The Student Engagement Unit's Academic Skills website has a number of resources to help make sense of the assignment and instruction words.

For your assignment you will need to find information about your chosen health profession, good starting places are:

Tip: Look to see if there is a Subject Guide for your chosen discipline and look at the Find evidence > Government and organisation information page to find professional bodies. 

A mind map is a great tool to help you start brainstorming concepts. Please see the example below to get an idea of how a mind map might look:

Explore the following free online mind mapping software to start your assignment:

To search effectively it is important to prepare a search strategy.

Identify the key concepts (main ideas) in your assignment. Terminology used will vary, so be sure to consider alternative terms for each. These will be your search keywords.

Have a look at the example question below to see how to start preparing your search strategy.

Example question: musculoskeletal manipulation in Chiropractic

You can use quotation marks (“ “) to find an exact match, e.g. “healthcare professional”

Combine your terms to form your search strategy (you'll type this in the search box):

• combine all the search terms for the same concept using OR
  This will search for any of the words included
• combine different concepts using AND
  This will search for at least one word from each line

Example search strategy:

For more help:

The Library Collection can be a useful starting point in locating quality information.

Use it to find:

• books or ebooks
• journals or journal articles
• conference papers and newspaper articles

Journals and journal articles are a great source of quality information.

They can be found by searching in databases. The Library has a wide range of health-related databases, but for this assignment you could start with Scopus.

To search in Scopus:

• Type the first line of your search string into the search box.
• Click the plus button on the right hand side.
• Add the next line of your search string into the second search box.
• Repeat these steps to add as many lines as needed.
• Click the search button.

To refine your results:

• Use the menu on the left hand side of the results page.
• You may like to refine by publication date (e.g. 2014-2019).
• You can also refine by document type (e.g. article).
• Select the items you require and then click the limit to button.

 Tip: These search strategies can be applied when you are searching in other databases.

 More help:

Google Scholar
You can search Google Scholar in the same way as a Collection basic search.

1. Access Google Scholar through the Library website
2. Follow the instructions to link your session to UniSA
3. Use the basic search box like the Library Collection
4. Look for the PDF links or Fulltext at UniSA links to access the resource

More help:

To do well in this assignment, you need to identify and use quality resources.

Once you have identified potential articles, you need to start evaluating them to determine which articles are the most relevant and appropriate.

Demonstrating appropriate academic writing skills will help you succeed in this assignment.

View the Student Engagement Unit's Academic Skills website for help writing your assignment, or to make an appointment with SEU staff.