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EDUC 586: Educational Research Designs

Welcome to the library guide for Dr. Tyler Love's EDUC 586 course!

Finding Articles

University Libraries sponsors BrowZine, a service that allows you to browse, read, and monitor scholarly journals on your computer or mobile device. You can add journals to a personal bookshelf and save articles to read at a later time.

To use this service, you can download the app for iOS or Android or use it from your computer via BrowZine’s website.

BrowZine automatically detects your library’s location. If you are on campus, you will not be asked for your Penn State Access Account user ID and password. If you are off-campus, you will be required to authenticate to access the journals through BrowZine. Choose “Penn State University Libraries” from the list, and supply your Access Account user ID and password when prompted.

For an overview of BrowZine, watch the video introduction.

BrowZine is used for keeping current on topics in your field and for browsing issues of journals. You can't search BrowZine for topics, articles, and titles, but it's a great way to get ideas. Use it on your computer, your tablet, or your phone.

While you do not have to have an account to use BrowZine, you will need to create one in order to use the personalization feature of My Bookshelf and My Articles. I think these features are really useful and well worth creating the free account.

As you find interesting journals in your field, click ADD TO MY BOOKSHELF. You have 4 Bookcases available, each with 4 shelves (holding 4 books per shelf), meaning you can store up to 64 journals.

I don't think arranging your journals on your bookshelves is very intuitive, so here's my attempt to make sense of it for you!

When a journal is added to your bookshelf, it automatically is placed on the next available open slot on My Bookshelf. You will then need to click on the My Bookshelf tab to move the title to a new slot, if you want to organize your titles.

For example, when I added the American Journal of Education to My Bookshelf, it was added to the second shelf of my first Bookcase, which I have titled My Research. I want to move it to the first shelf (EDUC 586) of my third Bookcase, titled Education.

Clicking in the upper-right corner of the American Journal of Education in My Bookshelf opens the menu, with the choices to Move or Delete.

screen shot of journalClicking Move brings up an arrow, and this is where it gets tricky!  screen shot of journal showing showing arrow used to reposition on bookshelf

Once you see the arrow on your journal, you'll navigate to where you want it to go. If you want it to go on one of your other bookcases, you will use the arrows to the far right of your bookcase name.

screen shot showing location of arrows to move to other bookcases

When you reach the bookcase where you want to put the journal, you will see gray bars with down arrows on each shelf. When you hover over the gray bar where you want the journal to go, you will see a tiny image of the journal appear.

screen shot showing navigation used to move journals within bookshelves

Clicking on the gray bar with the image drops the journal title into the chosen slot.

screenshot of journals on the Education bookshelf

 

 

Using the FIND box on the Penn State University Libraries' home page is the easiest way to find an article if you know the title. If you are reading an interesting article and want to follow up on that topic by reading some of the articles in the reference list, just type that title into the search box and see if we have the full text.

TRY IT!

Want to read the article "Addressing Safety and Liability in STEM Education: A Review of Important Legal Issues and Case Law"? Just copy and paste the title into the search box below:

 

Now that you see how this works, just start using the Penn State University Libraries' home page as shown below:

 

Using specialized databases often allows you additional criteria to use when searching for articles on your topic. An easy way to identify education databases is to check the Education Subject Guides mentioned on the Finding Education Resources page of this Guide.

For example, when you search the Thesaurus for the phrase "school suspensions," you find out that the subject term used for this topic in this ProQuest database is "expulsions & suspensions." Putting a checkmark in front of that term and clicking "Add to search" yields all the articles in that database that cover that subject. Limit your results by selecting "Scholarly Journals" as the "Source type."

While you will find hundreds of journals in BrowZine, there are some available only through other databases, such as ProQuest. For example, you can find Young Children and Middle Grades Research Journal through ProQuest.

The ERIC database through ProQuest provides additional options for searching.

Choose Advanced Search to see the Thesaurus. Even though this is a ProQuest database, it does not use the same Thesaurus as the ProQuest Education Journals database. Searching "school suspensions" does not give you any helpful results. However, when you search just the term "suspension," you see that "Suspension" is the appropriate subject term used for this topic in ERIC. Clicking on the Notes icon beside the word "Suspension" tells you how the term is defined ("temporary, forced withdrawal from the regular school program'). You also see related terms which you can add to your search.

Again, you might want to limit your search (under the search boxes) to Peer reviewed and, using the drop-down boxes, limit the Document type to Journal Articles. You can also limit by Education level.

ERIC is also available through the U.S. Department of Education.

You'll find full-text for Education Week and Educational Leadership (note, these two publications are not peer-reviewed) in addition to full-text peer-reviewed titles.