Introduction
Across every subject area, students turn to the internet to prepare assignments, build background knowledge, and find information to support their work. But the online information environment can be noisy: results vary widely in quality, many pages have a purpose or point of view that isn't obvious, and sponsored content can be easy to confuse with neutral information.
Search Coach and Search Progress help learners build information literacy habits that transfer across their digital lives—not just schoolwork, but social media, AI tools, and everyday decisions. These tools teach students to ask better questions, narrow or broaden results with intention, compare what multiple sources say, and consider whether a source is worth using or engaging with.
Here's a simple way to think about the difference:
| Tool | Best for |
|---|---|
| Search Coach (tab app) | In-the-moment practice, mini-lessons, and learner-driven exploration—anytime |
| Search Progress (in Assignments) | Structured research workflows where teachers want learners to slow down, think deeper, document key choices, and reflect on how they decided what to use |
Search Progress works inside Assignments—in Teams for Education or through the Microsoft 365 LTI app in your LMS. Search Coach is a Teams tab app you can add to any channel for open practice
Why this matters now
These skills matter even more in a world shaped by AI. Students increasingly encounter information through AI tools, social media feeds, and recommendation algorithms. Thankfully, the critical thinking skills educators have been teaching for years—evaluating sources, checking claims, understanding bias—are exactly what students need to navigate AI responsibly. You're not starting from scratch; you're leaning into expertise you already have.
Research underscores the urgency. In a national study of students' civic online reasoning, Stanford researchers found that two-thirds of students couldn't tell the difference between news stories and ads labeled "Sponsored Content," and 96% did not consider how a website's ties to the fossil fuel industry might affect credibility—often focusing instead on superficial markers like the contents of a website's "About" page (Breakstone et al., 2019: Students’ civic online reasoning: A national portrait).
Meanwhile, the OECD identified Media and Artificial Intelligence Literacy (MAIL) as their priority domain for PISA 2029 (PISA 2029 MAIL project page). For an educator-friendly companion lens, the AI Literacy Framework (review draft) also captures many of the same real-world skills students need.
Search Coach and Search Progress make these thinking moves teachable—and visible—so you can coach the process that leads to stronger final work.
Learning objectives
By the end of this module, you'll be able to:
- Describe why effective search strategies matter for learners
- Identify the core search tools in Search Coach
- Describe how Search Coach supports skill-building with tips, lesson plans, and Insights
- Set up Search Coach for your class
- Create structured research assignments with Search Progress
- Describe how Search Progress makes learners' choices and reflections more visible to educators, including assignment-level, class-wide Insights