A+ Education was my next database to explore and by this stage I am now becoming a much more efficient and much less frustrated 'information seeker.' After locating this database through searching educational journals in the QUT Library Homepage, I began my searching in the same way as I did via pro Quest.
I started my advanced searching with the term 'Inquiry Based Learning,' however I set some limits from the beginning, by limiting my searching to Full Text Records Only and Date Range 1990 - 2010. After starting with this search, there were 175 results in comparison to 394 when I did the same search via Pro Quest. So, at this point I can see the benefits of setting limits from the beginning of the searching process in order to become a much speedier searcher.
To refine the searching, I once again added 'not science' and this narrowed the results to 91. I then once again added 'and researching' this narrowed the documents found to six, however none of them were relevant. At this point, I changed the 'and researching' to 'and information literacy' and this gave me 12 documents, three of which were relevant and useful.
After using both Pro Quest and A+ Education, I preferred the layout and navigation of Pro Quest, as well as the marking documents function. When marking documents in A+ Education, they were not as easy to locate, in comparison to having the My Research Folder in Pro Quest. However, A+ Education seemed to refine the documents more explicitly and efficiently and gave you options in how you wanted the documents found displayed. I selected the newest to oldest function, to ensure the data being read was the most up to date and relevant.
When seeking information in the future, both of these databases will become well-used tools in my researching kit!
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