A Useful Tool for Education Researchers

ProQuest One Education is a multifaceted resource that supports teaching, learning, and research by undergraduate and graduate students and faculty in education. With its well-designed user interface, multiple access points, and excellent content, it is appropriate for both beginning and more experienced researchers. Its topic pages and areas of research provide particularly valuable gateways to its content. Its new AI-powered Research Assistant helps users connect with appropriate resources.

Product Overview/Description

ProQuest One Education supplies content in multiple formats to facilitate the study of education. Its unique interface, which was created specifically to meet the needs of researchers and teachers in the field, guides users through concepts and ideas, giving them access to both quick overviews and more in-depth research. The resource’s authoritative content has been curated by the senior product manager and other in-house editors to meet the needs of students, faculty, and other researchers. It includes thousands of scholarly journals, ebooks (from ProQuest’s Ebook Central), videos (from Alexander Street Press and other sources), research reports, dissertations, and news articles. Content from ERIC (Education Resources Information Center), the world’s most widely used index of education-related literature, is included, offering citations to journal articles, research reports, curriculum and teaching guides, conference papers, and books (ProQuest One Education, 2024). Subject terms from the ERIC Thesaurus facilitate focused searches.

User Experience

User Interface

The ProQuest One Education landing page features a search box with options for basic and advanced searches. In the basic search, users can choose to search all content or specific source types (Figure 1).

In addition to traditional keyword and subject searching, the platform includes over 800 topic pages, some of which are listed on the landing page; the others are accessible by clicking “View all topics” (Figure 2).

Rachel Kessler, a senior product manager at ProQuest, told me that these pages contain “a curated selection” of content providing users an overview of a given topic and supporting the development of instructional materials (R. Kessler, personal communication, August 6, 2024). Clicking on a topic surfaces a page featuring resources in several categories, including Scholarly Journals, Top Publications, Books, News, Dissertations, Videos, and Reports (Figure 3).

A third feature of the landing page is “Areas of Research,” broad categories which link to a list of relevant topic pages (Figure 4).

In addition, users can browse the titles of journals, books, and videos, a feature likely to be more useful to a researcher than to a typical undergraduate student. There are also links to topic pages on educational theorists, including Carl Jung, Horace Mann, and Maria Montessori.

ProQuest recently released its AI powered Research Assistant in ProQuest One Education as well as its other ProQuest One discipline products. When the user views a document, the Research Assistant appears on the right and provides a key takeaway, links to related topic pages, suggested sources, and applicable index terms (Figure 5).

According to the product’s FAQ, the “key takeaways are extracted from the document and are intended to help a user understand what [the] document is about…to quickly determine its relevance” (ProQuest Research Assistant: FAQs, 2024, para. 5). The key takeaway for the article I examined (Marcovitz, 2022) appeared to be accurate and was derived from the article’s abstract and text.

Related topic pages provide links to relevant topic pages within One Education. The Marcovitz article included two topic pages—social justice and educational technology—both of which were relevant.

Suggested sources for the article, however, did not appear to be directly related. The article is about the intersection of social justice and educational technology, while the top two suggested sources pertain more to introducing social justice concepts into the science classroom. A third suggested source addresses the role of a summer field experience in perceptions and social justice awareness. The full list of suggested sources appeared similarly off-topic. The suggested sources are listed with brief citations; clicking on the title surfaces a full citation as well as link to the full text.

Navigation and Searching

When a user enters a keyword into the search box at the top of the landing page, they surface multiple entry points to content, including subjects from the ERIC thesaurus, recommended searches, and relevant topic pages.

I entered “technology” in the search box and chose “technology in education” from the recommended searches, which produced over 750,000 results, an overwhelming and not useful quantity. ProQuest could improve search results if instead of supplying the non-standard term “technology in education,” it used the established term from the ERIC thesaurus—“educational technology”—so “educational technology (as ERIC subject)” appeared in the Search For list (Figure 6).

In the advanced search, I searched for “educational technology” as an ERIC subject and limited to full text, peer reviewed, and 2000–2024 publication date, which surfaced over 30,000 results. As a comparison, I performed the same search in EBSCO’s Education Source Ultimate. While ProQuest shows additional suggested searches using both standard subject terms from the ERIC thesaurus and non-standard terms, EBSCO shows only standard ERIC terms (with one exception) in its list of suggested subjects, making it is easier to refine the results.

The results were more focused when I selected the “Educational Technology” topic page under “Go directly to.”

Facets on the left side of the results page narrow the results, though for my “technology in education” search, I did not find them useful. For example, under the “Source type” facet, there are thousands of resources listed next to each type. I do not think an undergraduate user would find this helpful. Limiting to full-text and peer reviewed resources still surfaced almost 250,000 results. The “Subject” facet also showed many thousands of results for each of the subjects (Figure 7).

Many of the resources are available full text in One Education, which also supports open URL link resolvers (Figure 8).

Accessibility

“The ProQuest Platform is continually designed and developed to meet Level AA of the W3C Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG 2.2) and Section 508 of the US Rehabilitation Act for features and functions” (R. Kessler, personal communication, August 6, 2024).

Contracting and Pricing Provisions

The “Product/Services Terms” document applies to all Clarivate resources. At 54 pages, it is complicated and confusing. My ProQuest contact referred me to “ProQuest Platform & Ebooks” as the pertinent section for One Education (Clarivate product/services terms, 2024, pp. 34-53). However, that section does not mention One Education specifically. The section is detailed and includes standard sections such as the definition of authorized users. Text and data mining are not allowed but interlibrary loan is. The agreement allows “reasonable” use for currently enrolled students, faculty, staff, and visiting scholars, as well as walk-in users while they are on campus. “Reasonable” is not defined. There is no indemnification clause. The governing law jurisdiction is Delaware.

