Click here to view our Project_Smart_Search_Tutorial
Transcript:
Hi, and welcome to our tutorial on how to use Project Smart Search: a search that allows you to find projects by the parameters of the project, rather than needing to know the author or project title. Project Smart Search was designed so that you can use specific keywords to find projects that are either similar to your own project or find projects or colleagues that are facing similar challenges or have similar interests.
To get to Project Smart Search you can either click this button on the home page or click on the Project Smart Search link, which is located throughout the CADRE site in the upper right hand corner.
As you can see here on the Project Smart Search page, keywords are an important aspect of the search.
Each project on the website has several keywords assigned to that project, either by the PI of the project or by our partner group, Abt, who did portfolio analyses of all of the projects. The keywords should capture the different parameters of the project. However, we encourage members of the projects to update or adjust the keywords to be as accurate as possible. To learn more, please watch our tutorial on adding and changing keywords to your project.
To show you how to navigate Project Smart Search, we will walk through an example: Let’s say that you are currently doing research on the assessment of 8th grade math exams. It is a longitudinal study, and you are interested in seeing who is also working on assessing 8th grade math.
To start your search, you think to yourself what parameters you want to search for. You decide that first you want to look up Mathematics projects. So you look under Project Focus, category: content area because that folder contains keywords describing possible subject matters covered by the project. Using the black scroll bar on the side of the window, you scroll down until you see mathematics. When you select Mathematics, it automatically goes into the hot/cold control area here below. Notice that there is a number next to Mathematics. The search automatically assumes that you are looking for projects that have the keyword Mathematics (rated on a scale of 1-100) as 100—meaning that this is the central focus of the project. However, you can change this rating, by grabbing the slider with your mouse and sliding it over to the rating you would like. For a quick example, I will slide this over to 25 and then back to 100 for now. Each time, I change the rating of the project, Project Smart Search resets its search.
Now you decide that you would also like to look up Assessment projects. You look under Project Focus, category: topic area because that folder contains keywords that describe possible education topics discussed in a project, and you choose Assessment.
You expand your search one more time to search for middle school projects. You look under Target audience, category: age/grade level because this folder contains keywords that describe the age or grade level targeted by a project. You choose middle school. Again, as you’re choosing these different options, Project Smart Search will adjust the search results accordingly. Also, all 3 keywords are in the hot/cold control area and we can now adjust them to rate them accordingly. For an example, I will change this so that we are looking at Mathematics projects rated as 100, Assessment rated as 100, but then since we are also interested in other grade levels to a certain extent, I will deemphasize middle schools to 25. Or, if I decide that I don’t want to look at middle schools at all in my results, I can also click the negative sign and take that parameter out of the search. Alternatively, if I wanted to start the search over, I could refresh the page or click on the blue refresh arrow at the top of the search (which I won’t do right now).
So let’s look at our results. I’m going to first minimize our keywords section by clicking on the orange downward arrow. When you scroll over the projects, notice that the title of the project shows up in a pop-up window. It also gives the percent match of the project to your search. And to look at other pages of the search, you can just click on the arrows on the right.
Let’s scroll over a couple of these projects and then choose one.
Let’s say that we want to take a closer look at the CLEAR project. We just click on the logo and it will bring us to the project’s page, where you can see an abstract on the project, the project members and any other information posted to the project. For ex. many projects will have resources or events or other postings on their projects page. This particular project has a project url we can go to for more information. If I like this project and want to bookmark it, I can add it to my favorites by clicking on Add to Favorites. It will then be stored in the Favorites section of My CADRE. From the project page, I can also get in touch with Project members.
If I decide that I’d rather go back and see what other matches Project Smart Search has, I can use the back button to get back to the search.
This was our quick tutorial on how to use Project Smart Search. We hope this will be helpful to you and will enable you to connect with researchers, or learn about projects that interest you. If you have any other questions, feel free to contact the CADRE leadership team. Thanks.