Rubric Assessment & Evaluation

ACADEMIC WEBSITE EVALUATION RUBRIC

(For a Teacher Class Website)

Developer's Name: Mr. Victor Manuel Gayol Fernandez

URL: https://www.liveworksheets.com

Area/Content of Site: An academic website for students, teachers and schools that provides interactive worksheets for all languages and subjects

Purpose: Liveworksheets.com allows members to transform traditional printable worksheets and classwork ( doc, pdf, jpgs) and turn them into interactive online exercises with automatic grading making them 'live'. Students can complete the worksheets online and send (email) their answers to the teacher.  The interactive worksheets utilise the new technologies applied to education, including: sounds, videos, drag and drop exercises, join with arrows, multiple choice and speaking exercises, where the students use their microphones.

Using each of the criteria below, evaluate the usefulness of the web site for teaching and learning. For each dimension in the rubric, select the column that best reflects your opinion and record the total. 

EVALUATION CRITERIA

DIMENSION	1 POOR	2 BELOW AVERAGE	3 AVERAGE	4 ABOVE AVERAGE	5 EXCELLENT	Score
Goal	Goal of this website is unclear and confusing	Conflicting themes make sit’s goals uncertain	Goal is clear but the site contains some unrelated or distracting elements	Clear purpose and goals; but elements seems unnecessary	Goal and purpose of site is clear with no distracting elements	5
User Friendliness	Unwelcoming to users	Does not evolve a welcoming message	Welcomes visitors but does not appear friendly	Welcoming and appears friendly	Exciting, welcoming and very user-friendly	5
Design	Poorly organised, contains obvious errors, loads slowly and difficult to read	Organisation is confusing; There are some errors and load slowly	Organisation is acceptable, no obvious errors, load adequately and easy to read	Good organisation, no errors, load quickly and easy to read	Excellent organisation, free of errors, loads quickly and clearly and all elements are easy to read	5
Navigability	Difficult to find and follow site navigation links	Navigation links visible but somewhat confusing	Navigation links clear and readily available	Navigation link clear and logical; sitemap included	Navigation logical and clear; site map and search engine available	5
Authority	Unclear who is the teacher, and the class the site refers to	Teacher name and contact information included, but insufficient class information	Teacher name and contact information included, and some  class information	Teacher name and contact information included; there is full class information	Teacher provides all necessary information to students, parents and community visitors	5
Content	Content is limited and lack relevance to students and parents	Content appears relevant but quality is limited in student needs	Content is adequate in relevance and quality to meet  student needs	Content is relevant and the quality is sufficient for student needs	Content is on target and provides excellent coverage to meet student needs	5
Dates	No date evident	Sites contains some dates	Site contains both creation and updates information; but there is no date related to class activities	Site contains creation and update information and some dates relating to class activities	Site contains dates for creation, updates and all class activities	5
Links	Few relevant working links	Adequate number of links but many are no longer functional	Sufficient number of links that are all functional	A good variety of useful active links	Links offer connection to a wide variety of excellent sites	1
Handicapped Access	No options available for handicapped	Some pages on the web site offers text-only	Site offers text-only on all pages	Sites offers clear options for handicapped	Site includes handicapped options on all pages and links to support software	3

Extracted from myeducation kit- Teaching and Learning with Technology @2011

Name of Participant: Nichole Ifill

Rating: 39/45       86.6%

Recommendation:

I recommend the Liveworksheets academic website as a very useful tool for teachers and students, as it meaningfully uses technology for creating pedagogical conditions for teaching and learning. 

The purpose of the site 'interactive worksheets for all languages and subjects' is well documented and executed.  Its design is uncomplicated and navigating to the various pages is easy and user-friendly.

The website's primary navigation features are logical and clear and easy to follow.  The site does not display a site map (a blue print of the website that helps search engines find, crawl and index all of the website's content). Nevertheless, site maps are not typically shown to users and are used only for internal planning purposes. 

Assistance in navigating and using the website is provided under categories, including: getting started, teachers, students, community support and contact support. In addition, frequently asked questions with corresponding answers are provided. 

If however, a user or member types a question in the help search engine and the answer is not provided on the website, Liveworksheets Support will email a response. This blogger received a timely response from the Support Team when specific information about the website was queried. 

For all publicly shared interactive worksheets, information on the following is provided: the name of the member who created the worksheet, his/her years of membership, date of creation, age level, level of difficulty, language, main content of the worksheet and related content. 

There is comprehensive content coverage that meets students' individual, group and whole-class needs.  Liveworksheets provides an effective means of teaching at various lesson stages: activation of prior knowledge, presentation and consolidation of new material and control of the achieved results.

Links for the worksheets can be shared and embedded into other online platforms (for example, Google Classroom), thus making them user-friendly, labour saving and easily accessible.  

Most importantly, students are active participants in their learning through completing a variety of tasks, games and assignments, which are created to capture their attention and keep them motivated.  It also allows students to track their progress and identify what they need for further improvement.  

A point that was noted is that the website does not offer links to a wide variety of sites. When this observation was queried, the response received from Liveworksheets Support was that its purpose is to 'provide a place for a community of teachers to share their worksheets.'  

The main shortcoming of this website is in the area of handicap access, as the site does not include handicapped options on the pages and links to support software.  This is one drawback which is recommended that the website addresses.