If the web site is not being utilized then I am not doing my job to make this a resource stop the students and teachers should be using. I plan to conduct post research interviews with both the teachers and the students to make sure the information they find on the site is helpful and easy to find as they pursue their research projects. I also believe the most powerful form of evaluation is observation; are they using the site, are they having problems with navigation, do they enjoy using the site, are there additional items they would like to see on the site, do they become frustrated while using the site.
Once the site is up and running on the internet, I hope to create a survey for the parents and the students to see if they are using the site at home as they work on their research projects and if the parents use the site to look at examples of student projects.
I'm also curious to field test the site with a class. We have 15 computers in the library, if all 15 are using the same web page does the load time increase.
I have already conducted several formative evaluation with students, parents and teachers to make sure they understood the navigation. I gave them a list of task to complete and observed where they would go to find the information. This information has already lead to some redesigning of pages. What made sense to me was not making sense to them.