Searching for information can be broken into three components.  You first need a topic – in this case your Problem Solving Presentation topic.  (Reminder:  You must complete this assignment using the instructor-approved topic you will be using for your Problem-Solving Presentation).

Second, you need to pull specific concepts out of your topic.  For example, the topic of rising college tuition involves the concepts of tuition and college education.

Furthermore, it is generally a good idea to think of some synonyms for the concept words you identify.  “College education,” for example, could also be described as “university education” "undergraduate education," or “higher education.”  It will also be useful to define a geographic scope for your topic.  The example above could be applied to CSU, Chico, to universities in California, and/or to universities nationally.  Knowing what region you are considering will allow you to avoid information not specific to that region, or potentially to draw comparisons between two different regions.

Last but not least, you need to arrange the keywords for the concepts you identify into different combinations to form search strings.  You can create these arrangements using the words AND and OR.

• AND requests documents that include both of the keywords you are connecting.  For example:

Chico AND campus safety

• OR requests documents that include one keyword or the other.  For example:

fraternities OR sororities

• You can combine AND and OR into a single search string:

(fraternities OR sororities) AND campus safety

The parentheses function just like they do in algebra – they tell the search interface to do the operation in the parentheses first, then do the operation outside the parentheses.

Please complete the portion of your worksheet on constructing a search string. Include your Problem-Solving Presentation topic and keywords you pull out of that topic. Also include an arrangement of your keywords in chart on your worksheet using the AND and OR operators.

Once you have done this you are ready to begin searching for information for your assignment.  Please complete either section two or section three, depending upon whether your Problem-Solving Presentation topic considers an issue specific to a university environment (section 2) or an issue affecting the city of Chico or the surrounding area (section 3).  Once you have completed either section two or section three, complete all of the remaining sections.

Section one of your assignment worksheet (constructing a search string).

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