WIP: Beyond Keywords: Demonstrating Reproducible and Transparent Database Search Strategies for Engineering Education Systematic Reviews

This work-in-progress, research-to-practice paper focuses on creating and reporting reproducible and transparent database search strategies for engineering education-focused systematic reviews. A systematic review, also known as a systematic literature review, is a type of research method designed to comprehensively collect, analyze, and synthesize the literature related to a specific research question(s) using a structured, linear, and detailed approach. The method has its origins in the medical sciences, but has since been adopted and popularized in many other disciplines. Recent research, conducted by the authors, shows that conducting systematic reviews in engineering education is a popular and growing trend globally, but researchers are generally not following best practices and established guidelines for conducting and reporting their database search strategies, which may result in incomplete data collection, inadequate analyses, and irreproducible reviews. This paper highlights best practices and guidelines (e.g., PRISMA) for developing and reporting transparent, reproducible, and thorough database searches for systematic reviews, since this is a complex aspect of the method that requires careful planning, consideration, and attention to detail. It will also provide a situated learning approach to educating researchers about database search strategies, incorporating a hypothetical research question related to engineering and computing education. The approach will demonstrate the detailed process of selecting appropriate databases to search, how to select keywords and synonyms, how to properly combine terms and phrases into a database search, how to translate a search to a different database, and how to properly report database searching using established guidelines for systematic reviews, all in the context of engineering education. This approach could be used by engineering education instructors, librarians, and other engineering educators in courses or with small groups of students. Future research plans include investigating how extensively and well engineering education researchers (faculty and students) create and report search strategies before and after receiving guided instruction on the process.