US annual subscription costs range from $4,400 to $43,000 depending on the institution type and size, determined by Carnegie classification. ProQuest also offers consortia and packaging opportunities. Contact ProQuest for specific pricing.

Authentication Models

“The ProQuest platform supports various authentication methods including IP authentication, proxy server, referring URL, library barcode, Shibboleth, OpenAthens, Google single sign-on (SSO), SAML SSO, Clever, and LTI authentication via LMS integration” (R. Kessler, personal communication, August 6, 2024).

Competitive or Related Products

ProQuest’s primary competitor is EBSCO Education Source Ultimate. Education Source Ultimate is organized as a traditional database with search boxes and facets/limiters and the ability to build a search using standard ERIC subject terms. One Education organizes content visually, with topic pages, areas of research, and AI-generated key takeaways prominently displayed, making it more useful to a beginning user. Education Source Ultimate has the advantage of EBSCO’s smart linking, providing direct links to other EBSCO resources the library subscribes to. One Education has many articles native to the database and relies on open URL link resolving to link to non-native articles.

Gale Education Professional Development eBooks is another competitor, although it covers only print and ebooks and not the other resource categories included in One Education.

Critical Evaluation

Strengths

• The topic pages provide a useful gateway to a variety of resources on a subject. The quantity and quality of the topic pages and the curated resources within them are impressive. The multiple categories of resources within the topic pages, including scholarly journal articles, books, news and magazines, dissertations and theses, videos, and reports, should enable any user, from inexperienced undergraduates to seasoned researchers, to find valuable resources on a topic.
• The areas of research on the landing page provide access to broad topics that link to more specific topic pages. If a searcher is unsure how to narrow a subject, or wants an overview of a topic, the areas of research provide a useful access point.
• One Education’s multiple entry points to access content—traditional keyword searching, topic pages, including those for key theorists in education, and areas of research linking to relevant topic pages—are a big plus.
• Multimedia resources, including videos from Alexander Street Press and ebooks from Ebook Central, both owned by ProQuest, are a strength and accommodate varied learning styles.

Weaknesses

• On the landing page there is a prominent link to browse journals, books, and videos by title. Clicking on the link results in a “publication search” screen. Even with the facets to narrow the browsing to scholarly journals or by subject, in my experience, browsing by title is not an effective research method for undergraduates, and the prominence of the link might confuse such users. ProQuest should either eliminate the “browse titles” link on the landing page or move it to the advanced search screen.
• When one enters a term in the search box on the landing page, the number of results that surface can be overwhelming, even after using facets to narrow them. The topic pages and areas of research are much more useful for the inexperienced researcher than the search box. ProQuest should move the traditional search box down on the landing page, so the topic pages and areas of research appear more prominently.
• On the topic pages, it would be helpful if the categories defaulted to opening minimized so the user could see all options on one screen and then decide which to open. For example, when I clicked on the topic page for online learning, each category showed five resources, so only two categories showed on the screen. I had to keep scrolling down to see the other categories. If the categories defaulted to opening minimized, a user could see all the category options on one screen and could decide which to open, instead of having to scroll down to see the other options.
• The topic pages should show the most useful categories of resources first. I suggest changing the order to:
  1. Scholarly journal articles
  2. News & magazines
  3. Books
  4. Dissertations & theses
  5. Reports
  6. Results in the last 20 years
  7. Top publications for this topic

Quality

Most of the publications are scholarly. There are also articles from trade journals, magazines, newspapers, and dissertations as well as videos and ebooks. The publications are chosen by in-house editors. The content that populates the cards/categories on the topic pages is driven by searches performed in One Education and is curated by in-house editors (Figure 9). This ensures the content is constantly refreshed. An external subject matter expert chose the related topic pages to populate the areas of research (R. Kessler, personal communication, September 23, 2024).

Recommendation

While there’s room for improvement in the layout of the landing page, the operation of the basic search, the organization of the topic pages, and the AI assistant, ProQuest One Education contains comprehensive, high-quality multimedia resources, including scholarly articles, ebooks, and videos. Its user interface provides multiple access points to accommodate the experience level and research needs of the user. The topic pages and areas of research are especially useful since they eliminate the need for the user to know which subject or keyword terms to search for. I recommend the product as essential for undergraduate, graduate, and faculty users researching education topics.

References

Clarivate Product/Services Terms. Retrieved September 13, 2024, from https://clarivate.com/wp-content/uploads/dlm_uploads/2023/12/Product-Terms-v3.7.pdf

EBSCO Education Source Ultimate. Retrieved September 22, 2024, from https://www.ebsco.com/products/research-databases/education-source-ultimate

Gale Education Professional Development eBooks. Retrieved September 23, 2024, from https://www.gale.com/ebooks/category/academic/educational-resources-for-teachers

Marcovitz, D. M. (2022). The Intersection of Social Justice and Educational Technology: The Educational Technology Social Justice Matrix. Education and Information Technologies, 27(4), https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10639-021-10828-1

ProQuest One Education. Retrieved September 13, 2024, from https://about.proquest.com/en/products-services/proquest-one-education/

ProQuest Research Assistant: FAQs. Retrieved October 3, 2024, from https://support.proquest.com/s/article/ProQuest-Research-Assistant-FAQs?language=en_US