Done!

I finished and submitted my bibliography. It feels good.

I enjoyed sharing the semester with everyone.

Finishing

I'm now organizing the papers and preparing the annotated bibliography. Getting the citations just right is not my favorite part.

Finished Searching

Well, the "computer gods" have been working hard to stop me (malfunctioning computer, then a bad internet connection) but I have made progress and found what I needed. The advanced search techniques were necessary to zero in on what I wanted. I ended up using ANDs and truncation (lab*) to get the correct papers and I limited the type of result and date to keep my search current and relevant.

Further Results

I found that searching within the site or journal containing a valid reference can yield more. ERIC sent me to get a reference on EBSCO Host or a journal. On that site, I enter search terms and find more relevent papers. Some of the references were not shown on the ERIC search.

ERIC

I have been using ERIC and Scirius to search for papers. Although I thought it wouldn't be as good, I found ERIC was better at finding papers that focused on the educational use of laboratories in distance courses.

Further Search

I have found papers that are relevent to what I am interested in finding. I looked at the keywords listed for the papers I found previously and tried them in new searches. This seemed to give better results with most of the results being papers that were more focused on what I was looking to find.

I'm still having problems with my computer after Microsoft applied an update. So far, Microsoft has been unhelpful. It has made my search harder because I have to borrow a computer to do it.

I found one paper that I found interesting. Two colleges, a 4 year and a junior college, ran similar introductory chemistry courses. Although not identical, they were designed to be very similar. The 4 year college had a traditional class with laboratory while the junior college offered an online class with a lab portion performed at home by the students. At the end of the year, both classes had a lab practical that required the students to be tested at the laboratory with comparable evaluations. You can guess what the outcome was: the online junior college students received better grades. Interesting.