Educational Software

Researcher's Assistant

Age Range: Adult
Platforms: Internet-based tools, Windows and Mac
Media: Online
Cost: $99 for six months, $199 for a year or $159 a year for educators

Company: Carlton Solutions for Education
Phone Number: 1-800-787-6767

Description:

Carlton Solutions for Education has released Researcher's Assistant, an intelligent productivity Internet toolsite that eliminates the drudgery of locating research literature and formatting citations and bibliographies in documents. This toolsite is a work-saver for anyone who needs to locate educational research. It is one of the first of a new generation of productivity tools that are accessible totally over the Internet. Users do not have to install any software. Just use a current Internet browser on either a Windows or Macintosh computer. Users can even save their documents online and access them from any Internet computer using a password protected ID.

Researcher's Assistant allows the user to paste research documents into Carlton SE's Internet website, highlight any section of the document, and retrieve the most relevant research abstracts using a natural language search technology over the Web. Once the user chooses the most appropriate abstracts, the references are automatically placed as citations into the document and correctly formatted into the bibliography. The revised document and bibliography are then stored at the website, allowing the user access from any computer - at home, work, or the library. The bibliography is automatically formatted in the user's choice of APA, MLA, Chicago, and Turabian styles.

The current database included in the Carlton SE toolsite is the complete ERIC (Educational Resources Information Center) collection of more than one million article abstracts dating as far back as 1917. The database of abstracts is updated quarterly to provide access to the newest research information.

The Researcher's Assistant uses a supportive "Process Guide" interface that provides step by-step procedures to accomplish the literature search. The toolsite also includes hints for using the tool to write research papers and grant proposals. When the user has created a list of references a report can be generated with or without the research abstract text. This report can be used to order the full research documents from a college or local library service agency.

All Carlton SE products include the following features:

• 24 hour Web access
• Productivity ­ the user produces valuable documents
• Interactive concept retrieval technology
• User portfolio for document access from any web-based computer
• Easy-to-use interface (less than ten minutes to learn)
• Password access ­ no software installation required
• Instant product updates to all users

For further information, click here

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Howard J. Bender, Ph.D.
President
The Education Process Improvement Center, Inc.
P.O. Box 186
Riverdale, Maryland 20738
hjbender@epicent.com