Search strategies materials

[ElizabethECharl]

On a regular basis I need to provide additional information to learners on search strategies, outside of just using Google.  So I thought I would use this opportunity to see what else is available that I could cite and or recommend and ease the transition into one of the stages of searching for materials.  That being the case I decided to focus on and search for ‘Boolean operators‘ in one or two of the listed resources.  I had a look at both Merlot and Jorum as I hadn’t used these before – the others were not appropriate or did not provide any resources that I could use straight away with a learner.

How easy was it to find a relevant resource?

Merlot – was fairly easy to use and I found 4 relevant resources, two of which I would consider using the first more likely than the second:  Advanced Online Searching: OLLIE Search Strategies tutorial  a Flash presentation from California State University San Bernardino; and Search smarter, search faster a funny and engaging tutorial with dinosaur toys from the Sydney University.

Jorum – was fairly easy but out of 800+ hits only this one was exactly on the money Boolean searching by Lewis Jones.

How could you incorporate this resource into your professional practice?

Merlot – They could be incorporated into my main teaching session with a minor tweak or two as well as being used as supplementary materials that I could provide for my learners. They can be used to augment our research skills pages providing a different teaching/learning style to widen the range of learners’ preferences.

Jorum – This could be incorporated into my teaching session as a primary resource and or as study skills and research skills – the balance is spot on.

In contrast to the ‘official’ materials I then looked on YouTube as TED yielded very little for materials on Boolean operators. It was fairly straightforward to find a large number of resources of varying quality. There were a number that I would consider incorporating into my teaching, and some would be useful to add as supplementary materials and to study skills pages: example one and example two.

Which source did you find more useful (and why) – the ‘official’ resource bank or the open search?

The official resources appeals to me because of the thoroughness and the manner in which the topic has been approached and I know it will be useful.  However I can see how if I was a different type of learner and was pressed for time I might prefer to go with the briefer but more immediate YouTube offerings.  With regard to the prefered resources there are no restrictions to access.  There is no login password required or copyright issues except the need to attribute and cite the content.  In this instance I think the majority of my learners would agree that the resources that I have chosen is accessible. The approach is not overtly technical and all provide scaffolding to this topic, good examples of how the concepts works and might be applied. No additional expertise is required to access the resources.
What I learnt from this exercise is that I should explore more often such resources on a regular basis just to see how others are teaching the same topics and to seriously consider using and or remixing some of the exisiting content. If nothing else I am now clearer about what they have to offer and can confidently refer learners should it be necessary.

[PeterHartley]

Maybe involving your learners in the regular exploration and dissemination would be a productive teaching strategy?

This is one of the things that seems to be useful in the Dynamic Learning Maps project at Newcastle which might interest you.

Best wishes

Peter

 

[ElizabethECharl]

Peter – an excellent suggestion and a good way for the learners to be introduced and become familiar with the resource and for me to keep up to date with the content.    I will have a look at the Dynamic Learning Map project.

[GrahamRGibbs]

Elizabeth,

I suspect there is more relevant material on YouTube than you found. In my experience it is very important  when uploading videos to YouTube to make sure the description, title and meta data are done properly and informatively. As there are now lots of universities putting up materials on YouTube to support student learning and research, I would guess there there will be videos on using bibliographic search tools. But not everyone is good at writing metadata and those putting up materials from universities are not to be relied on.

I notice you didn’t use Google. I just did a quick Google search using the search string “YouTube boolean search” and found loads of relevant videos.

The other thing you find now is that creators of video material may have their own websites where, if you know to look there, you can find the resources, but they also put the same videos on YouTube too. In fact, I now do this the other way round. Putting stuff on YouTube is so easy I do this first and then embed the video in my website or in the VLE pages I run.

[ElizabethECharl]

Graham – thank you for raising the vexed and very real issue of the inconsistency of metadata being added to items. For although most people do add tags these tend to vary from item to item.  As I mentioned in my post I was very impressed at the amount of resources that I found on YouTube. Also I know some of my colleagues use these as I have received call out requests for alternative items when a selected item is suddenly no longer available. Regarding using Google in this instance I chose not to use it as I wanted to test the effectiveness of the individual resources’ search mechanism.   At our institution the intention is to encourage all content from staff and in the near future students to be uploaded into a consortia cloud based provision and that will then plug into Moodle.  It is good to know that there is such good quality teaching resources out there.

[James Kerr]

Google is such a powerful “weapon” for searches, but it really is a shotgun approach.  Google Scholar helps narrow to reliable, primary resources, but it still casts a wide net.  To be able to use Google for quality search results, one must possess excellent searching skills, identification skills, and patience.  Younger learners do not always have that mix.

Also frequently forgotten is that Google is not unbiased or completely objective; they are a business, and they do make money by promoting results.  The impact of this will vary based on the content area being searched, but will impact nonetheless.

The advantage of using other OER aggregators is that it effectively takes the first layer of searching and creates a filter through which the results are passed.

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