What's the best way to find information online?

The most common (and worst way!) for students to find answers to a question is to type the question directly into Google. If you ask Google a question that the teacher asks word-for-word, you will most likely find links to forums where other students have asked the same question.

The problem with these forums is that ANYONE can answer these questions, and often well-meaning students give wrong answers or some people even intentionally give you false answers. 

Moreover, you can’t cite Quora or Reddit in your Reference List. 

Remember, Google doesn’t really care about question words, question marks, or connecting words and prepositions. You can pick out the keywords from the question or title of your work and simply use them on their own. This is quicker to type — and you get more precise, focussed links to the information you need, 

Instead of typing “How did the Moors create and maintain agricultural water supplies in Spain?”, simply search “Moors agricultural water Spain”.

As you can see, the search for the keywords gets over twice as many hits, and the links Google finds are more specific to school work than when you type the whole question in.

Another Red Flag that shows a teacher you aren’t great at finding information yet is when the Reference List is full of links to Wikipedia. Wikipedia often appears at the top of searches for school-related information, but again, ANYONE can add to Wikipedia. This is the same for YouTube, where although there are a lot of good quality educational channels, anyone can upload a video and include false information, either accidentally or as a joke. 

This doesn’t mean that you can’t use the ideas that you find on Quora, Reddit, Wikipedia, or Youtube; but use these sites as starting points for your searches, not the end-point. Try to see where they found their information, and look at those sources. 

Remember, don’t spend too long on these initial sources of information, it is too easy to “go down the Rabbit Hole” and find lots of information not relevant or helpful to your project, or just zone out watching YouTube videos.

Sometimes going all digital isn’t the best way: try putting a Sticky-note on your screen with the title of your essay/project, keep referring to it, and think “Does this help me answer this?” 

If not — Move On!! 

Don’t dwell on ‘interesting’ facts if they are not relevant.

How much info do I need?

When you are researching your work, keep in mind how big the project is. If the assignment is to answer one homework question, you are going to need a lot less than you would to write the Conclusion of a Lab report. If you have to do a complete design project, you are going to need more information than you would to write an essay. 

Also, try to imagine yourself as the Reader of your (soon-to-be) completed project. Will they need to know what you have found to understand your work, your meaning, or your argument? Will they need to know more than this, or does this point need more detail?

Remember to keep a good record of where you found your information so you can easily write your Reference List yourself, or use a suitable website!

You may have heard people talking about “Good sources of information”. This applies to academic writing as much as it does to police investigations. If you were investigating a crime and people were offering you information, you would be asking yourself “Can I trust this person?”, “Why are they telling me this for free, what do they want?”, and “How do they know that this is true?”.

You should be asking yourself the same questions about the websites you use: You must think about if the website (or the authors) are biassed in any way, and consider where did they get their information from; can you trust them?

A good place to start is the address of the website, does it end with .com (a commercial domain) or with .edu, .gov, or .ac.uk? These show they are purported to be educational, government-based, or (in the case of the UK) a university website.

Then try to see who wrote the webpage, are there any authors listed? Do they list their sources? Are they writing as though they are explaining facts or is this their opinion?

In many cases, you will have to rely on your own judgement, but your judgements will get better with practice and will come more naturally over time. Importantly, you will need and use these skills throughout your life — not just in school!!

The Danger of “copy-paste”

However, copying sections of text can cost you more time and effort later. Trying to edit copied text so it doesn’t sound plagiarised can be difficult and time consuming. You may get locked into a vicious cycle of changing words using a thesaurus then changing them again because they don’t make sense!

A better way is to use bullet-points:

• This helps you find the information easily in your notes at a later date.

• It is easier to see where you found each piece of information because it is less likely to get lost in a mess of words and different font styles.

• Only write down/type the main ideas/information.

• Transferring the information into bullet-points helps you remember the information.

• Summarising the information into bullet-points helps you to understand the information.

• Because you know the website that you used, you can go back later if you need more detail. 

• It is a great way to avoid plagiarism, the information is reworded into your unique style twice! Once from the source, and once from your notes. 

Recording and using information like this helps you understand that writing is a process. You (and even your teachers) may fall into the trap and think that the end piece of work is the important part, but you are given assignments to help you learn and using the information you find is the best way to do that. 

To easily find good quality, citable information that is relevant to your work, follow the 7 steps below!

1. Only search for the keywords! If a word is really important, put a plus sign (+) in front of it, e.g. “passive voice tourism +adverts”

2. Use Quora, Reddit, Wikipedia, and Youtube, but only as places to get an overview of the topic — don’t spend too long there!

3. Put a Sticky-note on your screen with the title of your project and keep checking what you are searching for or reading is specific to that topic. 

4. Keep searching until you think you keep reading the same things, you then have enough to start writing — you can always search for more after you have done some writing.

5. Have in mind how big your project is, this will help you focus on the amount of detail needed — you can always search for more after you have done some writing.

6. Is the site a “Good source of information” or not? If not —Move on!

7. Use bullet-points to summarise the main points.

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