Peer Review

The 1997 Census of Manufacturers

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Overall Rating:

Content Quality:

Effectiveness:

Ease of Use:

Overview:: The website provides access to national, state, counties and metro data, and
several industries derived from the Census of Manufacturers database.
Type of Material:: secondary industry data source
Identify Major Learning Goals:: As a data
reference source, the site could be used as a module for teaching students how
to access and make use of secondary data sources

Rating:
Strengths:: The assignment posted on MERLOT contains learning objectives and instructions
for making use of the site.
Concerns:: However, for the purposes of teaching and learning,
the learning assignment currently attached to this stand-alone site is not all that
engaging or visually appealing. Use if fairly limited to teaching students how to
access and find government secondary sources. The module could be improved
by providing a more authentic, real world problem and context for the assignment.
Doing so would make students more motivated and interested in making use of
the site. Currently, learning outcomes are not all that robust, except for the
competency in accessing secondary sources.

Rating:
Strengths:: The module has potential of being
used in a variety of ways as a means of teaching students how to access and
make use of secondary data sources.
Concerns:: While the usability of the site is in itself good, usability is mainly as a secondary
industry data source; or, it could be used to teach how to use such a data source
rather than using the data in it. Right now, it appears to be limited in terms of the
number of different industry reports available.

Rating:
Strengths:: Usability of the site is good.
Concerns:: Currently use is limited to accessing
information, and to an extracting a fairly narrow range of data necessary to
complete a data-driven assignment.