ERIC, sometimes known as Education Resources Information Center, is a database of educational research provided by the Institute of Education Sciences from the Department of Education in the US government. It covers education across the globe at all levels from pre-school to higher education and beyond, drawing information from journal articles, books and “grey literature” such as reports, conference papers, policy documents and case studies.

ERIC has a strong focus on research in education and does not cover non-research material. It can therefore be very useful as part of a literature review relating to education, or for anyone wishing to identify educational research. For anyone researching education in the UK, it can be useful to search both ERIC and the British Education Index.

Some groups who may find it particularly useful:

• Staff members interested in the scholarship of teaching and learning (for example, those completing the UCAP or PGCAP).
• Students completing a literature review relating to education, counselling, childhood studies, career development or special educational needs.
• Students from other subjects researching the impact of training and continuing professional development on their profession.

ERIC has a basic search option as well as a range of advanced search features.

The default option on ERIC is the Basic search screen – use this if you want to do a quick search for a simple topic such as cyberbullying or geography careers.

To do a more detailed search, use the Advanced Search screen – there is a link beneath the search box for this. This has three boxes (and the option to add more) and the most effective way to search them is to put one concept into each box.

For example, if you were researching the use of play in learning maths in the early years, you could enter early years in the first box, play in the second and mathematics in the third.

If there are different words you could use for the same concept, these can be entered into the box with OR between them, for instance maths OR mathematics OR math. Doing this means that ERIC will find articles and papers which use any of those words, which is a lot quicker than doing separate searches for each one.

Once you search, you can narrow the selection down using options in the left-hand column. This includes Publication Date and Language. Click Show more, just below the Publication Date, to see the full range of options including education level and intended audience. These options will use American vocabulary, though the contents of the database are international.

From your list of results, you can click the title of a document to read more information about it, including the abstract, which is often a really useful summary of the article or paper. If the university has access to an article, there will be a link saying Full Text Finder to take you to it. There may also be a link saying Full Text from ERIC to documents such as conference papers and reports.

See the video at the end of this page for a demonstration of how searching ERIC works.

• Go to LibrarySearch.
• Log in using your CCCU username and password. If you are away from campus, or connecting with your own device over Wi-Fi, you will need to include @canterbury.ac.uk after your CCCU username.
• Select Find Databases A-Z, then click on E, finally click on the link to ERIC (EBSCO) to open it in a new tab.

You can also access ERIC free online at https://eric.ed.gov/ without needing to log in. Accessing via CCCU will give you more search options and will automatically link through to articles which the university has access to. However, there is a short delay between new research being added to the ERIC site and it becoming available through the ERIC database we subscribe to – if you need the very latest information, it may be worth going directly to the web site.

After you have accessed ERIC, go to Help and search for accessibility or go directly to the EBSCO support information.

Try searching ERIC by following the steps outlined below. You’ll practice using some of the most common functions and be ready to search for information for your assignments.

1. Search for the topic virtual reality and higher education. How many results do you find?
2. Using the left-hand panel, limit your search results to those published between 2020 and the current day. How many results do you find?
3. Try using the Advanced Search screen for the same topic. Try increasing your number of results by entering alternative words for the topics (for example virtual reality OR VR in the first box).
4. Find an interesting document from your results list and access the full-text of the document by using the Full Text Finder or Full Text from ERIC links.
5. Reflect on the type of information appearing in your search. How will you use this information in your work, research or assignments? How could you make your search more specific?
6. Finally, search for a topic you are interested in. Experiment with using different words in your search and making use of different Limits options to focus your results.

You may also want to search other similar education databases that you can find via LibrarySearch such as British Education Index, Educational Administration Abstracts or Child Development and Adolescent Studies.

Your Learning and Research Librarian will be able to help you make the best use of online resources. For detailed guidance, book a tutorial via the Learning Skills Hub.