Ok, for this task I am going to use the term “human computer interfaces” as a way to get some more interesting results (forgive my previous diversion) and to tie in with my Concepts assignment.

Entering just the keywords as they are into Google  – “human computer interfaces”, results in 26,900,000 hits.

Using the AND operator as in “human AND computer AND interfaces” returns around half the results at 13,600,000. I suppose this is less because the operator is asking for all the terms to be taken into account when retrieving records.

Conversely, using the OR operator, as in “human OR computer OR interfaces” broadens the search to return a huge 1,650,000,000 Google hits! Winner!

To get the results that are most relevant here I would use “human AND computer AND interfaces”.

Other options to narrow the search would be to “phrase” the keywords or to use a “+” sign in front of a keyword to tell the search engine to match the word exactly as typed.

As for limiting a search to university sources only, I am a little unsure of how to achieve this. I have read on the Webct forums that including “edu” in the keywords can act to as a limiter as .edu is the domain for educational institutions.

My tactic for the Concepts assignment was to extensively use Google Scholar as a starting point. If results point to an academic online journal that is restricted by a cost subscription, access through Gecko database search means that you are going through a Curtin University gateway, and as such no fees apply. Very handy.

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