Expert Searching with Google and Google Scholar

The first port of call (and often last) in most web searching journeys is the famed Google. In the school library where I occasionally work I often see, to my dismay, students typing their whole research question in the ever obliging Google search bar. In order to really see the benefit of applying expert searching techniques to Google (we’ll look at Google scholar later on in the post) I thought I’d start at the same point as so many of my students (and unfortunately some colleagues) by asking Google a question as if it were a sentient being.

Dear Google,

There were some pretty impressive results from the search above, however if I had solely relied on this method though I would have 142 000 000 results to sift through - take note that in my experience many students stop here, usually after the top three or four results. That is equivalent to 0.000003% of what is available! In a bid to refine these numbers decided to target the key words of my question to make a search string.

With the help of Google’s Search operators and the Youtube video Search smarter, Search faster on The University of Sydney’s YouTube channel (shout out to the ever so generous Tony Szymkowski, a fellow QUT TL student, for sharing this) I was inspired to make full use of Boolean operators AND and OR. 

So looking at my question, "What are the various models of Inquiry Learning and how do they differ?”, I decided to isolate the key words and assign alternate words to use the OR operator with.

Question terms	Inquiry	Learning	Models	Differ
Search Term	inquiry	learning	model	difference
Synonyms/ alternate words	project-based	education	framework	comparison

Take two. 

 ("inquiry Learning" OR "project-based") AND (model OR framework) AND (comparison OR difference) 

A lot less results this time but by including “Project-based” I gathered a whole lot of information examining it’s difference to Problem-based learning - obviously a question which gets asked and answered a lot on the web. But this doesn’t seem to suit the direction of my intended search. So I try again omitting "Project-based".

Take three.

At each step so far using Google I have been able to refine my results. Google also seemed to recognise that I am keen to find quality information and automatically offered Google Scholar articles when I started using the Boolean operators. To be sure this was the case I tried searching 'Inquiry Leaning Models' and '“Inquiry Learning” AND models’, and sure enough Scholar turned up second time around. So, taking the bait, at this point I abandoned asking Google any further questions and switched its more academic sibling Google Scholar. Google Scholar searches scholarly articles and literature in the same way Google searches everything else.

Scholar has delivered me a lot of articles, but significantly less that Google produced. I’m happy with this number, I am not going to refine further using words however I did remove citations later (reducing the hits to 12 700) and tightened the date range to the last 5 years (further reducing hits to 7 950). As I am across the curriculum I don’t have a subject area to further reduce results by, my search is still broad in that aspect. Lastly I add AND ("secondary school" OR "High school”) to my search and retrieve 4 810 results, and I’m spent. I’ll go through this list, until I find some specific models to compare. 

During my first Google Scholar search as I was Scrolling through the list of results I stumbled upon a citation in the results. As searching is rarely linear, I started following breadcrumbs (links) that led me off the path I had set myself on. 

I was intrigued by this listing as it wasn’t a live link… a challenge! I searched for this book on QUT’s Library database, and sadly confirmed my fear that it was indeed a real life “book” and being based in Melbourne I couldn’t just stroll up to the Queensland University of Technology to peruse its pages. Instead of searching local libraries for the book I continued to scroll my database results list - I mean I am interested to see what it says, but the path of least resistance is just re-searching the resources digitally available. And further down the list I found an interesting sounding ebook listed in all it's digital glory - Collaborative models for librarian and teacher partnerships. Why am I bothering to tell you all this? Well reading through the chapter titles in this book I came across this Chapter 11 “Need to Know”: Partnerships in Project-Based Learning by Rhonda Huisman. And it’s the abstract for this chapter that got me excited, indulge me please. 

“ABSTRACT - This chapter outlines, defines, and illustrates examples of project-based learning, while focusing on how librarians can offer support to teachers when creating and leading project-based learning programs. Various disciplines and grade level (K-12 and higher education) examples of projects are discussed, pointing to strategic methods of intervention from school librarians, as well as ideas on how to collaborate and build relationships through project-based learning opportunities.” (Huisman, 2014) 

If you’ll recall my last inquiry question from my initial post "How can a Teacher-librarian best support staff to integrate Inquiry Learning into their curriculum in a gentle yet effective way?”… A-Ha! Although I’ve still not answered my first two questions, this 'search tangent’ I’ve gotten myself onto has brought me closer to my inquiry goals.

Join me in my next posts when I get to searching the academic databases A+ Education and ProQuest Education looking for examples of the various models of Inquiry Learning available and hopefully find the best fit for my inner- west Melbourne secondary college.

All the images within this post are screenshots, taken by me, of Google and Google Scholar search interfaces.