Yippee!

This little lamb is jumping for joy because I've finished writing my first assignment for the semester. I've finished writing it, but I haven't submitted it yet because I still need to make sure I'm happy with it. I've gone a little left of centre with it, I'm either a genius or heading for a very disappointing mark, I'm not sure which.

The assignment required me to critically evaluate two sets of website evaluation criteria. The problem I had was that there was so much similarity between different sets of criteria. Unless I purposely chose a really hopeless set of criteria so that I had a lot of things to criticise, I found I was saying pretty much the same thing about both sets of criteria. Very boring. Now you may be thinking that there's nothing wrong with an academic paper being boring! But by boring, I mean repetitive, and not really allowing me to demonstrate much critical thinking.

So what did I do? I found an interesting article in my pile of academic reading that described a different approach to evaluating websites. Instead of using a checklist of criteria, this method evaluates the website by observing use of it in practice. So I wrote about one 'regular' set of criteria, and also this other approach.

So what will the marker think about this turn of events? Maybe something like, "Wow, this student is exceptional! She has gone 'above and beyond' when thinking about this subject!". Or maybe something like, "Oh dear, this student has let herself down by straying from the expectations." I'm voting for number one!

The second part of the assignment required me to actually undertake an evaluation of four websites, two using my first criteria and two using my second. So that part won't be quite what they're expecting either. Part of me is happy with what I've written, and happy to stand out from the crowd. The other part is thinking, 'Oh no, what have I done???".

I'll keep you posted....