Community reviews for Google Scholar

While Google Scholar's interface is relatively basic, its ability to surface authoritative, relevant literature from many publications instantly captures students' attention. The "related articles" suggestions allow learners to discover new dimensions of the concepts they're researching organically. Google Scholar is perfectly aligned with developing academic research proficiency and cognitive skills like critical analysis, evaluation of source credibility, and evidence-based reasoning. It exposes students to diverse scholarly perspectives and empowers them to be critical information consumers. The integration with Google's main web search provides a familiarity that lowers the barrier to adoption. Google's Search Education resources, like activity templates and professional development opportunities, offer excellent supplemental support for educators aiming to build students' academic research capabilities.

This is a great research tool for students to use when looking for credible sources and one that I would recommend that students in upper middle, high school, and college use.

This is a great tool that few students have used. It is rewarding to use it because they now have another resource that can be of help to them in any class and beyond high school. It could serve students better by providing a tutorial to help students better create search criteria to narrow down the number of search "hits". I know Google already has this from my online searches, but it could be effectively provided as an engaging student tutorial on the home page to best support its use in education.

Students need to learn how to research effectively. I think this will help them on that journey. They can track their citations and keep a "library" of documents for quick reference. This is an excellent skill to master before college!

Using Google Scholar (especially when searching by date) allows students to see the ongoing conversation they are entering when writing a response to an issue. I like that it sparked thinking and helped students to see several current perspectives on an issue. An option to only search available full text / abstracts would be helpful to those without access to a university library.

I think as a learning tool, this is great.Teaching tool is a stretch, as it's more connected to learning than the direct action of teaching. I like that it's free. I like that it allows easier investigation into a topic.

As an educator, I think this branch of Google search engine is great. The credible, relevant sources gained through key word searches allows my students to perform better searches regarding some topics that sometimes 'open the floodgate' on other search engines. Sources must still be checked for reliability.

I like how easy it is to find academic articles and how relevant the search results are. It helps students become better researchers and manage their own learning.

Google Scholar is an excellent way for my students to utilize the latest research on their self-selected topics. It is an effective way for students to narrow their search and to utilize valid sources (instead of just using unreliable sources that pop up under whatever search engine they are using). I particularly liked the citation formats that are provided for my students. It allows them a way to speedily post the APA format. The case law option is also manageable for high school students to access cases that pertain to their topic.

As the review stated, Google Scholar is best for high school and on to college. However, I used it teaching 6th grade and with help, it can be used in the middle school classroom. It takes away most webpages and gives links to books and journals. The text level of these works is rather high. That, along with the fact that you need to pay for some of the journals, can be major stumbling blocks. My overall opinion is that we need to teach our students more about research then comes from a regular Google search. Google Scholar and other search engines need to be introduced to students along with how different search terms and words modify your results. Common Sense Media works to teach this in their digital citizenship curriculum. This is a stepping stone to data bases offered in college that students will be expected to be able to navigate through.