Project_Smart_Search_Tutorial

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). 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.