Evaluation Essay Prompt

We've worked extensively already in this course with learning how to find information--how to sift through all of the millions of sources out there to find exactly what we're looking for.  Now, it's time to figure out what to do with the information, once we have it in hand.

As you know, online content can be extremely trustworthy, or extremely untrustworthy, or anywhere in between.  It can be difficult to tell which is which at first glance. 

Enter the process of Evaluation.  One way to think about "evaluation" would be to consider it as a method of digging deeply into a subject, asking questions of it, pulling it apart, and reconsidering it in different ways and from different perspectives: in other words, critical thinking. Critical thinkers rarely take anything at face value. Instead, they take time to examine, consider, and reconsider. 

 In this essay, you will be asked to justify an evaluation. It isn't enough to just judge a subject. In order to persuade someone of your judgment, you must justify it (i.e. support it). Simply put, anyone can have an opinion, but the challenge for a critical thinker is to justify his/her opinion. For this assignment, you will choose a subject, examine and evaluate it, come up with a thesis and reasons that support your evaluation, and finally justify it with supporting details.

(photo available https://farm5.static.flickr.com/4061/4695658106_042a83f4f4.jpg Links to an external site.)

HOW WE'LL DO THAT:  

In order to personalize this project, you will select your own website that you will evaluate for this essay.  It can be any site you wish, other than Wikipedia (which we'll study in depth in another assignment).   The website you choose should have content that is intended to help you answer ONE of the following questions, however...

1. Should the Assault Weapons Ban be reenacted into US law?
   
2. Is 21 an appropriate legal drinking age for our country?
3. Should genetically modified food (GMOs) be labeled for consumers?

To be clear, your essay is NOT answering any of the questions above.  Instead, it's evaluating how reliable the website is that you'll find to answer one of these questions.  The goal is to persuade your readers why they should or should not trust this website to help them form their own opinions on the subject matter.

Essay Requirements:

This essay should be at least 750 words (about 3 pages double-spaced). Your essay should also include a title. 

This will be a thesis-driven essay, meaning that your final evaluation will need to include your judgement about how reliable the source is that you've chosen to evaluate.

Finally, this essay will need to include MLA citations (in the form of in-text citations and a Works Cited page) for the website you've selected and outside sources you consult to help you prove your thesis (more on this soon).  It will need to be formatted as an MLA document.

You will need to use at least 2 sources to write this essay: the website that you're evaluating plus at least one additional one that helps you assess the validity of your chosen site.  

(photo available https://farm2.static.flickr.com/1337/5157056203_9e3917c9b8.jpg Links to an external site.)