Web site evaluation against a set of website award criteria involves what your will find below. Which is not an all inclusive skill set.

Reliability of Information: There are three traditional ways in which information gets filtered. First, if it is written and/or issued by an authoritative source such as the federal government or a reliable organization, it is generally accepted at face value as having validity. Second, if it is authenticated as part of an editorial or peer review process by a publisher, it is generally accepted as reliable. Third, if it is evaluated by experts, reviewers, or subject specialists/librarians as part of collection development, it is generally accepted as authoritative.

While all three methods may lead to the same information, there is a tendency to assume that information turned up via a search engine has somehow been evaluated as part of the selection process. (Many end users, by the way, don't even realize that each search engine searches its own database of selective citations or links, and not the entire Internet.)

Critical Thinking: Critical thinking offers an alternative to a drift toward postmodern relativism, by emphasizing that we can "distinguish between facts and opinions or personal feelings, judgments and inferences, inductive and deductive arguments, and the objective and subjective." {MCC General Education Initiatives} Critical thinking encourages us to recognize that our "rationally justifiable confidence" in a claim can span a wide range, from feelings to fact and everything in between. Three Categories of Questions explains why, because we don't recognize questions involving "reasoned judgment" (which are neither fact nor opinion), we may "fail to see the difference between offering legitimate reasons and evidence in support of a view and simply asserting the view as true."

Writing Skills: The exercise of writing is a learning process. Writing facilitates your ability to recognize instances of faulty thinking, such as inconsistencies, and aids in synthesis. As Francis Bacon once said, “Reading maketh a full man, conference [i.e., discussion] a ready man, and writing an exact man.” A reasonable paraphrase of Bacon is that your knowledge can be more precisely and effectively developed through writing than through either reading or discussion alone.