Contextualized Online Search and Research Skills

This lesson was designed and written with you in mind. It is here to help you master the Contextualized Online Search and Research Skills. The scope of this lesson permits it to be used in many different learning situations. The language used recognizes the diverse vocabulary level of students. The topics are arranged to follow the standard sequence of the course. But the order in which you read them can be changed to correspond with the textbook you are now using.

The module has one lesson, namely "Lesson 3 – Contextualized Online Search and Research Skills".

After going through this module, you are expected to:

Use precise keywords to improve online searches; and
Evaluate website’s credibility

INFORMATION

Information is just literally just a click away. Information can be accessed through personal computers, smartphones, and other digital devices anytime and anywhere. However, most of the Internet users are experiencing an information overload which oftentimes affects the quality of information that they take. They often take information online as facts even if it is just the author’s opinion.

But before we proceed, let’s have a review first of our previous lesson. We've heard from our previous lesson about the various cyber risks that we can face online. If we post too much information about ourselves, we can be a victim of identity theft. If we enter our bank details on phishing sites, our savings in our bank accounts may be compromised. Our computers may slow down if we are not careful to download content from unreliable websites.

We also shortly tackled how to protect our protection online and how to avoid copyright infringement by always asking permission or giving credit to the original author of the page or information.

This next topic that we will discuss will help us to be more knowledgeable when we visit and get information from different websites.

On this lesson, we will learn how to evaluate website’s credibility and use keywords to specify our search term.

Tips on Improving Search and Research Skills

Online search and research are more than just ‘googling’ – typing a word in Google and then clicking the search button. It is a skill that every Internet user should know to do smart searching and this starts with improving search and research skills to get better results.

Here are the things that you need to know to improve your online search and research skills. This will guide you to obtain the most relevant information that you need.

When searching online, narrow your topic. Identify the key concepts or important ideas. Assuming that you would like to search for the answer to this question:

“What precautionary measures should you observe when you are logged in to a public computer?”

Do not type the whole question in the search box. Typing the whole question often leads to a large number of inappropriate search results.

From the question, the keywords are precautionary measures, observed, logged-in, and public computer. Keywords are terms that are used by most search engines to find related documents.

2. Put the word “AND” between each keyword to create a search string. You may type the following in the search box:

Precautionary measures AND observe AND logged-in AND public computer.

You will notice a decrease in search results as shown below.

3. Identify synonyms of the keywords. Not all databases or articles use the same words to describe a topic. Group similar words together by using the word “OR” for a quick and relevant search. In the case of our example: the synonyms of some of the keywords are:

Precautionary measures – preventive measures
Observe – pay attention to
Logged-in – signed-in

You may type the following in the search box:

Precautionary measures OR preventive measures AND observe OR pay attention to AND logged-in OR signed-in AND public computer

This gives you another set of search results:

4. Review the first pages returned. If these are not helpful, change your keywords for a better description. In this case, you may remove the phrase “pay attention to” and then type the following in the search box:

Precautionary measures OR preventive measures AND observe AND logged-in or signed-in AND public computer.

This gives you another set of search results.

If you think you have found what you are searching for, then you may stop here. Otherwise, you may proceed with these other techniques.

5. Use the plus (+) sign for a more specific search. Just type + before a keyword to indicate that the word after the sign is a required word that must be found in the search.

Example: +preventive measures

6. Use the minus (-) sign for a more specific search. If you want to exclude a word from your search, place a minus sign just before (without any space) the word you want to exclude.

Example: public computers -personal

7. Use wildcards for a broader search. Wildcard characters (*) let you find variations of a word.

Example: measur*

8. Use quotation marks to find phrases or names. Enclose the phrase or names that you want to search in quotation marks.

Example: “precautionary measures"

9. Use several search engines. Search engines are programs that look for documents based from specified keywords and return these documents where the keywords were found. Major search engines include Google, Yahoo (which uses Google), AltaVista, Bing, and Lycos.

Evaluating Websites

To help you evaluate the website’s credibility, here are the questions that you need to answer:

What is the domain type of the website? If it is a personal website, then you should further evaluate the website. (Learn more about domain types here: CLICK ME!)
Who wrote the article? Check if the author’s credentials or affiliations are listed so you can tell whether or not the author is qualified to write the topic. Check also the publisher of the article if it is a reliable publisher. Make sure that the author provides an e-mail or a contact address/phone number.
What is the purpose of the document and why was it produced? It is also important to check the document’s purpose and why it was produced. The document should provide accurate information and must be objective in presenting it. Some websites produce documents for the purpose of motivating users to buy products. If this is the case, information might be biased. However, bias is not necessarily bad but you need to investigate the author or connections.
When was the document published and updated? The document should be regularly updated. As to the freshness of the date, it depends on the information needed. For some topics, you want current information. For others, you want information near the time it became known. The links should also be up-to-date. There should be no dead links.

ACTIVITY

Evaluate the given two web pages by answering the questions on the table that can be found in this link https://docs.google.com/document/d/1-QRMmeLqiB3JOwLdUXQWychaO4dC0szp/edit?usp=share_link&ouid=111187423410114066159&rtpof=true&sd=true

Follow the download and submission instructions.

References

Tarun, I. M. (2016). Empowerment Technologies. Plaridel, Bulacan: St. Andres Publishing House.

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