Searching and Researching-Module 6

I know I’m not alone when I say that searching for information that will be useful when writing a research paper or working on a project can be quite time consuming. It can be so time consuming because in order to write a good paper, you must have credible sources from which you retrieve your information. Why does it take so much time you may ask? It takes so much time because many college students remain unaware of the tips and strategies available to cut that search time down immensely. One of these strategies that I use myself is called “advanced search”. Many students go straight to Google to do their research, but they don’t understand how easily their search results can be narrowed down. Google has this “advanced search” option available right next to the actual search bar. This “advanced search” option allows you to apply different things such as keywords to your search to really narrow the results down to credible sources that will be useful to you. Reliability, quality, and utility are the three elements that you should think of when searching for sources. Make sure to ask yourself questions such as, “Where has this information come from?”, “Can I trust this information?”, “How recent is this information?”, and “Is this information going to help me get my point across in my paper?”. There is no doubt that if you see the source as reliable with high quality information that will be useful in your paper or project, it is a credible source.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *