Focusing Students' Research: Tips for Using Search Engines

This week, I want to offer a quick tip that came out of a surprising conversation I had with a student. My Year 9s were searching for information related to human body systems, some were daunted by the level of depth to go into. I'm sure that if you're teacher and reading this you may have come across parts of research projects where the language students use seems to indicate that they've been sitting in on university lectures!

For these students, I asked them to do their research using the Internet - no online library searches, either! The reason for this came about because search engines like Google, Safari and Firefox are generally students' first port of call when doing homework online. Research literature by Crook, among others, and my own experiences told me that students' skills in this area need to be developed.

The screenshots below show typical search results my students obtained when they typed search terms related to the project rubric.

Figure I: "Lymphocytes" - Students needed to report some of the specialised cells in their system

Figure II: "Specialized cells in the lymphatic system" 

Figure III: "What are liver cells?"

Notice the red squares? Apart from finding these links frustrating to read, the information can possibly have effects on students' self efficacy in Science. Articles that are cited by... refer to academic journals. Although students' search terms seem adequate for them, perhaps based on project rubrics or handouts from the teacher, if not taught to interpret the results of their searches critically, they are faced with information presented in a language that is beyond their grasp. How can I do well in Science, I don't understand the words used?

Here are 3 tips for getting students to think critically when doing web searches:

1) Use the students' original search terms, but add for kids or some other variation after. The students' prior research and scientific terms they have found is still valued and more accessible information is yielded.

Figure IV: "Lymphocytes for kids"

2) Look at the domain name in the web address, this is the end of the address (.org, .gov, .edu are some examples of domain names). You might have some discussion about what these stand for and whether the information can be trusted or not.

3) Don't discourage students from going further in their study if something that is interesting, but teach them a little about the nature of knowledge presented on the Internet. For my students, I projected some of their search results on the board. We talked about what cited by means and when using these links would or wouldn't be appropriate.

These tips are just 3 that were inspired by a conversation this week. I would love to hear more about other tips readers recommend for research projects. Please feel free to comment.