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Alta Vista
Why This Resource
Alta Vista is a good search engine, it searches a variety of sites as well as provide additional information. It is a good place to begin, as provide you will the basic tools to begin any search.
Syntax/Keywords
this exact phrase: online distance education
Results
68,000
Comments
The keywords I used were not specific enough, I needed to refine my search further. Most of the results were focused on distance course, rather then distance learning.
Refinements
all of these words: advantages and disadvantages
this exact phrase: online distance education
Result
22, 900
Comments
Although this got a better result then the previous search, I was still getting alot of responses that were not related to the topic. They were more to do with university course that were offered via distance education. So I refined my search further.
Refinments
all of these words: advantages and disadvantages
this exact phrase: online distance education
and none of these words: university
Results
42
Comments
This result was more to do with the topic and less to do with the other areas. By specifying my search so that it did not include universities narrowed my results down considerably. This obtain the desired results
Google Groups
Why This Resource
Google Groups are news groups that are being provided by Google. It is a good place to search as it offers opinions of others and gets people involved in different issues.
Syntax/Keywords
online distance education
Results
49,000
Comments
I only used a basic search, where I proberly should have used an advanced one. It gave out many results that were not related to the topic.
Refinements
This exact phrase: online distance education
and not these words: university
Results
158
Comments
This narrowed the search down considerably. The quality of these results however were not very good. I tried to refine my search further by adding advantages and disadvantages, but no results were obtained.
ProQuest
Why This Resource
ProQuest is a good resource for finding good quality journals. It provides you with tools to limit your search making it easier for you to obtain desireable results.
Syntax/Keywords
advantages and distavantages
AND online distance education
Limited to only full text documents and scholarly journals.
Results
14
Comments
Although this search displayed a limited results, some of them were not really relevant to the topic. There was no need for refinement in this case as we already found the desired results.
Wiley InterScience
Why This Resource
Wiley InterScience is another good database like ProQuest, but it offers more by providing a database, journals and online books.
Syntax/Keywords
online distance education
Results
111
Comments
This search provided good quality information, but due to the quantity the search needed to be refined further.
Refinements
advantages and disadvantages of online education
Results
0
Comments
This search did not obtain any results. So I changed what I wrote to only include advantages
Refinements
advantages of online distance education
Results
15
Comments
This did return some results which were of good quality.
Encyclopedia of Educational Technology
Why This Resource
This resource is a good resource as it relates back to technology while also provding the online learning side. However its down side is that when you go to refine your search further it gives you more results instead of less.
Syntax/Keywords
Online Distance Education
Results
134
Comments
Majority of these results were of good quality. I tried to refine my search to see if I could get it lower then the previous result, however it gave me more results then my first search(see below). So my first search had the desired outcome.
Refinments
Syntax/Keywords
advantages and disadvantages of online distance education
Results
432
Comments
As you can see, this search gave me more results then my first search and I used more specific keywords this time.
Which was the better Searching Resource
Wiley InterScience was the best searching resource for my topic. This is because it provided me with the most quality documents.