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Tips on searching

To make the search as simple and friendly as possible we have introduced a keyword search facility. You must click on 'examples', 'resources', 'lesson plans' etc.' or 'all' to perform your search. When using 'all' MoLeSHARE will attempt to link your keyword across all areas of MoLeSHARE.

Combined words searching

Supports complex syntax to search for a word or phrase using boolean operators e.g. and, or. Click on 'search options' to use boolean operators.

Freetext searching

Freetext performs a ' wide' search that matches any of the complete keywords you specify. Freetext uses intuitive syntax to match the meaning and not the exact wording of the words in the search condition. It has the ability to match plurals and other inflectional forms of words. Multiple words are considered with "OR". Often, freetext searches will be too wide and if there is more than one word you may like to switch to 'combined words' searching.

Variations: If the word is a verb, alternative tenses and number are used. If the word is a noun, the singular, plural, and possessive forms are used to detect matches.

search for a word using the same stem
e.g. tutorials finds tutorial, solutions finds solution, languages finds language
singular form will find plural form
e.g. tutorial finds tutorials, solution finds solutions
Finds partial matches on specified keyword

Freetext will find hyphenated words but you should generally search the web without hyphens.

As with all search systems you will need to choose your search terms carefully. Sometimes you may find instances where you pick up far too many results from your search and these will appear to have nothing to do with what you want!

In these circumstances it may be because you have entered a term which is part of another commonly used word.

An example of this is:

Order by RANK

In simple terms the server orders the results associated to the number of references there are to the word in the item listed. The rank also relates to the number of keyword(s) there are in the results before it. At first order by RANK can be confusing especially in a world, despite well known search engines, where we are used to items being listed a-Z or by date. However, this method does try and look for word association and ensures that examples that begin with the letter 'N' onwards do, at least, have a better chance of being seen.