For those who are not as familiar with google search syntax, here is a couple of quick tips for conducting searches on DL programs, while restricting the search to the .edu domain. For example, in a post yesterday, a forum member asked for suggestions for a DL masters in poly sci. In this instance, I entered the following query in google: master "political science" "distance learning OR education" OR online site:.edu The part at the end (in bolded text) will limit your search to only the .edu domain. The .edu domain is reserved for sites owned by mostly legitimate schools, not commercial entities. Be wary though - some of the older mills were grandfathered in before regulations were put in place to limit .edu domain to accredited schools. Just replace the text in the above query with the degree and major you are searching for. BTW, I often try the above query with and without the section OR online. If you exclude this information, you'll miss some sites that only reference that a specific program is online and does not make reference to distance learning or distance education. However, the reverse is also true, so try it both ways. I hope this is helpful.
Wow - Tom, that was a great tip! I never knew about this - did a search for "creative writing" with the site:edu & came up with lots of good colleges & universities.
I'm glad this was helpful to you. Unless you are looking for individual courses in creative writing, be sure to add the degree that you are looking for (e.g. bachelor, master, phd). For example: master "creative writing" "distance learning OR education" OR online site:.edu phd "creative writing" "distance learning OR education" OR online site:.edu I usually search on "phd" vs. doctoral or doctorate, as most schools use the degree title abbreviation when listing the program. On the other hand, almost all schools spell out the word master (I use the singular to pick up on variations of master, masters, master's) and bachelor (same rule as above).
Just wanted to say, again - this is great advice. I thought I had everything figured out, but w/a problem w/my financial aid, I need to make a different strategy to finish my degree. I've come up with programs I never even heard about using this search. Thanks again!
Doesn't putting several words in quotation marks or parenthesis cause Google to look only for that exact term? I have always thought that this was so, but sometimes it does not seem to work.
Yes quotations return exact terms unless there are very few available in which case google will automatically remove your quotes from your search. It will tell you if this has occured. Sometimes the first few results will show up as exact matches to your specific search and then the slight modification to your search is below. Hope that helps. As for the above examples with quotes, I suspect the OR overrides the quotes allowing for both the terms "distance learning" or "distance education" to return without requiring that both terms be present while still requiring one or the other term with both words in that order and adjacent to each other. This was a very, very good post by the OP, I did not know that OR could go in between quotation marks.
Sure. Anytime. I often decide to limit my searches to the .edu domain. This gets rid of most of the garbage that is out there (although there is the occasional non-.edu site that is useful when searching for degree programs, IMO it is a rarity). Cheers!
Yes, this is a good thread as well. There is useful information regarding the other Boolean operators (+ and -) and additional search strategies. I thought I would keep things relatively simple in my original post. However, the "-" (AND NOT) operator definitely comes in handy to remove terms that one does not want to appear in a set of results. BTW, google automatically adds a + (AND) operator between words, so that one is generally not needed (can't hurt though).
Hi Rickyjo, Yes you are correct about the combination of quotation marks and the OR operator. A longer way to type this out would be "distance learning" OR "distance education". I like to keep my search strategies as compact as possible (laziness on my part, no doubt).
