Final summer season Microsoft introduced a brand new Groups product that may be rolling to schooling customers over the approaching faculty 12 months. That product is known as Search Coach and it seems to now be extensively obtainable to all Microsoft Groups schooling customers.
As its identify implies, Search Coach in Microsoft Groups supplies college students with ideas to enhance their search strategies. The guidelines offered are based mostly on college students’ search behaviors.
There’s extra to Search Coach than simply offering search tricks to college students. Academics can use Search Coach to get perception into their college students’ search behaviors. The insights offered to academics embrace variety of searches tried, hyperlinks opened, and search phrases used.
One other notable side of Search Coach is the flexibility to limit search outcomes in line with area sort, file sort, and date. Academics may also allow restrictions on search operators.
Mike Tholfsen lately printed an in depth video overview of all features of Search Coach. You possibly can watch his video right here or as embedded beneath.
Purposes for Schooling
Microsoft at present gives a half-dozen lesson plans that incorporate using Search Coach.
I believe Search Coach may very well be a priceless device for teaching college students by the search course of. That stated, I am afraid that some folks may use it as a device to easily block college students’ entry to some components of the Web with out educating them enhance their search behaviour. However the identical may very well be stated for nearly any internet filtering instruments.
If you happen to’re occupied with studying much more about search and educating search there are two sources I like to recommend. First, Dan Russell’s The Pleasure of Search needs to be in each faculty’s library of sources for academics. Second, I supply a self-paced course on search methods college students have to know.