Google Docs' New Research Tool: A Review for Teachers

About a week ago a new feature showed up in the my Google Doc, the research tool. The first two days I couldn't get it to work properly, still not sure if that was our school's web filter of the tool itself, but now that I have had some time to play with it I thought I would review and share.

What is it, and how do I use it?

The research tool basically allows you to do mini-research inside of a Google Doc. No need to open another tab on your browser in order to look more in depth into something. In order to bring up the research tool you simply select the relevant text, and then you can either right-click and select "research tool", select the feature from the "Tools" menu (right above "define"), or use the keyboard shortcut [command-option-r (mac); cntrl-option-r (pc). If you want to search something that is not already in your document just use the options above without highlighting anything and a blank research box will appear.

After you make your selection you will see a pane pop up on the right hand side of the screen (in the same area as the chat feature).  Google will research the web, images, scholar and quotes from within this pane directly in Google Docs. You can chose to have all four shown at once or drill down to just the results you want.

This image shows the Web results that I got when researching the term "discount rate" in my document.  I had selected to search all four of the options so you can see the thumbnail images at the bottom of the screen shot.


My review:

While at first glance offering nothing more earth-shattering than saving you the time of opening up a new tab to do your research, there are some real benefits to in-document search.

For example, you can easily drag and drop images from the thumbnails in your research pane into your document.  Once inserted into your document, Google Docs automatically creates a footnote with a link back to the original source. If you do not change the settings, the image search feature will allow you to add some copyrighted images (for example my search yielded results from Cartoon Stock) to your work. Google, however, is taking some steps to protect image copyright. You can adjust the settings of your image search to bring up only images that are "free to use, share, or modify, even commercially." Do do this you need to bring up the search pane without highlighting any terms or just search a blank box. This will bring you to settings where you can set the image search to filter based on image rights.  There are even instructions on Google's research tool help page on how to make a report if you believe there is a copyright violation issue.

For Web searches, hovering over a result in the research pane will provide the user with a set of options including preview, insert link, and cite.

The preview function brings up another narrow pane that provides a minimally legible preview of the webpage source. This can be useful in making a quick determination of the utility of a result. The insert link is a great way to save any research that you have done to your document. I can imagine a student conducting initial research on a topic right from google docs, quickly gathering and sorting resources for later review by using the preview and insert link features.  If you follow a link to a web result and end up using the information, you can easily insert a footnote citation at the bottom of your document by just clicking on the "Cite" button with your cursor directly after where you placed the relevant information.

Google Scholar will search for scholarly articles that are available online and provide you with a title of the articles as well as a link to read the PDF and a link to articles that cite the article listed!  Once a student reads the article and determine that they are going to use the information contained therein, they can easily add a citation to the document (useful for the Works Cited/Bibliography) or they can insert a footnote into the document. Google allows for citations to be inserted in MLA, Chicago, and APA style.

When you search for quotes, the research pane will show you the text of the relevant quote as well as the author of the quote. Hovering over each quote will show you the source of the quote as well as bring up the insert button.  When you click "insert" the text and author of the quote will be inserted into your document and a footnote with the source will be created.

Note that here I was researching "Money" since a search for quotes with "discount rate" returned no results. In order to change my search terms I did not have to find the word money in my document, I could simply type the term into the research box once it is on my screen.


Conclusion:


The research tool is way more than just a fancy new tool. It can be a great addition to a student's research skills toolkit.  The research tool makes it simple for students to find great information and more importantly to cite the sources of their information.