Expand students' information literacy skills: A guide to Search Progress for educators

By Microsoft Education Team

Search Progress, a new Learning Accelerator, is intentionally built alongside Search Coach to help students gain lifelong information literacy skills within a structured environment. Search Progress empowers you to create, customize, and assign research projects. It offers simple and authentic ways to find, curate, and reflect on information discovered throughout the research process. Search Progress offers many benefits for both educators and students:

Educators

Students

Creating a Search Progress assignment takes just a few easy steps. Start by creating an assignment, selecting the Learning Accelerators button, and then choosing Search Progress from the list.

You can customize a Search Progress assignment with the following options.

Number of sources: Determine the minimum number of sources required.

Explanation: Customizable questions prompt students to state why they chose a particular source. Use these examples to get started:

Reflection: Offer customizable prompt for students to practice metacognitive and reflective skills. Use these question stems to get started:

Create a Search Progress assignment with custom settings.

Tip: Search Progress assignments can serve as stand-alone practice activities, or they can be attached to larger research reports or presentations. Consider starting with several low stakes practice activities before integrating Search Progress into other assignments.

Search Progress assignments leverage Search Coach to make filtering search results simple, with informative and visible filter menus that explain advanced search operators in terms that your students already understand. Each filter provides students with an explanation of what they are filtering and why they would want to use that type of source. Additionally, sites that frequently post news will feature NewsGuard ratings that evaluate them on transparency and credibility.

Standard filters

Optional filters

Search Coach provides students guided support for search query filters, including explanations of domain types.

Tip: Introduce one filter category at a time. This helps your students grasp the importance of each filter. Later, they can combine them to enable more advanced searches.

With Search Progress, collecting and sharing sources is as easy as a single check. After filtering their queries and previewing their results, students select the plus sign to add a source to their collection to make a living and more informative bibliography.

Students use Search Progress to find, evaluate, and collect their sources all in a simple sidebar.

Before students submit their Search Progress assignment, they can see all their sources and explanations in an Assignment Summary. This displays each of their searches, which sites they opened, and other helpful information that they have filled out during their assignment. If enabled by their educator, students have an opportunity to include an overall reflection on their research process. With Assignment Summaries, students can reflect on their own information literacy skills.

Students receive an assignment summary of their Search Progress submissions.

Tip: Your students can add external sources, such as online PDFs or videos, by selecting “Add a source found without searching.” They can then add this source to their collection, explain how they discovered the source, and reflect on the source’s value.

Once students submit their Search Progress assignments, you receive access to a wealth of information that provides glimpses into each student’s search process, granting you insights far beyond a simple works cited page.

Review your students’ Search Progress submissions and provide feedback to each student.

Search Progress gives you and your students support throughout the entirety of a research assignment. From helping your students with filtering results and evaluating sources with NewsGuard, to collecting and reflecting upon the sources that they plan to use, Search Progress helps learners of all ages gain lifelong information literacy skills.

Start adding Search Progress to your assignments today for a more powerful way to teach information literacy.

Educators recognize the importance of data in helping students thrive. However, the abundance of data often makes it challenging and time-consuming to identify relevant and significant trends. Education Insights in Microsoft Teams for Education is an analytics solution that automatically connects with key apps such as Learning Accelerators and the tools in Teams to provide a more holistic view of student wellbeing.

Information literacy, which involves critical thinking when finding and engaging with information, is a vital skill for students in both their current education and their future careers. However, finding the time and resources to prioritize this skill can be challenging.

Reading Progress and Reading Coach, two Learning Accelerators available in Microsoft Teams for Education, are designed to enhance your students' reading fluency. With Reading Progress, students read a passage out loud while recording video and audio, then turn in their recordings to you.