• Introduction
• Searching for research
• Published Sources
• Other Sources
• Being Opportunistic
• Web search skills
• Research organisations
• Electronic libraries
• Gateways
• On-line courses
• Research software

On-line courses

There are not many on-line social work courses that are generally available and fewer in the area of social work research methods or research mindedness. An example is Bill Trochim's Center for Social Research Methods, an on-line course from the University of Cornell, USA for people involved in applied social research and evaluation. It includes:

• a Knowledge Base (online hypertext textbook on applied social research methods that covers defining a research question, sampling, measurement, research design and data analysis)
• Research Pointers Page
• Selecting Statistics
• Simulation Book
• Research Papers and
• World Wide Web Resource Center.

Locally available on-line courses

Most on-line courses are available for students at a particular institution and are available either to those accessing from the same domain name (eg bristol.ac.uk for Bristol University) or by registering for the course. It may be possible for you as a social work practitioner to obtain access to courses locally either by

1. having your agencies domain name included on the authorised list or
2. being allocated a password for a course.

The first problem is finding what is available. The starting point is to search the website of your local HE or FE institutions. The University of Wolverhampton provides a Universities and HE Colleges map that shows all universities and HE colleges with links to the main web site for each. It also has maps for FE Colleges and research sites.