LibGuides: Education: Online Searching

Recommendations for Searching Online

Whether searching online or in the databases, the search terms you choose determine the quality of the results you get. Just one search isn't enough to find the right resource, either. Try a few searches with different search terms to get different results.

Education Search Terms:

Education OR Educational
Teaching OR Instruction
Learning

Key Topics to search with Education Search Terms:

Common Core OR Educational Standards
Online Education OR Online Learning OR Distance Learning
Hybrid Education or Hi-Flex Education
Quality of Online vs. Face-to-face Education
Levels of Education (e.g. Primary Schooling, Elementary Education, Secondary School OR High School, Post-Secondary OR College education, Graduate School, etc.)
Literacy OR Understanding OR Skills
Interaction between Educational Institutions and Families
Role of Educational Institutions relating to poverty, underfed students, homeless students, etc.
Child Developmental stages AND Educational Needs
How prepared are Educators? What do they actually know?
Transitioning to College directly from High School vs as a non-traditional student

Evaluating Sources

When conducting research online (especially when not searching within a database), students must be sure to evaluate sources before using them as references in college-level assignments. One of the biggest benefits of online searching - the vast amount of information available - is also one of the biggest drawbacks. With so much information to sift through, finding information that is reliable, accurate, and actually pertains to your research topic can be more difficult than you might think.

The CRAAP Test
Source evaluation comes down to five key questions:
1) is the information Current?
2) is the information Relevant?
3) does the information come from an Authoritative source?
4) is the information Accurate?
5) what is the Purpose of the information?
See the attached CRAAP Test document for more in-depth evaluation questions and techniques.

Resources to avoid using as references typically include Blogs, Social Media posts, websites with pop-up ads, websites with outdated web-design, Tabloids, and Wikipedia.

Wikipedia is not considered a reliable source because it can be edited by anyone in the world with an account. Wikipedia can be a great resource for finding other sources, though. At the bottom of each Wikipedia page is a list of References that link out to websites referenced within each Wikipedia article. Check out these links and evaluate them for reliability!