Search Term Challenge

In-Class Exercise, Short Assignment

The Search Term Challenge includes tools and strategies to help your students take their search terms to the next level. The activities are presented as daily “challenges” that participants might accomplish either in class or as homework over the course of one week. Alternatively, some or all of the tasks that follow can be assigned in a course as a regular exercise not tied to the 5 day schedule.  These brief tasks are designed to help students get the best results from their search engines and databases by entering the best search terms, including identifying key concepts, finding search terms you couldn’t think of on your own, generating broader or narrower search terms, recognizing bias in search terms, and combining search terms.  Each part takes about 15-20 minutes.

Students can fill in their work on the Search Term Challenge Worksheet (download below) and turn this in to you for credit.

Considerations

  • These exercises do not assume any previous research experience on the part of the student and are appropriate even for first year students. 
  • Students often don’t realize what a big change in results can come from a relatively small change in search terms.  Make this visible to them by trying some examples in class when introducing this exercise.

Resources