Searching for high quality information

OPTO20200

Library for Educators

Published in

My Learning Essentials

4 min readAug 20, 2019

Supporting materials

Slides/materials: presentation slides
Online session materials: Mentimeter
Other materials used: N/A

Practicalities

Group: <70
Length: 45 minutes
Room: lecture theatre
Discipline: examples relate to optometry (but can easily be tailored to any group)
Level: UG

Learning outcomes

After engaging with this support, you will be able to:

Distinguish between types of reading for different purposes
Assess how a particular source fits within the wider context of literature and existing knowledge
Identify and use key databases in your discipline
Evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of different search tools
Identify an appropriate tool to use for finding information for your specific purpose
Identify and use relevant specialist information common in your discipline
Identify relevant sources from a list of search results
Develop strategies for assessing the appropriateness of sources to use in your assignments
Discriminate between good-quality academic sources and other sources
Evaluate the strengths of online user-generated content as sources of information

Suggested online resources

Session content

The purpose of this session is introduce students to effective search strategies, key resources for their course and the support available through the My Learning Essentials programme.

Introduction (slides 1-2)

Outline that during the session we will cover the following:

How to access key resources
Searching for information
Evaluating your sources
Skills support from My Learning Essentials

Search strategy: What, Where, How (Slide 3)
Introduce students to the “What, Where and Who” model of searching. Emphasise that taking more time at the planning stage, before you dive into searching, can save you a lot of time in the long run. Explain that we will cover each of these in order during the remainder of the presentation.

What am I looking for? (Slides 4–9)
Use the following hypothetical assignment title as the basis for explaining keywords and synonyms:

Assess the level of compliance with contact lens care among adolescents?

Activity (slides 5–7)

Using mentimeter, ask students to suggest the keywords/phrases in the question, then confirm these using slide 6. Using slide 7, show students how you would combine the key terms in a search string using the search operator AND.

Activity (slides 8–9)

Once the key terms have been identified, ask students to think about the other ways these terms might be described — both synonyms and related ideas. Students enter their ideas via Menti (using a word cloud response). Highlight some of the responses and stress that if a theatre full of students come up with so many ways of describing an idea, thousands of researchers in the field will also describe the idea differently — it is important to think about how others will describe an idea when searching.

Show students a search strategy template (a table in this session, could use a mind map) and advise they take their own question and work through the ‘Planning ahead’ online resource, found in the course Blackboard space.

Where will I look for it? (Slides 10–13)
Highlight where they could look for quality information and introduce subject databases, library search and google scholar. (Slide 11)

Explain what their subject guide is and where they can find it. (Slide 12)
Mention the other services they can access via their subject guides, e.g. referencing and My Learning Essentials. (Slide 13)
Show the tailored list of key databases, a description of each can be found on the subject guides. (Slide 14)

Library search (Slide 15)

Briefly open Library Search and show students the advanced search option and filters on the left hand side e.g. resource type/date range.

Google Scholar (Slide 16)

Briefly demo some of the main features of Google Scholar (FindIT@Manchester, date range filter, quick citations). Then discuss the pros and cons of Google Scholar.

Pros: Google Scholar is good for getting a broad view of what is out there, user friendly, content growing, using FindIt@Manchester can link to full text University of Manchester articles.
Cons: Not all journals are indexed, there can be a 6–12 months delay, the advanced search options limited, does not allow you to narrow your search and not everything on Google is available at the Library.

Evaluating sources of information (Slides 17–18)

Use the example of newspaper article (which erroneously reported that there were only 100 cod left in the North Sea) to highlight why it is important to go to the original source of evidence and critically evaluate the information you use in assignments.

The Telegraph ran the story about looking at data from the International Council for the Exploration of the Sea (ICES). It then asked researchers from the British government's Centre for Environment, Fisheries and Aquaculture Science (Cefas) for help with the numbers. According to Cefas, however, the journalists "misunderstood the data". The Telegraph chose to class an adult cod as aged over 13. But that's not merely an adult cod. It's an ancient cod. Equivalent to being over 100 years old.

Highlight the following points:

Always go to the original source of the data and make your own interpretation
When evaluating a source of information consider why it has been put together and what affect that has on how the information is presented (in the case of the Telegraph article the purpose was to inform a lay audience/entertain whereas the original research would have

The five W’s (Slide 18)

Move on to explain the basic technique for evaluating sources “what, why, where, who, when, how” i.e. the questions which students should apply to each source they come across.

Next steps and further help (Slides 19–21)
Highlight support which is available via drop ins and provide guidance on useful next steps following the presentation. Demonstrate the location of the My Learning Essentials online resources within Blackboard using slide 18, and highlight the most relevant resources to searching for information e.g. “Planning ahead”