for FIRST
  IMPRESSION category
• 1. The portal quality of the web site is
  good.
• 2. The site has essential contact information
  like email, phone/fax  numbers.
• 3. The design is consistent (headers,
  footers, navigation bar, etc.)
• 4. Download time is short
• 5. It has a good look and feel Readability,
  Attractiveness
• 6. The purpose of the site is clear? Is it
  obvious who owns this site?

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Proposed Metrics
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• 2. Navigation The three metrics proposed for
  this category have fairly obvious intents. They
  are centered on two areas of concern that are
  universal to all websites, not just academic
  ones Do the internal and external links work? Is
  there a map that can sufficiently direct a
  visitor to the content they are looking for? The
  proposed metrics for this category are 1.The
  links all work 2. There are links to the home
  page on every page
• 3. There is a comprehensive site map

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Proposed Metrics
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• 3. Content The metrics of this catagory have
  the closest correlation with Chickering and
  Gamsons Seven Principles. They cover a wide
  range of topics and attempt to capture not only
  individual features of the site but also create a
  sense of the total dynamic experience for a
  visitor. After evaluating the site based on the
  metrics in category Content, the evaluator should
  have a sense of its relevancy to a students
  course work, how engaging the site is, the level
  of interactivity it promotes, and how up-to-date
  is the content that is provided.

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CONTENT category
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• Following are the proposed metrics for CONTENT
  category
• 1. It has bulletins announcements
• 2. There is class meeting information date,
  time, location, agenda
• 3. Home works and assignments are posted
• 4. The site contains tutorials for related
  materials to your course
• 5.The site contains the solutions for past exams
• 6. The site has a syllabus. The syllabus
  contains the hot links
• 7. There are handouts posted on the web site. The
  handouts make sense within
• the context of the course.
• 8. There is personal information about the author
  of the site
• 9. The page is dated and current
• 10. The site uses valuable graphics, animation or
  sound
• 11. Level of interaction is high (i.e. exercises,
  bulletin board feature, etc.)
• 12. There are synchronous collaborative
  communications tools for real-time
• interaction(ie. chat functionality)
• 13. There are asynchronous collaborative
  communications tools (i.e threaded
• discussion feature)

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Proposed Metrics
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• 4. Findability The fourth proposed category
  measures how easily a viewer can locate the web
  site from a search engine. The metrics in
  Findability ask the evaluator to check for
  relevant keywords in the header of the HTML code.
  It also asks the evaluator to assess whether
  they feel the URL path is simple and easy to
  remember. Not only is Findability concerned with
  whether a visitor can easily find a professors
  homepage but whether they can find their way to
  specific content within the site from outside the
  site. This is the intent in the metric It does
  NOT use frames. Though frames can be a
  convenient way for the developer to create a
  clean uniform site, they also can present the
  would-be visitor some daunting challenges as they
  try to locate and bookmark a specific page on the
  professors site.

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Findability category
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• Following are the proposed metrics for
  Findability category
• It uses intuitive keywords.
• It does not use frames.
• 3. The URL is intuitive.

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Proposed Metrics
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• 5. Compatibility This category is the most
  self-evident of the five metric categories. The
  effort behind this category is aimed at
  establishing whether the site provides enough
  backward compatibility with older browsers.
  Following are the proposed metrics for this
  category
• 1. Internet Explorer 4.0 and up 2. Netscape 5.0
  and up
• The proposed metrics attempt channel those
  seven principles specifically to the online
  presence professors have built to support their
  classroom teaching. Some of the metrics in our
  evaluation are articulated to directly support
  one or more of the seven principles.

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USING PROPOSED METRICS

• We used the proposed metrics to evaluate the
  quality of the websites of 40 professors from
  different colleges and universities. The web
  sites studied achieved an average rating of 2.59
  out of 4.00 or 64.70 effective. The median score
  was 2.65 out of 4.00 or 66.20. Based on our
  analysis of individual characteristics of each
  web site, we concluded that a web site might be
  considered successful by achieving an average
  score of 3.00 out of 4.00 in each of the main
  categories.

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USING PROPOSED METRICS
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• The web sites generally scored highly on the
  following metrics
•    The site has essential contact information
  like email, phone/fax
• numbers.
•     Download time is short
•     The purpose of the site is clear. Is it
  obvious who owns the site?
• The web sites scored weak on the following
  metrics
•     The portal quality of the web site is good.
•     There is a comprehensive site map.
•    There are asynchronous collaborative
  communications tools (i.e. threaded discussion
  feature)
•     There are synchronous collaborative
  communications tools for real-time interaction
  (i.e. chat functionality)
•      Level of interaction is high (i.e.
  exercises, bulletin board feature, etc.)

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CONLUSION

• By improving their web sites around these issues,
  professors can better engage and maintain the
  students attention.
• Unless the portal quality is improved and a
  comprehensive sitemap is provided, the students
  may spend too much time trying to find relevant
  information, which can cause the student to
  discount the value of the site as a learning
  tool.
• The use of synchronous communication tools, such
  as live chat, and asynchronous collaborative
  communications tools, such as the threaded
  discussion feature, are important in order to
  develop reciprocity and cooperation among
  students and encourage contact between students
  and faculty.
•   

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CONLUSION
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•   The use of synchronous communication tools
  combined with a high level of interaction through
  exercises, bulletin boards, etc., would achieve
  the Chickering and Gamson principles of time on
  task, active learning, and prompt feedback.
•  The matrix is a flexible tool that allows a
  professor to use it in a manner that meets their
  needs. For example, a professor may elect to use
  it as a personal tool where they can rate the
  effectiveness of their own site. Others may
  elect to use it as part of an instructor-lead
  evaluation, where they ask their students for
  feedback on their web site
•  It is the goal of every educator to build an
  effective, and useful website.. With our proposed
  metrics educators can effectively, analyze, and
  improve the quality of their web sites. We used
  these metrics to evaluate the websites of 40
  professors. Websites cannot be regarded one-shot
  deals that can be developed and not updated. It
  must be continuously evaluated and updates. Our
  metric ease such evaluations and updates.
  Complete research results provided in the
  appendix