What's a Recommended resources page?

A Recommended Resources (or "Recommendations") page showcases your authority in curating high quality content that's been created by others. Often, it keeps visitors coming back, because you share and explain "gems" to them. 

If you're in Karen's class, you'll share and briefly explain content from our course that you think others should know about - a curated collection of your favourite content to recommend to your audience. 

Must Haves

The Recommended Resources assignment (due mid-way through the semester) only needs to include one recommendation of a course learning material if you're in my class. Later, for the E-portfolio Final assignment, there must be two recommendations of our course learning materials.

The Recommended Resources webpage must

1. Orient your audience to the webpage – tell them what’s below;

Each recommendation of a course learning material must:

1. provide the origins and features of the course learning material with: 

a. its full title, hyperlinked to the source, and 

b. its author/creator – name of the individual or organization 

c. what it is (is it a video? book chapter? podcast? research paper?), and 

d. its size (e.g., "in this 12-minute video" or "this 21-page book chapter")

2. briefly describe its key content, highlighting what will be most important to the audience, and most importantly,

3. explain its value - why should the audience bother checking it out?

Why it matters

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!

Oh, and I return to that person's website regularly. They're now "authoritative" and of value to me and my learning.

Some Examples

• The Resources page of the Downey & Chanie Wenjack Fund site reflects its purpose: awareness, education, and action to improve the lives of First Nations people in Canada. The page not only curates their recommended resources into categories, but they start off with guidance for their audience on selecting resources. This aligns 100% with their purpose. 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. The difference is with the word recommended.

You do not have to provide a separate page of References for all of the sources you cite throughout your e-portfolio. To be clear, you must cite and the source must be available to your audience, but how you do so is up to you.

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!