Fifth Post: Practical 4 & 5

For our fifth lesson in effective internet research, we went through two more types of search facilities namely, meta search engines and subject directories. It was great to be introduced to more search facilities as it gave us a wider variety to choose from in order to conduct our research for our topic. Not only that, the search facilities each have their own advantages which can benefit the research in different ways.

For example, Meta search engines have an advantage in the sense that they search and provide results from various search engines, giving the user a wide choice of results while at the same time, keeping it simple with their user interface. Also, it shows the user which search engine the result is retrieved from to give more information to the user. Not only that, it has suggested recommendations on the side of the page to recommend similar key words that the user might want to use.

For subject directories, various topics are catalog under different categories in order to give a more organized feel to the search facility. This makes it easier for the user to navigate the site topic by topic without much hassle. However, the only downside is that it would be better for the user to already know what he wants so that he can make full use of the site. Subject Directories, unlike other search facilities, are filtered content by the editors of the site. Therefore, the search results may not return as much or the keywords may not be as responsive as the search engines. As such, it is important for the user to know what he is looking for.

With the usage of different search engines, it has made researching much more hassle-free compared to the past where I only relied on one search facility. It also gives me different sides of the coin to choose from the various results returned from the different search facilities, widening my sources.

During the lecture, we were also taught how to make site feeds to our classmates. I feel that this is a useful feature as it would be easier to go to their site instead of heading back to the course forum in ole blackboard to search for their links, making it less troublesome.

To finish off the practical, we were told to collaborate with our classmates in the EIR-wiki, who are doing the same topic of research. Although I have not contributed anything inside it yet, I feel that collaboration is very important as everyone will be able to share what they have found which others may not. As such, it gives different views and perspectives to the same topic and with the different sources of research, it will help expand the research topic, making it a bigger and more helpful place for others to gain knowledge. Thus, collaboration is very important to help others as well as ourselves, doing the research.

At the end of the lesson, we did our class test which consisted of 20 MCQs. The questions were not impossible to answer but some were very tricky as well. All in all, I am not very pleased with the result I got and I hope that I will be able to do better in other parts of the CDS in order to pull up my grade.

Fourth Post: Practical 3

Another EIR lesson after a long thursday. To be truthful, it is refreshing to have a lesson that does away with books after an exhausting day.

Our lesson today was basically to introduce us to some available search engines as well as how to properly enter a search query, in order to gain maximum relevance in the results. As such, we were advised not to use keywords that were too common (e.g. the, an, a, of) as they would flood our return results with useless entries. Single keywords were also advised against as the results returned would be made up of a huge list of useless entries, with a minority of relevant results hidden somewhere within the long list of results. The search engines we were told to use were Google and Google Scholar.

Proceeding on with the lesson, we were taught some methods to make our research on search engines easier. How? By having multiple keywords as well as keyword variations. With those, it would help our search be more versatile as similar words that could be linked to our research topic could be picked up and be assessed by us for the usefulness. However, for the keywords and keyword variations to work properly, they have to be combined together with boolean operators. Basically, boolean operators (e.g. AND, OR, NOT, N) connect the keywords together so that searches can be narrowed down to give results that are close to our keywords and variations. For my research topic, "Impact of Cyber-bullying on internet users", I managed to come up with the following keywords and keyword variations(in brackets):

Impact(effect)
cyber(virtual, cyber)
bullying(harass, abuse)
online users(computer users)

It wasn't a huge number of variations, but I was definitely happy with them as I was sure that it would definitely narrow my search for more relevance with regards to my topic. With the keyword and variations down, we were instructed to combine them with the boolean operators (which we were provided examples of, as mentioned above) to create our search queries. Here is what I came up with:

(impact OR effect*) AND (cyber* OR virtual OR online) AND (bully* OR harass* OR abuse) AND (internet users OR computer users)

I was proud to be able to come up with something like that as all I ever used in the past were "". With the newly created self query, the results dropped from millions to a mere 59,000.

Between the two search engines introduced today, I would have to say Google was more helpful as it allowed more modifications to the search. Some functions include,

"I'm feeling Lucky" which would bring me to the first result returned from my search query. This would make my research faster as I would be able to enter the page immediately.

Google was also able to filter results based on languages. Therefore, there was no worry that results returned would be in other languages other than english.

Other features include the ability to choose how many results you wanted in the page, the file types of the results returned as well as choosing results that were within a certain date range.

With that much functionality, I was definitely impressed with Google, much more then before. Google Scholar, on the other hand, was helpful in it's own right. However, the functions and features were mostly more suited for academic research and not for more social topics like the one I was assigned to. Therefore, Google was more helpful in the research.

With the lesson closing off, we were told to do citations to our sources after we had done what we needed to. Although a hassle, I realize the need for citations as it is a sort of credit to the original creator/author of the object that we have used. Therefore, in order to avoid some sort of plagiarism, credit has to be given where it is due. To fulfil the bibliography, all we had to do was to combine the citations into a list.

Last but not least, I am glad to say that I have entered into discussions within a discussion forum with regards to my research topic on Cyber-bullying. Reading the other posts by other users, it definitely increased my knowledge on Cyber-bullying. Not soon after, I contributed some. It was a rather nostalgic feeling as it was a long time since I started a new topic as well as replied others. I hope that the replies will come flooding in soon so that I would be able to progress in my research topic.

I guess today has been a very long day, much longer than other thursdays as real work on EIR project began today. Our portfolio part one is due very soon and I hope that I will be able to keep up and do my best in every part.

Until the next post.

THIRD POST: Practical 1 & 2 CONTINUATION

Today has been a long and tiring day. For the EIR lesson today, we were to continue our work from the previous week, being Practical 1 & 2. Though I had mostly completed the practical, I tried to edit the worksheet after receiving some feedback from the teacher. Hopefully, the worksheet will be a good source for me to base on for more indepth project research later on.

With the extra time in the lesson, I managed to sign up in the forums that I had found out about before hand. I will most likely be posting a thread or two in there in time to come and hopefully there will be plenty of replies for me to read and filter through.

Though today's lesson was slightly more relaxed than previous ones, I think that it definitely served a meaningful purpose as it allowed me to look for other sources as well as delve further into what I had already found. Therefore, I hope that all these research done in the early lessons will help in my research project on cyber-bullying so that I will be able to do well.

End of post.