Searching for learning and teaching resources and evidence

Searching for learningand teaching resourcesand evidenceSuzanne Hardy, Senior Advisor, Higher Education Academy Subject Centre for Medicine,Dentistry and Veterinary Medicine, Newcastle University, UK

When starting to look for some-thing online to reference orinclude in your learning andteaching materials, the first placemany of us would go to is prob-ably Google.1 However, beingslightly more judicious in yourchoice of search tools and strat-egies could save you time andyield much more relevant results.

The Internet for Medics2 websitewas developed to help studentswith their research skills, but is auseful search refresher for anyone.Using the sister site, Internet forEducation,3 may help withsearching for pedagogically rele-vant materials.

We all probably constructsophisticated Boolean searchesin order to review previousresearch before carrying out ourown research work in the clinicaldomain; however, it seems thatwe are not so diligent whenlooking for learning and teaching

resources and evidence before weset off upon creating our ownmaterial (see section 8.11 in thefinal report of the OrganisingOpen Educational Resources4

project). In the same way that weengage in scholarlycommunication on our researchdomain, we should attempt toengage with the scholarship oflearning and teaching.

It may be useful to think aboutwhether you need actual learningmaterials, or research evidence foreducational interventions, beforestarting your search.

LOOKING FOR LEARNINGMATERIALS

Using the advanced search inGoogle Images5 gives youthe opportunity to search foronly openly licensed content bychoosing from the ‘usage rights’drop-down list. This is goodpractice that we should all adopt

to avoid any risk of copyrightinfringement.

The Xpert6 tool is a referatorydeveloped at the University ofNottingham that scans hundredsof feeds from databases of openlylicensed content, and you can besure that a search conductedthere will only yield safe openeducational materials that areclearly licensed for use and reuse.

Jorum7 is the UK’s nationalrepository for further and highereducation, and helps you findeducation-specific resources andpapers licenced for use underCreative Commons,8 a non-profit organisation that licenseswork that can be shared andreused. Clicking on the ‘find’button takes you to a searchpage, type a search term andpress ‘enter’. Jorum returns allrelated resources and papers, andindicates clearly the terms underwhich the owner has given

@ thepage

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permission for you to use andreuse their content.

The Higher Education Academy hasbeen developing EvidenceNet9 tobring together current evidencerelating to learning and teaching inhigher education in the UK. Thisrepository interprets ‘evidence’ inits broadest sense: data and con-clusions drawn from that data. Thiscan range from case studies emerg-ing from particular practices inparticular settings to the outputsarising from large-scale researchprojects, which draw on a substan-tial volume of qualitative andquantitative data. The collection isdivided into three sections:resources, events and networks.

LOOKING FOREDUCATIONAL EVIDENCE

There are a few simple things wecan do to increase the utility ofsearches, such as using theGoogle Scholar10 part of Google,which has been refining itssearch algorithms, and whichdoes give quite good results now,even with simple searches. Thiswill give you links to researchpapers and books, as well as on-line journal publications, patentsand case law. This is useful whensearching outside of the medicaleducation-specific domain.

As we know, using bibliographicdatabases allows us to search amass of scholarly literature inone go.

Thefirst port of call for any clinicianmight be PubMed,11 with morethan 20 million citations for bio-medical literature from MEDLINE,life science journals and onlinebooks. This expansive databasegives access to full-text contentfrom PubMed Central and medicalpublisher websites. There is a‘quick-start’ guide that offersdirection (including videoguides) to help you perform thecorrect type of search (i.e. au-thors, journal names, citations,systematic reviews). A simplesubject search will automaticallytranslate your search term intoMeSH12 terms (Medical SubjectHeadings from the NationalLibrary of Medicine) to enhancethe search and retrieve specific,as well as related, information.This is fantastic for findingevidence of medical educationinterventions and results, butmay not necessarily point you toactual resources that you coulduse or repurpose in learning andteaching.

ISI Web of Knowledge13 (previ-ously know as ‘Web of Science’) isanother handy search tool for

literature and publications. Themain page presents three searchboxes to allow you to search forterms (author, title, date and pub-lication) that can also be filtered toomit specific terms. A simple searchwith only one word in the firstsearch box will produce many arti-cles on different topics. Subse-quently, clicking on each result willgive more detail and also an offerto ‘find it’. The ‘find it’ option linksto library collections directly,where you can see if your institu-tion has subscription access to saidarticle and, if so, will allow you todownload the complete PDF. Again,great for pointing you to evidencein medical education and scienceeducation research, but notspecifically intended to findeducation resources that you canuse in your own teaching.

In summary, deciding on the lit-erature or resources you want tofindcan influencewhere you look.Choose appropriate places: is abiomedical bibliographic data-base the best place to look foreducational evidence? Are youlooking for material to incorpo-rate into your teaching? Adoptgood practice in looking foropenly licensed resources, anduse carefully constructed sear-ches using advanced search toolsto narrow your results.

REFERENCES

1. http://www.google.co.uk or http://www.google.com

2. http://www.vts.intute.ac.uk/tutorial/medicine

3. http://www.vts.intute.ac.uk/tutorial/education

4. http://www.medev.ac.uk/static/uploads/MEDEV_OOER_final_report-draft-12-after-HEA-feedback_2010-10.pdf

5. http://images.google.com/advanced_image_search?hl=en

6. http://www.nottingham.ac.uk/xpert

7. http://www.jorum.ac.uk

8. http://creativecommons.org

9. http://www.heacademy.ac.uk/evidencenet

10. http://scholar.google.co.uk

11. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed

12. http://www.nlm.nih.gov/mesh

13. http://www.isiknowledge.com

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Publisher disclaims all responsibility and liability for the content of third party websites which may be linked to from these sites. Users

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64 � Blackwell Publishing Ltd 2011. THE CLINICAL TEACHER 2011; 8: 63–64