Research Guides: Information Literacy: Searching as Exploration

Searching as Strategic Exploration

Searching as Strategic Exploration
"Locating information requires a combination of inquiry, discovery, and serendipity. There is no one size fits all source to find all the needed information. Information discovery is nonlinear and iterative, requiring the use of a broad range of information sources and flexibility to pursue alternate avenues as new understanding is developed."

Some Learning Objectives

Students will be able to find items in the catalog if given the author, title, or keywords and locate the item on the shelf.
Students will be able to identify keywords from a given topic and use appropriate search commands.
Students will be able to implement searches in a multipurpose database and on the web and understand the difference between web and database.
Students will be able to identify keywords and synonyms and construct a search strategy using appropriate commands for different interfaces.
Students will determine if retrieved information satisfied need and will refine search if necessary.
Students will be able to construct a search strategy using Boolean and subject headings or database-specific thesaurus terms.
Make connections between the importance of matching information needs and search strategies to appropriate search tools
Implement more advanced searching skills to respond to a discipline-based information need
Reflect on the usefulness of making mistakes in the search process and how searching is not solely transactional

Students will use discovery tool facets in order to find relevant info.
Teaching students how to understand and analyze scholarly peer-reviewed articles and understand statistics.
Students will be able to break down their research question in order to develop an effective database search.
Students will develop a topic and a list of terms in order to search sources databases effectively, efficiently, with confidence
Students will be able to brainstorm and discover search terms in order to find information about their topic.
Search discovery layer to find scholarly articles to complete an assignment
Students will be able to demonstrate the use of indexes and advanced search techniques in order to retrieve relevant articles for their class project.
Students will be able to construct search terms and refine terms based on results to reduce frustration around information gathering.
Students will be able to break their search into core concepts and brainstorm additional steps for each concept. Students will be able to apply search strategies using keywords to reduce research frustration.
Pharmacy students will be able to select the correct and appropriate resource (print or electronic) based upon the question asked in order to correctly answer the drug information question.
Students will be able to identify and describe 3 boolean operators and their proper uses in order to conduct an effective first round search.
Students will be able to select an appropriate source/database in order to locate relevant government content/sources of information for their [local] topics

Learning Activities

1. Ask students to choose a topic, develop key terms to search with, and use two different databases to locate information on their topic. Have them compare the results in terms of quantity, types of sources (e.g., government, educational, scholarly, commercial), order/sequence of results, and relevance. Pair students who used different databases with the same topics to compare results.

2. Assign students to identify and use subject headings after conducting a keyword search; after which they write a paragraph on the differences between subject and keyword searching.

- From the University of Washington University Libraries