Searching Education Abstracts at UST: A Brief Guide
Accessing Education Abstracts:
This database is available to the UST community anywhere on campus from the UST Libraries Database page.
Just click on "SilverPlatter". It's also available to
UST students, faculty and staff from off-campus through our proxy server.
Search Strategy
It’s important to approach database searching
systematically. Unless you can be specific about what you want, the database
will return too many irrelevant results. Follow these steps for the best results:
1. The initial step is to write down your topic
statement. Include all desired aspects of your research topic.
Topic Statement: I’d like to
research how critical thinking skills can be incorporated into the college curriculum.
2. Next, extract the primary or key concepts from the
topic statement.
Key Concepts (for statement above): Critical
Thinking, Curriculum Development, College.
3. Log in to the database. Start from the UST Libraries Database page.
Click on "SilverPlatter" link. The next screen allows you
to select the database you want to search and one or both date ranges to search. Click on
the search screen entry box and type your keyword(s) there. You may need to try to
think of multiple ways to search for a particular concept.
Examples of Alternative Terminology:
Critical Thinking: evaluative thinking,
thinking skills.
Curriculum Development: curriculum design,
curriculum planning
College: higher education, university
4. Combine your searches. Use OR to
combine lines in your search history that refer to the same concept. OR
means that you retrieve everything under each set combined. Use AND
to get a set which contains only the references that include both/all of your concepts. AND
narrows your search to just the intersection of the sets included. Your
result should be a well-focused search. If you get too many or too few results, check with
a librarian about how you can refine your search.
See a graphical depiction
of Boolean searching
Example Search:
#1 critical thinking or evaluative thinking or
thinking skills
#2 curriculum development or curriculum design or curriculum planning
#3 higher education or college or university
#4 #1 and #2 and #3
(An alternative to typing in the AND and OR combinations
is to click to Include each result set number you want, then click Combine
Checked.)
5. Click on Display Records to see the
references. Here's a sample record:
Record 1 of 1 in Education Abstracts FTX
1/95-12/98
TITLE
Developmental critical thinking: melding two imperatives
AUTHOR(S)
Harris,-Jimmy-Carl; Eleser,-Christine-B
SOURCE
Journal-of-Developmental-Education. v. 21 (Fall '97) p. 12-14+
ABSTRACT
A developmental critical thinking course offered at Southwestern Louisiana University is
discussed. The course aims to provide a comprehensive developmental education program for
this open-admissions university and to satisfy the critical thinking requirements of the
job market and the university. Students are taught both the skills and the creativity
elements of critical thinking, focusing on critical thinking as a useful, dynamic, and
ongoing process. The course uses
activities that are cross curricular and makes innovative use of technology and writing
assignments. The first evaluations of this course indicate that students are not entirely
convinced that learning to be critical thinkers is vital to their success in college and
afterward. It also appears that, to an extent, the critical thinking teachers are in
agreement with their students. These results indicate the need for further research into
why participating students do not value the course highly.
DESCRIPTORS
Attitudes-College-professors-and-instructors; Critical-thinking-Curriculum-Evaluation;
Curriculum-satisfaction-College-students; Remedial-teaching-Colleges-and-universities.
6. You’re not done yet. The default display does
not show the full text that’s available for some articles. To see it, you need to
click on Change Display, then click on the checkbox by TX - Text. Next,
click on the Confirm Changes button. You will now see any available full text
articles in your result set.
7. To mark specific references for printing, click
on the checkbox at the beginning of each reference. When you have finished looking
through the list of references, click on Show Marked. This pulls up a list of only
the ones you've chosen.
8. To print your marked references, click on the
"Print" button that's part of the database screen (not on the browser's regular
print button at the top). A screen comes up that allows you to change some of the
print defaults. Unless you wish to do that, simply click on the "Display for
print" button at the bottom of the screen. A list of your chosen references
appears, with a record of your search queries at the top.
9. When you're finished, be sure to back up one
screen and click on the "Log Out" button. This helps to make the database
available to others who may be trying to access it.
Michelle Filkins / Mail #MOH206 / Opus Hall./
Minneapolis/ MN / 55403
mmfilkins@stthomas.edu
11/99 mf
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