What's a Recommended resources page?

A Recommended Resources (or "Recommendations") page showcases your authority in curating high quality content. Often, it keeps visitors coming back, because you share and explain "gems" to them. For our assignment, you'll 

1. briefly describe each resource (from our course materials) that you're sharing, and 

2. explain why you're recommending it.

When I find a well-designed Recommendations page, it's like I hit the jackpot! Someone else has done all the work of evaluating the resource and then explaining to me why it's valuable!

In this section, you'll share and briefly explain content from our course that you think others should know about - a collection of your favourite content to recommend to your audience. 

One example is from the Downey & Chanie Wenjack Fund site. Notice how they provide the name and link to the resource and a quick, clear recommendation.

Another great example is Pooja Agarwal's RetrievalPractice.org site. If you hover your cursor over "Resources" you'll see she has recommendations under 5 different categories! I go to her site regularly... which is what you want your audience to do. The Recommended Resources page gives people another reason to visit your e-portfolio.

Is this the same as References?

No.

References tell your visitor where to find the source(s) you use in your work (e.g., in a blog post, infographic). You'll use in-text citations for all of your sources. Because you're creating for the Internet, and not an academic paper, you have more freedom in terms of how to cite your sources and provide references.

This HubSpot article, How to cite sources? (2023) is detailed and valuable.

If you're not sure, just follow the American Psychological Association (APA) guidelines and include the references on the same page where the citation happens (instead of one dedicated page to all references of sources used throughout the e-portfolio).

What to keep in mind

• Include Recommended Resources from our course, as a priority. It's required. Anything extra is up to you.

• This isn't a content dump or a simple a list of stuff. The "recommended" part of this page is your "value added" - your quick description of the resource and explanation about why it's valuable.

• For all content - images, text, video, etc. follow Information Design Basics as well as these tips to design your information with the audience in mind!