Some Very Good Tutorials to Help Students Develop Online Search Skills

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The key to unlocking the educational potential of the virtual world is through knowing how to effectively search it with the minimum time and efforts possible. Effective search in this sense refers to the ability to locate targeted information online using ‘informed search queries’. It does take time and practice to develop such an ability but it is worth every single second you spend learning it. Once you learn the skill, you will save so much time that would  be have been wasted tracing those search queries that render six figure number of responses.


We have been sharing several tutorials, tips, and graphics on how to help students develop effective search strategies which you can access from this page. Today we are adding another excellent resource from USC Beaufort Library. This is basically a tutorial made up of 20 well crafted lessons all geared towards helping learners build effective web search skills. The lessons are very short and feature only the basic things learners need to get started in the right direction. We have been browsing this collection of lessons and we found them a real treasure trove that teachers should definitely access and share with their students. Here is a round-up of the lessons covered by USCB Library’s Bare Bones Tutorial:

  • Lesson 1: Search Engines: a Definition
  • Lesson 2: Metasearchers: a Definition
  • Lesson 3: Subject Directories: a Definition
  • Lesson 4: Library Gateways and Specialized Databases: a Definition
  • Lesson 5: Evaluating Web Pages
  • Lesson 6: Creating a Search Strategy
  • Lesson 7: Basic Search Tips
  • Lesson 8: Searching with Boolean Logic and Proximity Operators
  • Lesson 9: Field Searching
  • Lesson 10: Troubleshooting
  • Lesson 11: Ask Search Engine: A Closer Look
  • Lesson 12: Clusty Search Engine: A Closer Look
  • Lesson 13: Dogpile Metasearcher: A Closer Look
  • Lesson 14: Gigablast Metasearcher: A Closer Look
  • Lesson 15: Google Search Engine: A Closer Look
  • Lesson 16: MSN Directory / Search Engine: A Closer Look
  • Lesson 17: Yahoo! Directory / Search Engine: A Closer Look
  • Lesson 18: Graveyard for Dead Search Engines
  • Lesson 19: Final Exam
  • Lesson 20: Beyond "Bare Bones"